Hercules: The Legendary Journeys

*Hercules: The Legendary Journeys* is the eighteenth episode of Just Bad Games, released on June 3, 2020.

## Transcript

**Adam**: *Hercules: The Legendary Journeys* is an action-adventure game for the Nintendo 64 developed by Player 1 and released in the year 2000 by Titus. You may know Titus as being involved, with uh-

*(Superman 64 and RoboCop (2003))*

Oh. Oh no.

**Shane**: The game is based on the hit '90s TV show of the same name, which used the Roman naming of the hero Hercules, who in turn was very much based on the Greek hero Heracles.

**Adam**: That's quite the rabbit hole.

**Shane**: Because his many tales have been reinterpreted for ages, depictions of Hercules have been kind of all over the place, from a demigod that killed his family in a fit of rage in the original mythology to the clean-cut lovable dork of the '97 Disney animated film.

**Adam**: Heck, there are several versions of the character in many different games, including a 2001 Game Boy Color version also called *Hercules: The Legendary Journeys*. But any way you slice it, when Hercules is the protagonist, he's mostly depicted as possessing incredible strength and looking to rid the world of evil.

**Shane**: And the TV series definitely played off those depictions. It lasted six seasons, placing Herc in a light, campy action-comedy that played extremely loose with Greek mythology.

**Adam**: Woah woah woah. Are you telling me that in the original mythos, Hercules never met Dracula?

*(clip from the show)*

**Hercules**: Hey! That's my friend you're suckin' on.

**Adam**: Or that he was never arrowed in the butt and transformed into a pig with little pig Hercules clothes?

*(clip from the show where Hercules transforms into a pig)*

Or that Hercules never went to Hollywood to act on the show *Hercules: The Legendary Journeys* disguised as actor Kevin Sorbo playing Hercules?

**Shane**: You kinda lost me on that last one, but I'm gonna say no.

**Adam**: Well, if the show is goin' for fun tongue-in-cheek entertainment over myhtological accuracy, it's possible we could see something special in this video game representation.

**Shane**: Let's heroically flex our N64 gaming muscles with *Hercules: The Legendary Journeys*.

**Adam**: As the game begins, we're introduced to a scribe who tells us one of Hercules' adventures.

**Shane**: Zeus, father of Hercules and king of the gods, has been poisoned by his wicked wife Hera. In Zeus' weakened state, Ares, the god of war, decides to seize Zeus' throne. This causes an imbalance in the godly planes and forces all gods to return from the world of humankind and investigate.

**Adam**: Unfortunately, without any other gods looking over the citizens of the human realm, it's up to Hercules the solve all of their problems. They need a hero!

**Shane**: Says here that Hercules awakens in the training stables.

*(Hercules is seen in a hay bale)*

**Adam**: Oh. That's a hero.

**Shane**: Herc's master tells him it's time to start training. Surprise! He's got horse pants.

**Adam**: Now's a good time to get a feel for the controls, and oof, they are really unprecise and feel clumsy. Herc changes direction on a dime, and his jump is super weighty. To make things worse, the camera constantly swoops with trajectory shifts, confusing you spatially.

**Shane**: Our centaur tutor tells us to use Hercules' incredible strength to pick up and throw some rocks.

**Adam**: Okay.

*(rock destroyed)*

**Shane**: The action in this game is insanely stiff. Hercules has to stop and wait for prompts in order to interact with objects. Out of the gate, this all feels incredibly slow.

**Adam**: Speaking of interacting with objects, there's a ladder in this training area, and when Herc hops on- oh. He seems to be breaking the laws of physics.

**Shane and Adam**: Lookin' good!

**Shane**: But not every form of movement in *Legendary Journeys* feels off. When you hold down the punch button, you can do this:

*(Hercules walks with a strange walk cycle)*

Look at it.

*(Disco effects added to the walk)*

**Adam**: Anyway, speaking of punching, basic combat- eh, doesn't feel so great. You can punch, kick backwards and throw enemies. Simple, but moves feel unresponsive, and because of Herc's sporadic turning, they don't land where you want most of the time.

**Shane**: After clearing out a few training dummies, our centaur friend tells us to visit the Scribe to save our game. She lives atop our sleeping stable.

**Adam**: Oh, it's the storyteller from the intro sequence. We decide to show her what we've learned in the tutorial.

*(Disco walk cycle)*

**Shane**: The weathered old scribe records our mighty deeds with her classic yellow papyrus and quill, and then asks us if we'd like to insert a Rumble Pak.

**Shane and Adam**: Nah. We're- we're good.

**Adam**: Finally finished the tutorial; the fantastical world is ours to explore. Ah, what adventures, perils, and incredible creatures await the courageous Hercules?

