We get one Sonic the Hedgehog, and then we are forced to live in a world that is entirely Awesome Possum… Kicks Dr. Machino’s Butt.
If you came here from an Awesome Possum… Kicks Dr. Machino’s Butt fan page, I have some bad news: this article requires a history lesson. I am going to momentarily ignore Awesome Possum to talk about the Sonic the Hedgehog of the 90’s, Oprah.
Oprah Winfrey was born in 1954. For generational context (I know some of you young’uns think the olds are all the same), this makes her a baby boomer, like Samuel L. Jackson or Agnetha Fältskog. Oprah had a tumultuous childhood to say the least, but according to some stories, she was involved in local evangelical-style church activities. If you are unfamiliar with churches of the time and region, this means she was more or less raised to be a public figure…. though in the imagined case of the time that was probably something closer to being “vocal church lady”. She was literally nicknamed “The Preacher” for her orator skills (and, in case you are wondering, Garth Ennis’s Preacher [1995] has very little to do with Oprah), and there could be an alternate universe where Oprah is “just” the Helen Lovejoy of a big church in Nashville. But we do not live in that world; Oprah went to Tennessee State on a scholarship (that she won from an oratory contest), and studied communication. Now, once again, I must remind future generations that, at the time (the fabulous 1970’s) “communication” was radio, television, and raucously hollering at Gary down the street. That was it. But Oprah took to the airwaves like a fish to water, and she became the youngest news anchor in Nashville. She was going up against rival network’s John Tesh! You know! From that Icarus episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation! She beat him like he was nothing. After Nashville, she moved to/worked in Baltimore for a little bit, and then migrated over to Chicago. She started on AM Chicago at the very beginning of 1984, and, within months, she transformed the show from something with toilet ratings to a juggernaut that was rolling over Phil Donahue.
And this is where history is made.
Noted boobs-enjoyer Roger Ebert approached Oprah, and encouraged her to take the same syndication deal as he had with his own show, At the Movies. Oprah pursued that contract, and 1986 would mark the start of the official The Oprah Winfrey Show. That Oprah-hosted show (that fact seems obvious, but some of our readers have short attention spans thanks to videogames) quickly dominated the ratings, and it would not lose its crown for its entire 25 year run. From Reagan to Obama, Oprah dominated the airwaves with a show about… uh…
What was The Oprah Winfrey Show about again?
So Oprah’s previous communications career was predominantly in newscasting and (thanks to the state of television entertainment at the time) something like gameshow hosting (go ahead and find some Dialing for Dollars footage). What do you do in those jobs? Well, you are basically the hype man/master of ceremonies for whatever is happening onstage. And we will mention noted videogames-loather Roger Ebert again, because it is easy to identify his job: he is a movie critic. What happened during Ebert’s syndicated At the Movies (which you might also know as Siskel and Ebert’s At the Movies)? Ebert critiqued movies. The format for the show was simple: new movies premiere every week, and these critics talked about said movies. You can see why Ebert had a syndicated deal pretty quickly: movies are always releasing, so there is always going to be content for a critic to talk about movies. Ebert’s At the Movie lasted for 24 years, and ended a mere three years before its host and creator passed. The Oprah Winfrey Show lasted a year longer, ran every weekday, and the point of the show was… stuff? Uh… things and stuff? Roger Ebert always had a movie to talk about, but The Oprah Winfrey Show just had talk to talk about. And it had to produce an episode every day? How was that supposed to work?
