Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection: Dungeon Dice Monsters

Most Yu-Gi-Oh! games are all about the franchise’s card game. Those began appearing early in the manga’s pages, and it only took a few books before the story shifted to focus on tournaments. However, before those, the manga had several tomes in which Yugi’s alter ego played various games, against many opponents. The early days were DARK; Yugi’s first Shadow Game had someone almost stab themselves for a game about picking up bills with a knife. In another, he burned a criminal to death.

As far as game tables go, I think those in the manga (for
Duelist Kingdom and Dungeon Dice Monsters) make more
sense than the giant arenas from the anime.

Then, there was Duel Kingdom. Shortly afterwards, there was Battle City, which ended up with rules much closer to the real card game. However, between the two, a short arc introduced another game of Kazuki Takahashi’s making: Dungeon Dice Monsters (shortened DDM). Created by Duke Devlin (Ryuji Otogi in the original Japanese), an aspiring game maker whose family sets up shop near Yugi’s home, the game features monsters appearing when dice are deployed on a field. I will explain much more in due time.

These odds are looking good!

There was also a whole thing about a disfigured man in a clown mask, an intense desire for revenge, and arson, but that’s because the manga has always been ballsier than the anime.

Dungeon Dice Monsters was eventually adapted into a physical board game. It never quite caught on, probably due to the complexity of the system that demanded a full board to play as well as the associated dice – not quite as simple as just playing with cards! It also got an adaptation on the Game Boy Advance, released in North America on February 11th, 2003 (though it came out two years earlier in Japan), and a rerelease in the Early Days Collection.

What IS Dungeon Dice Monsters Anyway?

Try not to get yourself cornered.

I’ll open by explaining the game, its rules, and its mechanics. As the name indicates, this game trades cards for dice. The board is made of 13X19 squares, with players on opposite sides. Each player has a pool of 15 dice, which will be the ones they roll. Each player has a figurine named the Die Master in front of them; this figurine starts with three hit points.

Dice sides are called Crests. There are six different  types: Summon, Movement, Attack, Defense, Spell and Trap. Every die has a different selection of these Crests – as an example, a die may have one or two Attack Crests, or maybe none! The only Crest guaranteed to be on every die is the Summon type. Dice have levels ranging from 1 to 4, and the lower the level is, the more Summon Crests it will have.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection: Duel Monsters II: Dark Duel Stories

The first Yu-Gi-Oh! dueling simulator was a bit of a mess, but some of that could be excused from the game releasing while the manga’s first tournament arc wasn’t over, the mechanics weren’t set in stone and the card game as we know it now did not exist yet, and being on Game Boy meant much smaller data storage space.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters II: Dark Duel Stories (not to be confused with the next Yu-Gi-Oh! game, also titled Dark Duel Stories) was released on July 8th, 1999 in Japanese only. We get to play it freely and in English thanks to the Early Days Collection released in February 2025. With more space in the cartridge and a stronger system, surely this new installment improves on the first game, right?

...Hey, that box art is just reusing the
Volume 10 cover art!

The New Tournament

Ahhhh! Color!

Just like Duel Monsters I, this game is a dueling simulator split into stages containing multiple duelists. You must defeat every opponent in a stage 5 times to unlock the next. This makes some sense, since you are drip-fed cards to improve your deck; you only receive one card at each victory against a CPU opponent, dropped from that opponent’s pool of rewards. This justifies having to beat every opponent repeatedly, since you wouldn’t otherwise gather enough cards to stand a chance against better opponents.

The plot? Just a different tournament beyond Duelist Kingdom, again helmed by Pegasus. Who cares, really.

The Stage 1 opponents (Yugi, Joey, Bakura and Tristan) are laughable; I went through those 20 duels without editing my deck once. They’re basically a tutorial. None of them ever use monsters with ATK higher than 500. Enemy decks are once again randomized out of their personal card pools, with some cards having higher chances to appear than others. Opponents cannot fuse their own monsters, nor use Magic or Trap cards.