**Shane**: Tents!

**Adam**: What?

**Shane**: Out in the wild, foes spawn out of little cube tents one at a time. Here you can see how crappy combat is, because positioning Herc is so awkward. And ooh, let me tell you, enemies are about as bright as a cave.

*(Disco walk cycle, then punching an enemy)*

Ugh. The combat is so bad. We really could've used some kind of targeting system like the Z-targeting in *The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time*, the absence of which is actually kind of weird because looking around the world, it seems like the developers took more than a little inspiration from *Ocarina*, a game that came out two years before this one.

**Adam**: Yet somehow, there really seems to be less going on here. Large chunks of this game are pretty bare. There's really not a lot going on in the open paths and fields.

**Shane**: We found some enemies.

**Adam**: A fire.

**Shane**: And a really big rock Hercules can move.

**Adam**: Behind the rock, we find a key.

**Shane**: We certainly do, and thus begins one of our bigger gripes with *Hercules: The Legendary Journeys*: puzzles. In this game, they are unbelievably simple. You find keys for doors in chests, pull levers, and punch giant rock walls. They don't require a lot of thought, they just slow you down.

**Adam**: Using our newfound key, we open a giant lock behind a waterfall that just screams "look behind me". Now, Hercules needs to wade through a mucky swamp. Here, we meet this fellow who we assume wants to harm Hercules, but just ends up following us along, as he's- oh.

**Shane**: ANUS!

We eventually make our way to the town of Traycus, where we have a chance to schmooze with the locals. We find out that the villagers of Traycus are in a bit of a bind, as a giant cyclops has blocked the vital flow of water to the area. The villain has set up camp just on the outskirts of town.

**Adam**: Woah! Sounds like it's time to save!

**Shane**: To the Scribe!

*(Rumble Pak prompt)*

**Shane and Adam**: Nah, we're still good.

**Adam**: We're warned that attempting to enter the cyclops' encampment would mean risking our lives, but we try anyway. Turns out the door to the camp is locked. We have to go off on a couple fetch quests in town in order to get the key to the area.

**Shane**: We find a cookbook a villager needs, who gives us a key so that we can open a chest that holds a teddy bear that we give to a guard in order to get the key to the cyclops' encampment. Riveting.

**Adam**: We go to use the key to confront the cyclops.

**Shane**: And we clip right through the gate. Hah. Guess the key wasn't needed after all- uh, but wait, there's no cyclops here. Either the villagers were lying to us or we're really not supposed to be here.

**Adam**: We attempt to leave the area, and we can't. Great! We're trapped. We spend a good ten minutes trying to reclip through the broken gate so that we can use the key on the gate to properly open it and meet the cyclops face-to-face.

**Shane**: Shhh. Careful. Careful. Careful.

*(Hercules repeatedly punches the cyclops)*

**Adam**: The cyclops awakens. He tells us that Hera wanted the villagers' water redirected for her vineyards, and then it's boss fight time.

**Shane**: We die.

**Adam**: We try again. We attempt to attack the cyclops from his blind spots- back and sides- but the hit detection is garbage. Hercules feels like he's jolting around, and the colossal boss is always blocking our view. This is a total mess.

**Shane**: Eventually, we strategically whittle down his life bar, and the defeated cyclops becomes our friend. That's nice. He decides to correct his wrongdoings.

**Adam**: Our new friend moves the boulder, unlocking the flow of water. The villagers rejoice.

**Shane**: What a cool guy- and he's quickly washed away for helping. Doesn't look like he knows how to swim. He's dead, isn't he?

**Adam**: Likely! We refill our health with booze we find around town, in beer steins, from barrels we break outside of houses. So this is what being a hero feels like.

**Hercules**: (drunkenly) I'm Hercules! Who wants to be my friend? My cyclops is dead!

**Shane**: Having helped the town, a villager informs us that our old pal Iolaus is waiting for Hercules outside of town. Awesome. Iolaus was Hercules' sidekick from the TV series, dont'cha know.

*(clip from the show)*

**Hercules**: Hey! That's my friend you're suckin' on.

**Adam**: We find Iolaus near a newly-sprung pond, thanks to the unclogged water source.

**Shane**: And life is brimming. Look at these frogs enjoying the water.

*(frogs teleporting during their animations)*

Don't drink the water.

**Adam**: It looks like the flow of the river helped some vines grow up the ledge. They're not strong enough to hold Hercules, so it's time for the slightly more compact Iolaus to shine.

**Shane**: Iolaus has a stick. He uses it to hit things. You would expect combat to feel different because of this- it doesn't.

**Adam**: We end up having to work our way through some ancient ruins. This section of the game feels odd, as the buildings here all have clear doorways that are sealed up. It feels like this was supposed to be another fully-explorable city, but was changed to a space absent-mindedly scattered with enemies.

