FGC #707 G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero

There was a time I would have died for Jon Stewart.

I am a child of the 80’s. Before the grand Super Nintendo versus Sega Genesis Feud of the 90’s, there was a dichotomy I remember from my childhood: G.I. Joe versus Transformers. I was (and will always be) a Transformers kid. But my neighbor and best friend was a G.I. Joe tot. He had all the little guys and vehicles, and I had my army of transforming robots. Because I had a tendency to gravitate toward the more bestial Transformers (Terrorcons forever!), we couldn’t even have proper crossover play sessions. You know how it is: Duke could not stand against a gigantic robot that could transform into a boombox. Why pretend that would end in anything other than Decepticons frying up Duke burgers?

As Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and later urges to be cool and forsake toys took over, I gradually forgot about the schism in Hasbro properties. Both G.I. Joe and Transformers attempted reboots over the years, but I had aged out of their target audience, and no more cared that Snake Eyes was in 3-D now than that whole trukk not munky issue. Around when I was graduating high school, I thought back on the split between my best friend and I, and considered it a strange quirk of childhood. He liked war machines, I liked robots. Kind of a silly thing to fight over. We all like different stuff, right?

And apparently some people like being terrorists, because then 9/11 happened.

(Achievement unlocked: Never forget to include a transition.)

I have talked about my experience with September 11th before on this blog, so I see no need to get too into details of the actual event. And besides, today’s article is not about 9/11 at all. Today we are examining how practically everything that happened after September 11th made me feel like the most ostracized person in the world.

This is the basic timeline: On January 6, 2001, George W. Bush was certified as President of the United States after a hotly contested bit of legal malarky in Florida. For a solid nine months, everyone seemed to believe that George W. Bush was a buffoon, and the only advantage of this inevitably-one-term president was going to be four years of decent Saturday Night Live skits. Then we hit September 11, and a couple of planes hit a couple of buildings. From that point on, we were at war. With Osama Bin Laden? In Pakistan? Nope! We were apparently going back to Saddam Hussein in Iraq, because he had weapons of mass destruction. See, Osama’s assault in September just proved we were vulnerable, the real threat was Saddam and those dang WMDs. Did we have any proof of this? Nothing substantial! But we were told that very smart and learned investigators totally saw one peaking out of a closet somewhere, and that’s all we needed to know. Seriously. That is all we needed to know. Go to war now!

And I found it malicious and/or embarrassing.

Here is my memory of…. Let’s say the entirety of the Bush administration. Post-9/11, anything could happen, and it would immediately be funneled into an excuse for further “war on terrorism”. Anthrax mailed to specifically news organizations and democratic politicians? Iraqi Terrorism. Some guy named Richard flying from Paris to Miami tried to detonate his shoes? Iraqi Terrorism. Literally the whole rest of the world interprets the United States attacking Iraq as “unjustified” and “unprompted”? We now have to tout “freedom fries”. Actually, funny story about that one…

So back in 2003, I would have a weekly lunch with my grandparents. This was always immediately after church on Sunday (not that I went to their church), and always at the same restaurant (not that it was ever my first choice). It was a ritual we had committed to for years, and would continue to do so until my grandparents were no longer physically capable. Suffice to say, after years of going to the same place at the same time weekly, we were established patrons, and the host or hostess always greeted us and had a table available. One day, thick in the era of “freedom fries”, a waitress informed my grandfather that we did not have “French” dressing, it had been officially redesignated as “Catalina” due to France not supporting the United States. My grandfather had been raised to be polite to anyone “working”, and, as a result, was often pathologically nicer to strangers than family and friends. However, in this case, he immediately got his back up, and explained in no uncertain terms that he was a veteran of World War II, and the French were our allies, and it did not matter what France was doing right now, if we were disrespecting France, we were disrespecting the men and women that beat back literal Nazis. Suffice to say, this poor teenager that was just hoping for a decent tip was a bit taken aback by his rebuke, and “French fries” were definitely listed as a menu item by the time we got to today’s side dishes.

While it is fun to remember situations where the absurdity of the moment was drawn and quartered, it was a little weird that political debates were occurring between generations over salad dressing.

And, whether he supported the war in general or not, it is worth noting that my grandfather refusing to forsake France was not the norm. From the New York Times to republicans and democrats alike to your boss, the overwhelming zeitgeist was that invading Iraq was the only way to save America from malevolent forces hopping over here and detonating The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota. We were at war! And any concessions that our government might be misrepresenting the situation to justify atrocities, or the possibility that the press as we knew it was all in on the con was brushed aside as paranoia that would only empower our enemies. You are either with us or terrorists. You don’t want to wind up like France, do you? On the wrong side of history, and having your contributions to potato sciences erased?