However, they can still destroy your monsters
if they get lucky with Alignments.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection: Duel Monsters I

Back with another themed month, and I return to the well of Yu-Gi-Oh! Except, this time, I’ll be focusing on older games. In February 2025, Konami released the Early Days Collection, which contains 14 (technically 16) games from the earliest of the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise. I already covered one of these, The Sacred Cards, in the first year of Planned All Along, which leaves 13 games to cover (technically 15; you’ll understand why I say that, but not until next year).

This volume had the duel against PaniK,
also known as the Player Killer of
Darkness in the original Japanese,
because the manga was edgy like that.

I figured that I would start with the shortest games (according to How Long To Beat); but the four I’m planning to cover this month, I’ll do in chronological order. I’m opening today with the first game in the entire collection, the original Duel Monsters, released for the Game Boy on December 16th, 1998. Several of these classics had never been officially released in languages other than Japanese before, so it’s a chance to discover them and experience the start of a legacy.

Technically, it isn’t the first Yu-Gi-Oh! game ever released (the actual first was based on a lesser game from the manga’s history, Monster Capsule), but it is the first to feature the card game that would then take over the anime and be the sole focus of every following series. When it came out, the manga itself was at its tenth volume, in the middle of the Dueling Kingdom tournament arc. Barely halfway in, not even in the finals. The duel against Pegasus is still far. The timeframe in which this game was made explains a lot about it. For starters, the characters we meet and duel are only the ones we have seen in the manga pages up to that point.

However, it’s most notable in gameplay, with duels obeying the, um… elastic rules of Duelist Kingdom. I’ll get there soon enough.

The OG Duel Simulator

Choose your fighter Duelist!

Before the game starts, Yami Yugi tells the player to input their duelist name. It’s not important in the Story Mode, but it is a screen name for dueling and trading with other players using a Link Cable (remember, this was the Game Boy era).

Story? What’s that? When the game begins, your first screen shows the mugs of Yugi Muto, Joey Wheeler, Tristan Taylor and Bakura Ryo. We can surmise, based on the background showing a large boat, that we’re on the ship taking our characters to Duelist Kingdom. Each of these four will say the same thing: If you want to proceed, you’ll have to beat them all five times. Why five? Shouldn’t one be enough? Nah, not here.

Okay, back to that pin about gameplay. The card game as we know it didn’t even exist yet. The cards at the time were the Bandai OCG, a short-lived version that ended in 1999, when the actual Konami card game began and overtook the former in popularity. As a result, early Duel Monsters video games had the bare minimum to base themselves on, gameplay-wise. All they had was the Duelist Kingdom rules (which would later be streamlined for the second tournament arc, Battle City). Also, take into account the hardware limitations: A Game Boy cartridge could only contain a maximum of 4 megabits of data, and the game had to be designed to account for the tiny screen.

VGFlicks: Free Guy (Part 4)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

Guy VS Dude

God damn, that section title alone is making me crack up.

The bridge is built, all the player characters are gone, and Guy will be free to cross the water towards the island of Life Itself. Keys, on his way out of Soonami, activates a program on his laptop that activates livestreaming to every screen that was playing Free City. The whole world will be watching this climax.

Dude, (I can call him that, that's literally his name),
your face doesn't fit your body.

The world, including the game's biggest streamers, are
watching the Reynolds VS Reynolds battle.

Meanwhile, Dude’s upload has completed. He is introduced punching Guy in the face. Dude was the work of Antwan, when he was remaking Blue Shirt Guy so Free City 2 could capitalize on the bank teller’s sudden popularity. The end result is, of course, not Guy at all. A buff bodybuilder (the body of Aaron W. Reed) with a blue shirt tattoo on the left pec, blond hair, and Guy’s face shoved where a face should be. Like a deepfake that doesn’t quite convince. And it looks like Antwan put all his efforts into the looks, because Dude is a complete dummy. His catchphrase is “Catchphrase!” and his speech lines are incomplete. He’s ridiculous and scary at the same time. In short, he fits right in within a movie that stars Ryan Reynolds.

We see plenty of scenes from the game itself. Especially
as the climax is livestreamed to the world. We are, however,
never explained how the game, with nobody playing it, has
camera angles that change so the world can watch properly.