**Shane**: Oh, but don't worry about all the opponents in these ruins. Because of their slow, dumb AI, you can run right past everyone. How do we know this?

**Adam**: The attack screen of the game showed us. If you wait past the title at the beginning, you get this:

*(Demo shown with Hercules running past enemies)*

**Shane**: Thanks, game, for showing us we don't really need to play you.

**Adam**: We end up at yet another town filled with desperate villagers. It seems the evil Ares has swooped down and cast a spell on the mayor to trap him inside his house.

**Shane**: Upon chatting with the mayor, he is indeed stuck still within a magical pink aura.

**Adam**: We decide to brush away the many questions we have for the mayor and agree to find a Gem of Dispel to free the mayor from his prison.

**Shane**: Time for more fetch quests. We talk to a villager who has apparently lost her cat Lucy. We find it whimpering on a platform above town. Looks like Lucy may have gotten into that pond water from before.

**Adam**: We bring Lucy back to her owner, who- oh. You two were meant for each other.

**Shane**: The owner is so happy that she bakes us a date pie.

**Adam**: We give the pie to another NPC in town, and she tells us that she has a secret entrance just beyond her fireplace- which is still ablaze. We use it.

*(Iolaus catches on fire)*

**Shane**: Outside, we find a chest that needs to be opened with a key, which after exploring the town and talking to every villager, we still haven't found yet. Where is this thing?

**Adam**: Uh, here, hidden in this random pool of water. It has no visible sign of any item being anywhere in it. You have to be standing in the perfect position and see the "look" prompt in order to get it.

**Shane**: Vital quest items doled out through needle-in-a-haystack searching? Good design.

**Adam**: Back once again, through the secret entrance, over to the chest, and we acquire the Gem of Dispel, which allows us to rid the mayor of his nasty spell.

**Shane**: The mayor, in turn, gives us a key to a road to Thrace, our next stop in this fetch quest-ridden dumbfest.

**Adam**: Before we leave town, Aphrodite tells us that Ares has plans to release the Titans, the pre-Olympian gods, which could mean bad times for the current gods as well as the realm of man. Woah.

**Shane**: We should save.

**Adam**: Yeah!

*(Rumble Pak prompt)*

**Shane and Adam**: Nah, we're good. Don't need it.

**Shane**: We get back to Hercules with the key to Thrace, and he takes it from here.

**Adam**: Thrace is just beyond the town where we did nothing while our cyclops friend drowned. To reach Thrace, we have to march through another set of waving paths and fields, and of course, this area is infested with more dumb enemy-spewing tents. Oh, and every time an enemy sees you-

**Enemies**: Hey! (repeated)

**Shane**: On the bright side, as we fumbled about with the game's finicky comnbat controls, we learned a couple things.

**Adam**: With a set combination of movement and attack buttons, Herc can feign flying like Superman. Poorly. Kind of on-brand for Titus, who published this and *Superman 64*.

**Shane**: We also learn that Hercules can do this:

*(Hercules spins, which drains his health bar)*

**Adam**: In order to get through this section, we need to flick a bunch of switches so that the door to Thrace can be opened.

**Shane**: We weren't exactly enthusiastic about our little switch scavenger hunt, but nothing could've prepared us for the section leading up to the final switch.

**Adam**: It's a bit of a leap to the other side. With Herc's stiff, weighty jump, we didn't make it. So we had to run back, which took us about 45 seconds.

**Shane**: And we didn't make it the second time.

**Adam**: Or the third.

**Shane**: Or the fourth.

**Adam**: Or the fifth.

**Shane**: Or the sixth.

**Adam**: Or the seventh.
**Shane**: Or the eighth.

**Adam**: Or the ninth.

**Shane**: Or the tenth.

**Adam**: Or the eleventh.

*(the number of tries begin overlapping)*

**Shane**: After 35 attempts, we were starting to get ooh, just a little frustrated.

**Adam**: Turns out, for some reason or another, our official Nintendo 64 gamepad was not up to the task. We don't understand why. We were able to get Hercules up to a full stride and jump, but nothing.

**Shane**: So, we switched over to a third-party controller, and... first attempt.

*(Shane and Adam laugh, then sob)*

**Adam**: So we make it to Thrace, a bustling city with a population of- Iolaus.

**Shane**: Ares is the likely culprit behind the disappearance of the town's population. We're gonna have to investigate this further. We need to get to a place called Alpseus, which is too cold for Herc or Iolaus to enter. What does that mean?

**Hercules**: Fetch quests!

**Adam**: We find a squatting thief that sells us a calf skin, which we have to bring all the way back to Traycus- the place where we did nothing while our cyclops friend drowned. There, a tailor crafts a winter coat out of the calf skin, and then we have to go all the way back to Thrace and head off to Iolaus, because it's too small for Hercules to wear.