Well, if you are unaware, Oprah’s early episodes are often derided for being “trashy”. It was a cavalcade of baby daddies cheating on baby mamas, finding out who had secret families, and other cheap thrills that we would later attribute to Jerry Springer or reality TV. Also: a whole hell of a lot of psychics and mentalists who could “read minds’ or predict the future. And, as becomes a topic anytime Oprah comes up, dieticians/gurus tossing out plans for watchers to “lose weight now”. And, yes Virginia, this trash all comes out of the same can. Basically, the goal for The Oprah Winfrey Show from day 1 to day 9,125 was to stir up drama. The drama of “my best friend is sleeping with my spouse” is obvious, but things like psychics and mentalists and (fake) dieticians are right up there. In those cases, the drama is the audience saying “That can’t be real!” This was a show that, day after day, year after year, was practically designed for two people to be in the room, and one to say to the other “naw, that can’t be true.” Or, if people are not spending time together at 4 PM EST, to create a discussion the next day on why this diet can work, or why it clearly doesn’t work, Debbie, look at your ass. It was drama, over and over again, because drama is a self-perpetuating machine. You don’t have to “write” drama, because every moment of every day there are a thousand people in your hometown cheating on each other, or struggling to lose weight, or trying to convince each other they have all the answers. Yes, The Oprah Winfrey Show was a “talk show”, but a more appropriate moniker should have been “drama generator”. Ebert could review a movie only when it was released, but Oprah could generate drama with the tiniest amount of talk.
Infinite drama machine or no, there were always going to be problems that Awesome Possumified our world. There were 4,561 broadcast episodes of The Oprah Winfrey Show. One Piece by Eiichiro Oda, considered by historians to be the longest story that has ever existed, is currently barely past 1,180 chapters. Can you imagine having to figure out content for four times the amount of One Piece? Having to populate an unfathomable amount of time meant conversations happened that went a little something like…
“Oh we don’t have anybody for Tuesday.”
“How about we put on this guy that started his own religion in Brazil.”
“Should we look into whether or not the whole thing is just an excuse for him to rape hundreds of women?”
“No, we don’t have time. Put him on. What’s the worst that could happen?”
As has been documented throughout the last few decades, Oprah herself may be retired from the public eye in 2026, but menaces she brought to the forefront, like Dr. Phil or Dr. Oz, are still threatening the world with the same regularity as Dr. Wily. Fun fact: when you harvest the spectacle trees for every last drama fruit, you wind up squeezing out a lot of rotten juice. And that is even if you maintain a stable of guests that can successfully carry a metaphor!
But that was somehow not the worst part of Oprah’s impact on the world. The biggest problem with the meteoric rise of Oprah was that nobody understood that meteoric rise.
At this point we will address the obvious: Oprah is a black woman that has spent much of her life overweight. The previously mentioned “rivals” John Tesh or Phil Donahue are men that could be described as Oprah’s physical opposite. And, in an age when radio had fallen behind and podcasting was yet to be born, a talk show host or news anchor that looked like Oprah was more alien than a xenomorph. Oprah did not look like the usual reason someone was handed a microphone. What’s more, Oprah came from abject poverty. She patently was not Sam Walton’s niece or the sexy mistress of John Kluge (look him up!). The people who were in power in the media in the 80’s were pretty much the same people in power now: a bunch of old white men that may or may not have been wearing wigs made out of elephant ivory. They expected to see a parade of Donahues raking in the ratings, and “soft black woman” simply was not on the agenda. She became the most influential woman on Earth, and there wasn’t even supposed to be a most influential woman on Earth. So nigh-immediately, all those heads of the media wanted their own Oprah. In the same way my big gamer readers may be familiar with how corporate leaders want “the next Fortnite” without once analyzing why Fortnite has ever been popular (children yearn to build), Oprah may as well have been a cryptid on the level of Mothman (also a reason Fortnite is popular) for all the ways her popularity was (mis)understood. Were the elite going to promote a proportionate number of black women? No, that would be silly. How about we get that cadre of old white men to identify the one thing they did understand about Oprah: sex.