A quick thing I haven’t mentioned yet: Not only are we getting the live-action movie, but anytime we’re watching through a real-life player’s screen, we ARE seeing the same events in CGI, with the same level of detail as we’ve gotten accustomed to with stuff like GTA or Fortnite – these scenes had to be animated too! It’s one of the things we don’t quite think about when watching it, because in the story, these scenes are from a video game – but there had to be a TON of work to make all the players and NPCs look exactly like they do when the inside of the game is shown to us in live-action.

Dude punches Guy away, causing our hero to lose his glasses. However, Buddy comes by to help Guy! But Buddy is suddenly very interested in Dude. And starts playing with the Dude’s pecs, causing the latter to punch Buddy to the ground. He falls next to Guy, and then Dude picks him up again to toss him away, before giving his doppelganger Guy a beating. …Yes, I am using these characters’ silly basic names repeatedly on purpose.

I try to imagine Shawn Levy directing this bit. "Okay Aaron,
you gotta let Lil Rey Howery play with your pecs while he
acts like he has never seen anything like them. For an
uncomfortable twenty seconds. 3... 2..."

Hulk Arm VS Captain America's Shield. Sure, why not.

A key element is that Free City contains tons of nods to other franchises and video games. The hidden signification is that Antwan is incapable of creating something himself, so he takes whatever he can and shoves those things in his games. Who cares if they don’t fit. However, we are never told why all these things are still allowed to appear in the game; is Soonami striking deals with other studios and franchise owners to get the rights to add these things in? I mean, what’s next, a game that has characters from literally everything out there, like KPop Demon Hunters, Regular Show, The Office, Adventure Time, South Park, Harry Potter (AGAIN!!), Danny Phantom, The Simpsons, Scooby-Doo, Gorillaz- I’mma stop the joke there, we all know I’m talking about Fortnite by now. In hindsight, the numerous additions to Fortnite feel like they were predicted by Free Guy and the number of video game references that make their way into the film. Earlier, Guy is seen using a Mega Buster from Mega Man.

VGFlicks: Free Guy (Part 3)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

I’m Not Real??

And he is being told this in the one place where he can see
all the ways in which players are rewarded for mistreating
him. Ouch.

Millie goes to tell Guy everything. She takes him to the multiplayer lounge, which he couldn’t access previously, to explain the artificial nature of this world – and of Guy himself. As an NPC, he’s little more than setpiece decoration, and players are encouraged to mistreat him whenever they can. The weight of the revelation leaves him heartbroken and crushed, and he leaves even after Millie explains about the imminent shutdown of his world.

I guess swimming in that ocean is out of the question, huh.

Not fair! I wanted him to make me laugh, not cry!

Seeking further confirmation, Guy heads off to the beach. He tosses a rock at the ocean and sees it disappears into the out-of-bounds barrier. Failing to get through to any other NPCs, Guy goes to Buddy’s place for a chat. The security guard doesn’t quite grasp the part about not being real, but he says that this moment, where he helps out a friend in a funk, that’s real no matter the circumstances around it. Buddy might be one of the silliest characters, but he’s got all the best moments of emotion in the film.

It is hilarious to me that in this movie, Ryan Reynolds plays
someone who doesn't (or barely) grasp the concept of a
fourth wall.

This helps Guy a lot, and so he enlists Buddy’s help. They sneak into the player safehouse, and get in easily because Buddy is friends with all the security guard NPCs in town. The safehouse’s owner arrives, and Buddy threatens him with his work firearm. The player character, portrayed by Channing Tatum, is ecstatic at meeting Blue Shirt Guy. Tatum is RevenjaminButton, the player followed during the Oners in the intro, and has this lengthy scene as well, so his role is greater than a cameo. The character is played by a streamer who speaks monotonously; the character is more animated than him. Guy easily gets his video just by asking nicely; though he does mention Millie's name in the discussion. The streamer tries to ask for things in return, like having Guy say his stream catchphrase. Or, uh, other awkward stuff.

VGFlicks: Free Guy (Part 2)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

Life Itself

Maybe IGN should focus on the game and the development
work instead of inquiring about the relationship status
of the devs.

