So what do…
And…
Have in common? The answer might surprise you!
Both of these examples are going to require a little explanation, so we are going to start with the one that might be a little more well-known. Have you ever heard of Batman? He is one of those superhero fellows that fights crime. He is the one without any powers, but has starred in… let’s see here… ten (or so) live action movies going back more years than most of this audience has been alive. So, yes, you have probably heard of Batman. But! Have you heard of Absolute Batman? He’s this guy.
Okay, technically this is not Absolute Batman. This is, like, a fantasy of Absolute Batman. But he makes an impression!
My mother has no concept of Absolute Batman, so here is your explanation (, Mom): he’s Batman. But! He is a Batman that premiered in 2024, and has primarily been written by Scott Snyder. The hook of Absolute Batman is that he is “Bruce Wayne who fights crime in Gotham City under the alias ‘Batman’,” but he also lives in a universe entirely engineered by Darkseid. Unlike the “real” DC Universe (current designation: Earth Prime/Who Cares) this is a timeline where Superman spent his childhood on Krypton, Wonder Woman has never met another Amazon, and Bruce Wayne is so poor, he may as well be carrying a bindle. That’s right! Bruce Wayne does not have stately Wayne Manor, an entire company designing gadgets for his nights out, or even a fancy butler. Bruce Wayne grew up in Crime Alley (not a metaphor this time), and his teacher father was gunned down during a class trip to the zoo. And Martha Wayne survives! And she might be a revolutionary ninja! This is a totally different Batman for a totally different world!
And “a totally different Batman” is nothing new or… uh… different. Elseworlds have been a big part of the DC Universe from the minute someone decided an imaginary story should feature super sons. Over the years, we have seen everything from Batman: Green Lantern to Bruce Wayne: Cthulhu Puncher. And those are just dedicated, separate stories. It is not unusual for “Prime” Batman to deal with a 5th Dimensional Imp or other wannabe god that messes with continuity for a six-issue, soon-to-be trade paperback. Bruce Wayne talked to his own (notably not dead) parents as an adult thanks to everything from a Superman team up to time-traveling eyebeams to that week when Flash broke the universe. And then there are “Dark Universe” What-If stories based on those stories! Point is that the basic premise of Absolute Batman being a “radical change to Batman” is just about as radical as Kellogg’s announcing their latest cereal containing looped fruits.
But what is unique about Absolute Batman is that it takes everything you know about Batman, and turns it against you.
From left to right: Harvey Dent, Oswald Cobblepot, Edward Nygma, Selina Kyle, Bruce Wayne, Waylon Jones
You can read Absolute Batman as a neophyte Batman enjoyer. You can enjoy seeing the 400-pound muscle man hitting a bunch of AR-addicted mooks with an axe. Absolute Batman is a good story about heroes and villains, and you absolutely do not need to know decades of continuity to appreciate that. But if you are familiar with Batman, you will likely realize his “childhood friends”, the guys he plays poker with every week, have the same civilian names as The Penguin, Two-Face, The Riddler, and Killer Croc. Is that an idle reference, or does this mean they are going to grow into their villain identities? But that would be dreadful! Bruce Wayne is such good friends with all of these cool dudes! For them to transform into mentally and physically scarred (Batman’s rogues’ gallery is not exactly a collection of lookers) villains would be a tragedy. Something horrible would have to happen!
And, yes, that is the tension that runs through much of Absolute Batman. While some have said the simple trick of Absolute Batman is a series of reimaginings of Batman heroes and villains as their absolute most exaggerated, “worst” selves, that is only one piece of the puzzle. The whole picture is not just a Jonathan Crane that looks like he would be at home in Raccoon City, it is that the audience is along for a ride where the phase “I have an upcoming meeting with Dr. Fries” sends chills down a million spines. Over and over again, Absolute Batman takes the possibility of redemption out of its cast, the chance that people might escape this Gotham City or Ark M and become something better, and metaphorically murders them until all they can ever be is Poison Ivy or The Batman. The heartbreak is inevitable. You know what is going to happen just as surely as you know how Jason Voorhees is going to treat those Crystal Lake campers. It is Batman as a horror story, and it is confirmed every time you shout, “Oh no, get out of there!” as Bane pays a visit to Bruce Wayne’s social circle.