Instead of finding the next personality that people would actually want to invite into their living rooms, media management focused on the “sex sells” aspect of the Oprah equation. As part of her show’s lurid beginnings, Oprah had always been someone who very publicly talked about sex. This became more principled when Oprah devoted an episode to sharing the details of a rape she had experienced as a child, and her own, extremely personal methods of coping with that trauma. From there, you had equal odds that an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show would focus on sexual assault survivors, or the occasional sexologist that would unapologetically examine orgasms. And, yes, this was part of the perpetual drama machine intended to have Wifey watch an episode and then ask Hubby, “Hey, did you know this whole time that I was also supposed to be enjoying sex?” This was new for the 80’s, 90’s, and today! Television had long been a bastion of puritanism, and it was forbidden for a man and woman to both have their sinful lips in the same frame. Oprah had managed to sneak in on that front: she started with a nothing local morning show, and gradually grew to something that had conquered the nation. She got this “carnal trash” on the air before anyone cared, and, by the time she was a popular and respected talk journalist, people wanted the same sexual content. She was the most popular woman in the world! No one was going to tell her she was not allowed to talk about vaginas anymore. Oprah was the Trojan Horse of broadcast sex.
… Which became very convenient when the president got a blowjob.
42nd President of the United States William Jefferson Clinton went down in history for having his dick sucked in the Oval Office. It was all anyone was allowed to talk about from about 1998 to 9/11 (2001). This talking point became mandatory thanks to a media blitz that made it clear that Bill Clinton lying about having (oral) sex with an intern was the most important thing that had ever happened. And now you understand why this happened (the media coverage, not the blowjob): everyone copied Oprah. It was okay to talk about sex now! And sex always equals drama! This was a garbage man cheating on his baby mama, just that garbage man happened to be the president. It is easy, infinite content!
And the reason this infinite content became the norm? Well, Bill Clinton signed his own death warrant.
Two years before impeachment hearings, Bill Clinton’s John Hancock was on the Telecommunications Act of 1996. We are already about 2,000 words into an essay about a videogame that has been obliquely mentioned a whole two times, so we are just going to look at the cliff notes on this legendary legislation. The short explanation about the TAO’96 is that it was supposed to foster competition in the media sphere or some such legend, but the reality of it was that it allowed approximately six companies to buy literally all the media streams that have ever existed. It is the opinion of GoggleBob.com that some legislation like this had to happen at about when it did. The internet was struggling to be born! We needed something new as a media mission statement that was not “radio: airwaves of the future”. But the Telecommunications Act of 1996 is exactly what happened, and it allowed media stations to pull together and merge into a gigantic, 
life-threatening monster just like The Ooze (1995). Thus, smaller, local news outlets were all but obliterated, and the big boys (like Fox News or CNN) had to fill 24-hour news cycles with broadcasts that were appealing to someone in California just the same as Louisiana, but also eternally self-perpetuating.
So they pumped out a million Oprahs.
Want to know why Oprah is a billionaire? It is because, not unlike a corncob, she was never owned. She had a syndication deal, but, beyond that, Oprah owned Oprah. No one in the halls of power believed she would be successful, so there was no reason to produce contracts where Oprah filling a water balloon could be transformed into an eternal Oprah peeing sticker revenue stream. And, since they missed Oprah, you better believe the Ted Turners and Rupert Murdochs of the time wanted the next Oprah to be locked down in their own system. And what better way to guarantee that than to make everyone Oprah? The pundit of 1998 or the modern era exists exclusively because of Oprah. A thousand talking heads talking about the daily drama. And once that became the standard for 24 hours of news, news became whatever would be easiest to handle by a million Oprahs. The debate over healthcare is a great talking point! The actual logistics of how it would work or how it could be funded is boring. Let’s just talk about issues forever, and never come to any real conclusions! I’m sure that will not lead to a Harrison-Bergeron-esque blast of static blasting in all of our ears at all times, every day, forever!
But maybe the reason we are completely boned is not that Oprah was copied, but that she was copied poorly.