We get Keys’ backstory with Millie Rusk. Together, they had created the video game Life Itself, which would contain revolutionary AI for its characters – they would learn from each other, grow like people, and branch out to the point where watching them would be almost like watching real humans. Things went awry when they looked for a publisher through which they could sell this “fishbowl game” (a term I have not seen anywhere else, by the way). Soonami Studios took it, but shelved it, claiming it didn’t do well with test audiences. And during interviews about their “revolutionary game”, journalists would pivot to asking whether the two are a couple, which would embarrass them.

This info is given through an old interview airing on Keys’ TV, which was on when he came home. Millie broke in to talk to him. He claims he can’t listen to nor look at her without violating his NDA; but she says that she might be close to finding evidence that their code was stolen by Soonami and used in Free City. She wants him to help, but he needs his job, so he declines.

The shadow of Antwan, Keys' boss and the CEO of Soonami
Studios, looms all over this discussion, and we won't see
him for another 10 more minutes!

Looks beautiful, but what do I do with it aside from watching?

Okay, the concept of a “fishbowl game”. This is one of the small things that kind of bugs me with the idea behind the movie, since so much of the plot hinges on that invented concept. A video game that you can’t interact with sounds… well, I’m gonna be a jerk and agree with Soonami there. If I pick up a video game, it’s to play it. Right? Technically, if it’s just observational, does it even qualify as a game? Because the more I think about it, the more I think that an idea like this would have just needed some tweaks. Some way in which players could impact the NPCs positively. Admittedly, maybe Keys and Millie didn’t have the resources to make something that players could genuinely interact with, using avatars and controls and whatnot; but, had Soonami not decided to go behind their backs, maybe the studio could have whipped up something different.

VGflicks: Free Guy (Part 1)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

Moving on to the final VGFlicks review this year, and it’s another big one. I still remember the summer of 2021. The pandemic was still bad, but cinemas had reopened, figuring they could have representations if moviegoers wore masks and practiced safe distancing. Sad times. But! I do remember going to the theater for a few films that summer. One was Space Jam: A New Legacy (reviewed these past two weeks) and another was this one.

Sunglasses are back in style.

We video game fans have been dining well since the early 2010s when it comes to movies about video games, be they adaptations or original stories with the medium as centerstage. It’s not that there weren’t good video game movies before, but they became far more common afterwards. I covered a lot of movies about video games, both good and bad, so I did witness that shift.

Anyway, without playing my hand too early, I guess I could say that Free Guy is one fine example of a movie that really understands the medium of video games and everything around them, all while hiding a science-fiction plot under the guise of a comedy. And with one of Hollywood’s most famous quippers, too. For what it’s worth, I knew this movie was going to do things right just by seeing its advertising – so many posters parodying famous video game franchises, and mimicking quite faithfully the look of those franchises (or their box arts, at least). Seriously – look at these!

Free Guy was directed by Shawn Levy (who would go on to make more movies with Ryan Reynolds), and was filmed in 2019 – though it wasn’t released to theaters until August 13th, 2021. As someone whose first language wasn’t English, let me start with a little observation: This movie’s title is untranslatable. It works on like three levels, but any translations will only be able to go for one of them. Explaining this would spoil things ahead of time, so why not just look at the plot?

Welcome to Free City

See? Super-cool. Totally justified, not psychopathic at all.

The film opens on narration by our protagonist, who presents Free City: An incredible place to live, where “anything is possible”. In this city, those who wear sunglasses are badass heroes and have access to anything they want; they can parachute, they can use gliders, they can get any girl they want, they can steal cars, they can rob banks, they can kill random people. True heroes! …wait, what? Amazing idea, by the way, to present this all within the first shots of the film, two oners that show and tell so much about the setting in such short time.

VGFlicks: Space Jam: A New Legacy (Part 4)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

Completely Looney

That's really the best silly face you could make, LeBron?

Thanks to LeBron’s realization, the Tunes are now allowed to use their zany antics on the court. They have a fighting chance now! They make a grand entrance on the playing field. Third quarter, and the tone is set by The Brow getting run over by a train, courtesy of Wile E. Coyote. Elsewhere, Wet-Fire’s liquid form gets absorbed into Gossamer’s fur.