And I will say that that whole epoch is the most alone I have ever felt in this country. Oddly, given the pervasive drumbeat of war that saturated every news report and conversation from this era, it felt like G.I. Joe versus Transformers all over again. Make no mistake: there were definitely people that enjoyed the Bush Era of the Iraq War. Thanks to a combination of 9/11 “pride” and the flood of reports of the USA “saving” the Middle East, this was supposed to be a morally good war. We were going to save the world from scary brown men! It may as well have been G.I. Joe, just with Dick Cheney commanding the Killer W.H.A.L.E. to detonate the nefarious Cobra Rattler. It seemed like everyone wanted to see the obliteration of Iraq, and never mind any silly details like the majority of the Iraqi population wanting nothing to do with any of that American nonsense. But I guess that was their problem for being born in such proximity to invisible W.M.D.s and having the same skin color as actual terrorists. Hope you’re born somewhere less flammable next time, innocent masses!

And then there was my Transformers to the rest of the nation’s G.I. Joe: The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

The Daily Show was always a comedy news program. In some eras, it has been a moderate excuse for a comedian to sell their latest book or movie. In the Bush era, it was a shining bastion of sanity. The trick was basically that The Daily Show was allowed to be a comedy news show, so it did not need to conform and match the tone of every other news program out there. As such, it wound up being the only news outlet that would:

1. Cover events happening on the federal level involving national leadership
2. Actually note that some of these leaders might not have our best interest at heart

And it was a goddamned revelation for me. My immediate friends and I all agreed that practically everything about Iraq was a bad idea… but we also agreed to routinely eat at Denny’s at 2 AM. Our opinions were clearly not the norm. Beyond that? I knew practically no one that disagreed with Bush and his Iraqi ambitions. But The Daily Show? Here was a program on television that believed in the same things as me. Me! A 20-something kid struggling to make auto insurance payments and wielding the same political power as a newborn marmot! That Jon Stewart up there on the tv believes in a better world! Hope is possible! The entirety of the “adult” population doesn’t just want to feed my generation into a desert-camo themed threshing machine!

And now, twenty years later, I am so glad that things are better.

No, things are not better politically. Our president is inspiring more SNL skits than his Republican forbearer, and we are somehow attempting to justify a war with Iraq again. In many cases, the issues of today can be traced to the ruling class of the earliest 21st Century still being in power in one way or another. Liz Cheney was somehow still a part of the 2024 election even if her father is the one 80-year-old white man that has managed to retire from politics. Measure our country simply by measles outbreaks, and it is not inaccurate to say that the leaders of the United States are blatantly worse than they have ever been.

But! Social media is here! And, what’s more, a little over a month ago, the largest national protest in 249 years was organized by people that identified that the current state of things is not to their liking. If you object to what is happening today, you are not alone. You are not stuck watching one show on basic cable at 11 PM every weekday just to reinforce that you are not insane! Yes, a voting majority may have elected a President that does not understand how makeup works, but mass protests and organizations on social media are here to remind you that only 22.7% of the actual US population voted for the guy. People that wanted this administration are literally the minority! And the secret truth? Those numbers were even worse back in 2000 (17.8% of the [then] US population elected Bush in 2020, 21.1% in 2024… Bush didn’t even have Trump’s future percentage in 2024 with “The War on Terror”!). Not supporting this nonsense was always a popular position, just the media and our leaders made that position seem toxic. The true “silent majority” was always the people in this country that want peace.

And now, more than ever, it is easier to see the world for what it is. This is not a world where countries want to stomp all over each other because wealthy leaders want more (hey, guess what George W. Bush, Donald Trump, Osama Bin Laden, and Saddam Hussein all had in common? A tax bracket you could only ever imagine), the average human being must be hyped up on “patriotism” and years of conditioning to want to “bomb them back to the stone age”. The divisions between us are fake, and, whether you like G.I. Joe or Transformers, you still don’t want to kill somebody over your preference. You have to be convinced that is a reasonable idea. And today, more than ever before, you can find people who share the same opinion.

So, even through these hard times, be glad you are here in this moment. You are not alone, and that is reinforced across the nation. Stand up for who you are. Stand up for what you are. And make it clear to everyone that you do not want more war. Be part of the solution, even if your part is reinforcing others with the knowledge that you are out there.

There was a time I would have fought a war for Jon Stewart, because it seemed like he was one of the only people out there that didn’t want a war. Be that person for others. Be a real American hero.