From top to bottom: Bruce Wayne, Bane, Waylon Jones
It is a new, fresh take on Batman that is only possible because the audience has had Batman stories since 1939. Or, maybe more importantly, it is a Batman story that relies on the fact that Batman fans have internalized the normal beats of a Batman story since childhood. If you were born any later than 1960, there has always been “a Batman show” immediately available. You learned about what The Joker or The Penguin were supposed to do before you ever absorbed lessons from Moby Dick or The Great Gatsby. And now that that knowledge is being mutated into something horrific? Now that you actually feel bad for a guy that is traditionally a cannibal reptile man? What you know is being turned against you, and you cannot wait for the latest issue to find out what happens in that world next.
Absolute Batman is a new take on Batman that is only possible because there have been decades of Batman. It is not simply “the next Batman story”, it is a whole new experience.
Now, we switch gears to talk about lesbian fox girls.
Kitsune Tails is a retro 2-D platformer about stomping elemental bosses and ironing out a love triangle. Yuzu is a young Kitsune just starting out in her job as a goddess’s messenger. Everything is going smoothly until her friend and former mentor, Kiri, disappears with her other friend, the healer Akko. It looks like Kiri was jealous of Yuzu’s relationship with Akko, and now Yuzu has to follow behind Kiri across different worlds to fish out the mystical keys that will free Akko. So, in a way, it boils down to a typical “Mario chases Bowser to rescue Princess Peach” story. And if you think that is the only Mario connection in this game, go ahead and take a gander at this screenshot:
Those are donut blocks. Those are… just donut blocks. You stand on them for a few seconds, and they begin to fall. They work the same as the donut blocks that first premiered in Super Mario Bros. 3. They have been featured across multiple Mario titles ever since. They have also appeared in Super Smash Bros., Mario vs. Donkey Kong, Yoshi’s Island, Super Princess Peach, Captain Toad, and even the Super Mario Bros. Movie. Nintendo did not copyright the humble donut block, but they are definitely just as much “a Mario thing” as fire flowers or goombas. And here they are in Kitsune Tails, functioning exactly the way you would expect from decades of Mario Time.
And do not get me started on when Kuribo’s Shoe shows up!
Kitsune Tails is a retro 2-D platformer. But the “you only have one social media post to sell me on this game” pitch is “It’s Super Mario Bros. 3”. It is a wholly original game with unique monsters, an inimitable plot, and even a “gameplay twist” halfway through that genuinely surprised this grizzled veteran of the console wars. But, also, it’s just Super Mario Bros. 3. The game may as well start with Mario defeating Bowser in Dark Land, tagging in Yuzu, and then seeing the fox girl hold down the B-button to dash across her own private Grass Land. It does not take a wizard to identify Super Mario Bros. 3.
And, frankly, that is genius.
36 years after the release of Super Mario Bros. 3, Kitsune Tails is a wholly new IP. It is also a story that would never have appeared in 1988. The points of the love triangle of Kitsune Tails do not involve a single male. Akko’s parents (seen in conversations between worlds akin to Peach’s Letters in SMB3) are her “vanilla” dad and proudly promiscuous mother. Super-secret spoilers, one of the characters eventually discovers they are something like asexual. And it is only “something like” because the point of this revelation is she is still figuring out her own sexuality, so putting a distinct label on her preferences may be premature before the release of Kitsune Tails 2: Bigger, Longer, and Outfoxed. But perhaps even that in and of itself is huge: when was the last time you played a videogame where someone’s sexuality wasn’t presented as a binary choice as rigidly defined as a birthday or blood type? The latest Street Fighter includes more wrestlers engaging in incest than characters canonically treating their own sexuality as fluid. This gameplay may be straight out of the 80’s, but its morals of Kitsune Tails are practically revolutionary.
And it is a revolution I would have missed if I didn’t just want to play more Super Mario Bros. 3. The challenges of Kitsune Tails are empirically better than any Super Mario Maker stage I found in the last few years, so it more than scratched that SMB3 itch. And added something completely unexpected! Like how Absolute Batman pulled the same trick, but was something I would have missed if I didn’t want some new Batman comics. These experiences are amazing, and I would have completely ignored them both if not for their attachment to properties that were established before I was out of primary school. “Scott Snyder’s new horror comic” would have turned me off immediately. A title that won “Best LGBTQ+ Indie Game” inevitably must be another damn visual novel about dating chairs, so that’s a hard pass. But toss a donut block in there? Tell me this includes Alfred Pennyworth: Agent of MI-6? I am back on board; ready, willing, and able to devote hours of my life to the cause.