Let’s get back to our marsupial du jour. Awesome Possum… Kicks Dr. Machino’s Butt was released in 1993. In 1993, Sonic the Hedgehog was the hottest videogame franchise on the planet, and caring about the environment was a national phenomenon for conservation-addicted kids. Awesome Possum… Kicks Dr. Machino’s Butt sought to combine the gameplay and attitude of Sonic the Hedgehog with environmental sustainability education. So Awesome Possum… Kicks Dr. Machino’s Butt features Awesome Possum running with generally high speed, jumping with the press of the A, B, or C buttons, and even includes several digitized quips so Awesome Possum can constantly remind you that he is an animal with attitude. But unlike Sonic the Hedgehog who is only saving his animal buddies from a mad scientist that seeks to transform the world into a technological nightmare, Awesome Possum is saving his animal buddies from a mad scientist that seeks to transform the world into a technological nightmare and recycles. Awesome Possum’s “rings” are recyclable cans that can be transformed into health and 1-ups, and Awesome Possum answers trivia questions about the planet between levels. Awesome Possum is kicking Dr. Machino’s butt for Mother Earth!
Except Mother Earth and all her residents were not thrilled by Awesome Possum. The essential flaw of Awesome Possum… Kicks Dr. Machino’s Butt is that it did not understand what made Sonic the Hedgehog fun, and failed to properly imitate the master. First and foremost, the “camera” for this 2-D platformer is abhorrent. You are constantly jumping with absolutely no idea what is below you, so the odds of falling into a spike pit or some manner of chainsaw robot are practically guaranteed. And this pairs poorly with the common Sonic-wannabe mistake of providing a segmented health meter, and not relying on “always have one ring” gameplay. You will run out of health constantly, and the “level up” health refills provided by claiming 50 recyclables are simply not going to cut it. There are checkpoints and first aid kits scattered about (which is more than you can say for many janky platformers of the time), but they are not plentiful enough to fight against a screen scroll that is vaguely homicidal. And the final challenge for the game is a boss rush! With barely any bosses capable of staying centered for longer than three seconds! Good luck figuring out where your opponents even are, left alone surviving them. Buddy, you do not understand how good you had it when Eggman started swinging that wrecking ball without leaving for parts unseen.
That’s the thing: Awesome Possum… Kicks Dr. Machino’s Butt looks good on paper. It even has a mad scientist flying around in a dumb little pod! But the devil is in the details, and Awesome Possum is no Sonic the Hedgehog.
And today’s pundits are no Oprah Winfrey.
Oprah may not have ever said it, but she is absolutely the source of “do your own research”. Even putting aside the obvious (apocalyptic) misstep of platforming Jenny McCarthy’s vaccine beliefs, Oprah often ended her episodes with “final thoughts” that encouraged her audience to learn on their own. It was part of the perpetual drama machine (“go discuss this with others”), and it could be morally neutral. Like a certain digital possum, that kind of advocation for education sounds good on paper. In practice, though, an invitation to draw your own conclusions means that nothing is ever definitively said, and an audience can construct objectively wrong conclusions about a subject matter. And even that can be okay! If you are just one woman with an hour a day of people’s time, that can cause complications, but it won’t alter the course of history. However, it will get cataclysmic if everyone starts adopting Oprah’s (lack of) position on every news program across 24 hours on three different networks dedicated to “the truth”. Oprah was deft at incepting what should be a correct answer in her audience’s minds. Fox News Fired Podcaster #102 does not have the same skill today. They make the same moves, they say the same things, but they miss what made Oprah so good at her job. Oprah was a generational prodigy of communication. She gave her audience a skillfully produced paint-by-numbers canvas that could create the Mona Lisa in your living room. Modern pundits are barely offering a coloring book. And since it takes actual effort to be Oprah, that coloring book is eternally whining, “I’m just asking questions.” They know they are not Oprah! But it pays the bills, so they must keep faking it.