That's not "Gossamer inexplicably with a child's mind" from
the Looney Tunes Show, but I'll take it!

Side-note, I like how Gossamer recently went from just some monster in early WB cartoons to a full member of the gang. The same could almost have been said of Penelope, the poor cat that kept getting chased by Pepe Le Pew, but she was removed because of Pepe’s problematic personality. I get it, maybe the director, Malcolm D. Lee, decided it was wiser not to shake that hornet’s nest. And perhaps trying a different angle for the skunk (like showing him working on bettering himself) would have broken the rhythm of the film, who the Heck knows. Whatever.

😬Today, in "are you SUUURE you want this in your film?"

Even LeBron participates to the shenanigans – well, as much as a live-action human can, anyway. Al-G steals a microphone from Bugs during a trick and, in coaching his team, accidentally drops a rhyme – which triggers a special Hip Hop round. Uh oh. The court changes to a dancefloor with the Tunes dressed in ‘90s rap clothing. Ugh, can’t believe I’m saying that, but… we get a rap battle where Porky drops some bars to make fun of Al-G.

…

…

Good God am I glad that this gif exists. Do I even need to say anything else? This was painful. Were those extra 150 points for style worth it?

VGFlicks: Space Jam: A New Legacy (Part 3)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

Countdown to the Game

Several plot threads happen concurrently at this point. Let’s see how they evolve on the way to the match.

Would make sense that Lola would be the second-in-
command, she is the second best player in the team!

Who in the making of this film decided that Granny
needed to be the biggest badass in the cast??

Back on the ship with a full cast, LeBron tries to teach basic basketball to the Tunes. Lola, as a second-in-command due to her knowledge, demonstrates basic shots. Bugs tries to explain to LeBron that Tunes tend to do things differently and disregard rules, but the superstar doesn’t listen.

Practice devolves into toony shenanigans, with Yosemite Sam bringing his guns to a basket fight, Tweety distracting Sylvester with yarn, and the Road Runner swapping balls with bombs. Special mention to Granny doing daredevil tricks. Since when is the elderly lady the most badass of all the Tunes? It’s chaos! Pandemonium! And it leaves LeBron aghast at all the nonsense.

They aren't exactly here for tourism.

In the real world, LeBron’s friend Malik is desperately trying to get Warner Bros. Studios’ security to help him look for the star player and his son, who both disappeared right after the meeting, but the guard he talks to is appalled that LeBron is gone yet unwilling to help. Thankfully, Kamiyah James, their other son Darius, and their daughter Xosha, all show up to lend a hand.

The family walks around the studio to start their search, when Darius receives an invitation from an unknown app, the Warner 3000, announcing a peculiar match: Father VS Son. Following signal of LeBron's phone, they find their way to the servers room, deep underground.

VGFlicks: Space Jam: A New Legacy (Part 2)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

Bugs Needs Friends

And the vehicle is Runawous Truckous.

When we left off, LeBron James had just encountered Bugs Bunny on Tune World. The athlete is like a kid, fanboying over meeting his hero. As for Bugs? He has stayed alone for so long that it’s taken a toll on his sanity. He immediately tries to pull LeBron into shenanigans like the Rabbit/Duck Season routine. The bunny has been left to talk at similes of his co-stars. And, well, you can’t pull pranks on pumpkins.

Though it helps that he got turned into one, it’s funny how well LeBron James takes to being a Tune. In comparison, part of the original Space Jam was Michael Jordan figuring out that merely existing in the Looney Tunes’ world gave him toony abilities. Jordan got rolled into a ball, dribbled around, and tossed through the hoop, in one of the freakier scenes for young me (I was a kid when that film came out!) and he still didn’t catch on until seconds before the end of the match. And it took Wayne Knight’s character getting flattened, re-inflated, and then farting the extraneous air around the stadium, for him to understand!

Forget how Bugs can get drunk on carrot juice, I want to
know why LeBron ended up almost disguised as Lucky Luke.