FGC #707 G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero

• System: Today’s excuse for an article was only ever seen on the Nintendo Entertainment System. There are other G.I. Joe games, but they ain’t this one.
• Number of players: You have a variety of Joes available, but you can only play as one at a time.
• Breaking News: And now this is publishing within 24 hours of the announcement that Stephen Colbert and the Late Show will be obliterated in a “cost cutting measure” that sure looks like something that was demanded by our big boy president. I will amend the closing lines of this article to note that you can “be that person for others”, but the unfettered greed of the ruling class does not make it easy. Show solidarity with the people that have a spine.
• Maybe actually talk about the game for a second: It is sad that the state of politics is so bad that I had to use this excellent NES game to talk about solidarity and not, like, Snake Eyes being rad. This is a good game! It is even better when you can utilize save states, and not get wrecked by all the bullshit instant death pits that Cobra scattered around. In a weird way, this almost feels Castlevania 3-inspired, as you can cycle through three different characters with marginally different skills and powers. One Joe can jump high! Another shoots footballs! It’s fun for the whole family!
• A little more talkin’ bout games: In addition to being a cool, low-stakes Contra, G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero has a few other unique innovations. There is a pseudo-leveling system for your weapons that encourages grabbing (bouncing) powerups and making sure your Joes live through a mission. Every world’s second stage is a maze of growing complexity where you have to find “detonation points” that are basically Red Coins. And there’s even the 80’s standby password system so you can pick up your game later. This isn’t just “good for a licensed game”, this could conceivably compete with Super Mario Bros. 3.
• Favorite G.I. Joe: Snake Eyes now and forever. His ninja magic does not use ammo! And he’s a freakin’ ninja! As an adult with refined taste, I will grant Blizzard my second place slot, as he’s got a knife and a gun that shoots through walls. I have learned to appreciate such niceties as a mature individual.
• What did he do wrong? Every Joe is assigned a level tailored to their talents. For instance, Rock ‘n Roll is equipped with desert camo, so he gets the desert stage. Snake Eyes, the stealthy ninja, gets the sewer level. I understand that this is a “secret base”, but couldn’t they have thrown that mission to Tunnel Rat?
• Gonna Take You For a Ride: In addition to different characters, there are Cobra vehicles that can be stolen in certain stages. Given the most fun you could ever get out of a G.I. Joe action figure was by steering it around in a tank, being able to assault your opponents from a Battle Copter or Buzz Boar is radical.
• Favorite Boss: All of the bosses are playsets and toys you can ask your mom to purchase (and they are conveniently named as part of the credits). Was this a mandate from Hasbro, or was it done just to make it easier to narrow down G.I. Joe luminaries? Regardless, the Cobra Sea Ray is my favorite vehicle opponent, and Destro naturally wins in the human category. Baroness does not appear, because KID is a bunch of cowards.
• What Am I Looking At? Every human boss transforms into a blue blob and falls over upon defeat. Was that something from the show? Is it to confirm that these are not the real “canon” characters, and they’ll be fine and dodging bullets again on Saturday morning? Or is it a weird art style meant to symbolize death? I need to watch more G.I. Joe.
• An End: The final stage grants you General Hawk, who can just straight up fly. Unlimited mobility was always the best reward on the NES. Your final boss is then Cobra Commander, who has a Serpentor-esque flying throne and ability to transform you into a lizard. Whatever! Let’s just keep biting on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with a boss that can transform your ninja into a reptile.
• Did you know? This bad boy was developed by Kindle Imagine Develop aka KID. They were founded in 1988, went out of business in 2006, and in that time… made no other games I have ever seen. Well, they were responsible for this, its G.I. Joe sequel, and Low G Man: The Low Gravity Man on the NES. There was also Super Bowling on the Super Nintendo, which I am at least dimly aware of thanks to Nintendo Power. And past that? Best I can sus out of their discography is Pepsiman for the Playstation. I at least recognize the legend of the great Pepsiman. Again.
• Would I play again: Sure! This is a fun NES game… that is unfortunately not immediately accessible. This would likely be one of my “always play it when it becomes available” games if we lived in a glorious world where it ever popped up on any system’s virtual console.

What’s next? It’s Actual Site Announcement Time™! I’ve been meaning to get back to the Smash Brothers Challenge in some capacity for a while, as it has officially been over a year now since I “switched back” to these Fustian Gaming Challenge articles. So! I am going to take a page from the Super Mario Bros. Super Show and feature a new SBC article the last Friday of every month. And the last Friday of July is next week! So we are going to look at a smelly gasbag and his little dumpy. Please look forward to it!

Yeah! Make your men hotter next time!