The end result of The Oprah Winfrey Show has been an eternal feedback loop that created multiple generations of Not-Awesome Possums. They learned a long time ago that they could not be Oprah, so they would just have to be louder than Oprah. They would attach to the latest trends or most popular politicians, and bellow nonsense to fill airtime and generate advertising revenue. They could be hated, but “hate watches” generated results all the same. And then the next generation of talking heads saw what worked for the last guys, and now we are downstream of Mr. Beasts or Claviculars that do not even understand the concept of the source they are ignorantly copying. They are hooked into the drama machine, but the output is worse every year. Thanks to the ubiquitousness of social media, now everyone is trapped in an eternal loop of “you know what I heard today…”
Awesome Possum… Kicks Dr. Machino’s Butt is forgotten in 2026 because kids of the 90’s realized it was terrible, and decided to play something else. Maybe we should cancel these modern copies just the same as Dr. Machino.
But that’s just my opinion. Go discuss this with others.
FGC #738 Awesome Possum… Kicks Dr. Machino’s Butt
- System: Sega Genesis/a thousand landfills.
- Number of players: Man is incapable of imagining a world with two awesome possums.
- Quiz Time: Every stage ends with a quick quiz provided by the council of animals (or something).
You must answer correctly to please your predators. If you fail, just play dead. - What’s in a name? The original concept for this project was Rad Rhino and Awesome Possum. “Rad Rhino” was mostly dropped, though, and can only be found as an inexplicable mount in the final world. Steering Rad Rhino around is just as lousy as the rest of the game, so it is just as well he is not a featured player.
- Awesome Got All the Chaos Emeralds: Like Sonic the Hedgehog, you can find a way into bonus stages between the usual levels. Unlike Sonic the Hedgehog, these stages are literally more of the same action-platforming as in any regular level, and there is not a distinct “prize” at the end. So even more than surfing a halfpipe, these “bonuses” feel like busywork.
- A playable cartoon: Awesome Possum’s lips actually move when he is talking. That is a feature that is still missed on some games thirty years later. It adds absolutely nothing to gameplay, makes absolutely no sense when underwater, and looks vaguely uncanny, but it is something!
- The Natural Order: The progression of worlds is grass – water – ice – literal pile of garbage. Give or take a lava stage, you do not need anything more than that.
- Say something nice: You can pause the game, and then choose to restart from a checkpoint. This is standard nowadays, but it was downright revolutionary on the Sega Genesis. Even Sonic could be permanently stuck in a glitch state without hitting the reset button. Then again, maybe this is just the designers admitting that Awesome Possum… Kicks Dr. Machino’s Butt might not have the best design…
- Favorite Boss: Let it be said that the first world’s boss is just Guts Tank of Mega Man 2.
So that is my favorite, because Mega Man 2 is great. If I have to choose a (remotely) original boss, it is the leader of the ice stage. He is some kind of hockey-mime with a wrench. Is the wrench used to commit environmental crimes? Probably! - An End: After officially kicking the butt of cigar-chomping capitalist Dr. Machino, Awesome Possum is added to Mt. Rushmore. This was a recurring prize for videogame heroes, but for a game all about conservation and the environment, maybe someone on the staff should have looked up the history of the worst national monument ever.
- Did you know? There are no bottomless pits in Awesome Possum… Kicks Dr. Machino’s Butt. There are some spike pits that are literally inescapable, so they serve the same general purpose, but a straight up “fall into nothingness” is nowhere to be found. And the frozen water of the arctic just causes Awesome to bounce and lose health. Wow! That is practically Mario 64ian.
- Would I play again: No. I am not going to push against all the fake walls to recycle as much as possible, nor am I going to think too hard about the final areas where they toss 1-ups at Awesome Possum like candy. This game is not worth thinking about for even a second longer. Besides, I have to get back to all my podcasts.
What’s next? Random ROB has chosen… Once Upon A KATAMARI! I’m gonna do it! I’m really gonna review it this time! I swear! Please look forward to it!
He did the thing!