When the basketball player mentions Al-G, he gets the full story: The AI showed up one day and convinced the other Tunes to go live on the other IP planets (IPlanets? I’m gonna call them IPlanets.), where they’d have a wide variety of new experiences. Bugs stayed on Tune World because it’s his home, and the only place where he can be himself. LeBron mentions that he needs to create a basketball team to face off against Al-G; Bugs, of course, points out that a real-life player and a team of toons facing a villainous team in a high-stakes game sounds awfully familiar.

This will require visiting the other IPlanets, so they need a spaceship. Nothing simpler – just declare any parcel of land property of Earth, plant a flag, and Marvin the Martian will come down. Dude just can’t help himself. Bugs and LeBron steal the ship, leaving the Martian stranded.

Quick! Let's Grand Theft Spaceship!

VGFlicks: Space Jam: A New Legacy (Part 1)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4

The movie the least suited to the ongoing theme for this year's film reviews, Space Jam: A New Legacy is the reason why I specify “Trapped in a virtual world” rather than “Trapped in a game”. However, there is a major link to video games in its plot, which means that by my metrics, it counts to be reviewed here.

Chuck Jones was not a fan of Space Jam, because he didn't
think Bugs would ever ask for outside help. At least, in A
New Legacy, it's someone coming to him for help instead.
Also, eeeesh. Mr. Jordan, forget acting, stick to sports.

I guess I’d better discuss the history of its “franchise”, if we can call it that. An idea this bizarre has its origins in the world of advertising, where Michael Jordan starred alongside Bugs Bunny in two commercials, Hare Jordan and Aerospace Jordan, both advertising Nike’s Air Jordan shoes. Chance meetings eventually led to a Nike executive being given the idea by Ivan Reitman for a feature-length film with the same formula. The plans were halted by Jordan’s retirement from basketball in 1993 to try baseball, but resumed when the athlete returned to the sport in 1995, with the commercials’ director, Joe Pytka, directing the film. Despite a… tumultuous production, shall we say, the film was finished and released to theaters on November 15th, 1996. The film hilariously implied that the Looney Tunes were responsible for Jordan going back to basketball.

Talks of a sequel happened immediately, but miscommunications caused those plans to be changed, then scrapped. The poor performance of Looney Tunes: Back in Action at the box-office was another nail in the coffin… until new talks arose in 2014, this time centering the film around LeBron James, another of the biggest basketball stars of all time (I know very little about sports and even I knew of the guy!), and with Malcolm D. Lee in the director’s chair. Filming started in July of 2019 and ended in March 2020, right before the Covid-19 pandemic got really bad; but since all that remained was animation, production wasn’t hindered by the world-changing event. The finished film was released to theaters on July 16th, 2021.

Much of what I have to say is tied to the film’s plot itself – so why not cover it, and get to my talking points when they come up? Also – why call this A New Legacy when, aside from two mentions, there’s no link between the two films?

From child to superstar

The film opens in 1998 in Akron, Ohio, where a young LeBron James is dropped off at a basketball match by his supportive mom. He is a big fan of the Looney Tunes, as evidenced by his backpack. So although he should be focusing on the game, his attention is diverted when his best friend Malik shows up with a present: An old Game Boy with a Looney Tunes game cartridge in it.

Oh hey, that's The Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle!

VGFlicks: Jumanji: The Next Level (Part 3)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3

It’s the final level!

Storming the Stronghold

Always good to get together and plan the last steps.
The campfire is just for comfort, too bad Milo can't enter.

If the group wants to finish the game, they must rescue Eddie (currently using Ming Fleetfoot) and Milo (currently playing as Cyclone, the horse). Spencer (back as Bravestone), Fridge (back as Mouse Finbar), Martha, and Bethany (back as Prof. Sheldon Oberon) are down to one life left. In the latter’s case, her avatar had already lost two, even though it was being played by someone else. Guess lives are non-transferable. Alex still has three. All of them are scared, but must be ready for the final battle. Spencer and Martha, playing action heroes, will climb the mountain using equipment from Fridge’s Backpack of Holding, sneak into the fortress and save Eddie. Meanwhile, Alex, Fridge and Bethany will sneak in.