And for everyone that has ever said copyright expirations only lead to dumb media like Popeye: The Horror Movie or Winnie the Pooh: The Horror Movie, here are twin examples of how copyright exploitation can lead to genuine masterpieces. Sure, Absolute Batman is published by DC Comics, the owners of Batman. But that masked vigilante in the iconic purple gloves premiered in 1939, and has been written by literally hundreds of people over the years. There is no “one” Batman any more than “stomp on an opponent, use their shell as a projectile” has a singular origin. And Batman will enter the public domain in eight years. And that is all semantics anyway: what is important is that you can take a world that is established, and transform it into something new and (arguably) impossible. DC Comics is never going to jettison the marketability of ol’ faithful Prime Batman for an exploration of the horror possibilities of the modern superhero, and Nintendo will never, ever grant us a Mario title investigating the possible sexualities of its cast. Luigi transforming into an elephant and awakening something in a million preteens is the best you can hope for there. But other authors, other creative people taking those symbols and styles, and making them something wholly unique? That is where the possibility of an “intellectual property” really comes into focus. “Batman but it is a horror story” or “Super Mario Bros. 3 but it has gay fox girls” may sound like shallow elevator pitches, but the final product proves franchises can be adapted to amazing new directions.
So please give me a ring in 118 years when I can finally make my magnum opus of Absolute Batman and Yuzu Kitsune hanging out and being best friends. They both fight ogres! This can work!
FGC #729 Kitsune Tails
System: This is the abhorrently rare title here on the FGC that is only seen on PC/Steam/Itch. The Wikipedia page has said there are console versions of Kitsune Tails coming soon for years now… And I may have been holding out for a year or two to see that materialize. I finally cracked!- Number of players: This winds up being the story of how to found a polycule. Despite this, it is still simply single player.
- Favorite Powerup: On one hand, the petal grants a bird suit that allows for a double jump and gentle floating. That is essential in any platforming challenge. On the other hand, Shrimp Powers permit you to survive lava and shoot a fireball, thus granting you the fuel to literally say “a shrimp fried this rice.” So it’s a toss-up.
- Say something mean: The sprite design here is immaculate, but something about the stark backgrounds and (albeit rare) platform definition issues (what part of the crane am I supposed to ride on?) reminds me of the old days of Flash Games. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but that whole era of gaming had a certain “garage made” feeling to it that drops the polish level by a point or two. Amazing game! But even the presence of (really fun) voice acting does not detract from Kitsune Tails sporadically giving the impression it was made by someone during study hall.
- Beat the Boss: Kitsune Tails has a significant leg up over Super Mario Bros. in the boss departments. It has been decades, and the Mario team still cannot figure out how to probably top a world with a boss fight! Kitsune Tails’ boss fights may be a little repetitive with “watch the pattern, wait for an opening” gameplay, but at least each of your opponents are memorable. And the final boss is downright satisfying!
- About that Secret Character: Without giving too much away, I will say there is a hidden character that is basically “Zero Mode”. You have a sword, and you gradually accumulate a series of button-combination moves that work for both offense and movement. And my only complaint is that there are still a handful of powerups in Zero Mode, when the whole thing probably could have worked just fine without dipping back into the other character’s greatest strength. Let your heroines be completely different! And the ninja suit barely does anything, anyway!
So, did you beat it? Yes, but effectively making you play the game twice in a row to complete story mode and then granting access to “challenge stages” really sapped the gas out of my tank. You want me to beat the whole game repeatedly, and then you present advanced armadillo shell jumping techs? Bah! I will 100% it eventually, I am just kitsuned out at the moment.- Goggle Bob Fact: Having just written and edited this article, I am amazed I never made a joke about fox news. “Breaking fox news: this game is great.” Something like that would be gold.
- Did you know? Kitsune Tails is a proper 2-D platformer. That means anytime you have to go underwater, it sucks. Sorry, our world’s oceans, but angry fish are simply the opposite of fun.
- Would I play again: Yes. And you know what? Maybe the best part of Kitsune Tails is that it is something I can wholeheartedly recommend to my friends with kids. It’s a fun game, it tackles important questions about sexuality, but it also, like, isn’t about foxes rutting in the fields. It is very honest about both platforming and relationships, and I can count on one finger games that earn that distinction. Fun for the whole family!
What’s next? Random ROB has chosen… Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals! I told you I would get to it eventually, ROB! And the rest of you can please look forward to it!
I am legally required to include this scene