Pictured: "Augustus" and "Tomatoli Kababik".
Actually a girl in a man's body, and an athlete in a
small guy's body.

Alex inserts himself into the caravan of people walking into the fortress. Fridge and Bethany try the same, but they’re stopped by a guard who asks if they’re the Brothers Kababik. Time to LARP and roll for persuasion. Not only does that work, they even manage to sell the lie that they’re “brothers from different mothers” (since Fridge’s character is Black, and Bethany’s is white). Fridge even ends up having to play along to the guards’ claims that the Brother Kababik he is pretending to be is a eunuch. Geez, that was awkward. And then he still gets offered cake, the very thing that can kill his character. Yup, Jumanji has it out for the guy.

Alex finds his way to the room where Cyclone is held captive. The path is covered in pressure pads that release death traps, and he falls very quickly to one of them. It’s okay, he still has two liv-oh wait, no, just one. Third time’s the charm and he frees the horse, but not without seeing Cyclone’s character sheet first.

Alex has to be extremely careful. He's a family father now.
He has several more reasons not to die in Jumanji.

And since they're basically action heroes, they can have that
entire conversation while taking a break from climbing a
whole damn cliffside.

While Spencer and Martha are climbing up the cliffside, she asks why he never went to see her, and why he ended their relationship. He admits that he felt insecure after seeing just how outgoing and extroverted she had become through university life. She, in turn, admits that it’s been hard for her to keep that image and she’s worried her new social circles will see the shy girl she used to be – and it feels like it’s only with Spencer that she can truly be herself. Huh, guess Jumanji had lessons for the two of them after all, or at least it needed the two of them together to deliver it.

VGFlicks: Jumanji: The Next Level (Part 2)

Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3

The Search for Spencer

Finally, a sign of civilization. It's probably a trap packed
with goons, mooks, and cake-offering merchants.

The team ventures through the desert. On the way, Milo tries to get through to Eddie, who’s too angry at his friend to entertain a conversation. Milo tries to explain that he needed to retire from the business after working so long, but his efforts are in vain. They finally spot a town in the distance, The Oasis, as indicated by the map that only Prof. Oberon can read.

...Does this mean Jumanji: The Next Level counts as a
Christmas movie?

They must have walked all day, because it's the evening when we return to Bethany in the real world. She goes to get Alex Vreeke (Colin Hanks), who knows a lot more about Jumanji. He did remain stuck in the game for 21 years, after all. He’s reticent at first since he now has a family and a daughter, but she manages to convince him to help save the rest of the team.

She's not real, Eddie! Also, I know what you have in mind,
and I doubt Jumanji will let you use Bravestone's, uh,
“equipment” for that, if you see what I mean.

In The Oasis, the players notice Jurgen's army. They enter a bar, the Smoke Stack, where Smolder Bravestone is accosted by a gorgeous woman in a red dress. The archaeologist’s ex says she has a clue for him, but she cannot say it in the bar. She slaps Bravestone to act like she isn’t interested and flees, but in an obvious “follow me” way. Grandpa Eddie, of course, doesn’t make the connection with the “Follow the flame” clue given by Nigel.

The group progresses, encountering Jurgen. The safe containing the Falcon Jewel is there. Jurgen makes a speech while casually tossing pieces of meat to hyenas. A speech about those hyenas’ trainer, whom Jurgen considered a friend. The guy tried to get too close to the Jewel… and now he’s hyena food. Geez, that’s dark. Then, the lights go out, and when they’re back on the key to the safe has disappeared.

What hits the worst about this scene is, after Jurgen throws
the axe and kills Ming (well, Spencer), the avatar's head
literally flies off her shoulders before disappearing.

The warlord yells for the thief, and Eddie, thinking he’s playing right, stops the robber: An Asian woman (Awkwafina), who recognizes Bravestone. But it’s too late, Jurgen’s men pull her aside and shake the key off of her. She tries to explain herself, but sounds more and more like a shy Jewish nerd with breathing issues and no self-esteem. Before the players can rescue the thief, whom they’ve recognized as Spencer, Jurgen throws an axe that disintegrates the player character.