*(Dialogue: "It's so warm and snuggly in my winter coat!"*

**Shane**: Oh good! Iolaus likes his winter coat- that's not a coat.

**Adam**: On the road to Alpseus, we see a ton of humanoid enemies, and the AI for them is always the same. They're just reskinned enemies, and pretty easy to take care of.

**Shane**: But the wolves you encounter here? It's near impossible not to get hit at least once per encounter. This is one of the only times in the game where you'll need to use the block button, and even then, they still often get in a hit or two because your offensive controls suck.

**Adam**: When we get to Alpseus, Iolaus can't enter most houses- or so we thought. Sometimes he magically clips through them. Oh, a lot of space in here.

**Shane**: No one in this town wants to talk to Iolaus except Hephaestus, the god of smithing. And all he says is that he wants to speak to Hercules. Great. Outside, there's an NPC that sells you a large steer skin for making a big coat. You know where this is going?

**Shane and Adam**: \*sigh\* Fetch quests.

**Adam**: We leave Alpseus, head back to Thrace, switch to Hercules, go all the way back to Traycus, the place where we did nothing while our cyclops friend drowned. There, the tailor crafts a second larger winter coat out of the steer skin, then we have to go all the way back to Thrace, and then all the way back to the smith god in Alpseus.

**Shane**: He informs Herc that Ares has awoken one of the great Titans, and that its heart holds the portal to Olympus, which is the only way Hercules can save Zeus. This Titan can only be accessed by using three keys which have been transformed into the hearts of three minotaurs in three separate labyrinths. To access the first labyrinth, Hercules needs to use the Torch of Prometheus, which one of the villagers in Alpseus possesses, but will only trade for a letter from his cousin in Traycus. Okay, did you get all that?

**Adam**: Yeah. I wrote it down in my notes.

**Shane**: Good. Jumping forward a bit, we acquire the torch of Prometheus- which isn't actually lit, but never mind that- we access the first labyrinth.

**Adam**: Oh, right, dang. A labyrinth. We should get ready for a long haul, make a map as we go, or mark the floors or something.

**Shane**: The first labyrinth is a series of four or five hallways. It's easier to get lost in a mall food court.

**Hercules**: I'm Hercules!

**Adam**: And there's skeletons.

**Shane**: Reskinned pushovers. And the first minotaur boss isn't much harder. You see, Hercules has access to magic powers. Coins you acquire from defeated enemies can be spent on different elemental potions in bars throughout the land. But they're pretty expensive, so they're best put to use in boss battles.

**Adam**: Anyway, we use a couple earth and fire abilities on Mr. Minotaur with a slap or two, and then it's time for a lava bath. Bingo! Hercules retrieves the first minotaur heart.

**Shane**: We take the heart back to our godly blacksmith friend, who turns the heart into a rune, which we show to a villager who gives us a key to help us get to the next labyrinth. Honestly, we're not surprised by how many repetitive, meaningless steps it takes to enter the second labyrinth, but when we get inside and have a look around, oh boy, this space takes backtracking to a whole new level.

**Adam**: As you explore the labyrinth and knock down its many stone barriers, you start finding chests that you can't open. When you do eventually find a key, you have to backtrack to one specific chest, and if you manage to open that chest, you have to backtrack again to another, and so on and so on until you find the key to the minotaur room. This isn't fun or engaging; it's just doing laps of a bland space.

**Shane**: When you do get to the second minotaur, it's just a reskin of the first. The only difference is that when you knock it out, you need to hit a gong in order to fill the center vat with lava. Dip the minotaur, get the heart, return to smith, smith gives you MacGuffin, and tells you where to go. You know the drill by now.

**Adam**: Onto Santa Manicus, a tropical location. In this town, almost every NPC is the exact same character model, and they don't have names. We were wondering about the creative choices used here until we had a little exchange with an NPC talking about the sole deceased father of every woman in town. Let's hear what she had to say.

**NPC**: He had very little memory left.

**Hercules**: What do you mean, "had"?

**NPC**: Father passed away quite some time ago.

**Hercules**: I'm sorry.

**NPC**: That's okay; he simply ran out of time. He was released from the hospital way before he should have. The whole process was incredibly rushed.

**Shane**: "Ran out of time"? "Released before he should have"? "The process was incredibly rushed"? That's some very particular wording. Why do I suddenly feel very bad for everyone involved with making this game?

**Adam**: We would tell you about the numerous fetch quests we had to run for these NPCs in order to properly get into the third labyrinth, but we cared about this section of the game about as much as the publishers did. Onto the third labyrinth.

**Shane**: This one's tough. Not only do we have the treasure chest and key backtracking introduced in the last labyrinth, but this one also incorporates traps, some of which are difficult to avoid- even when you're physically nowhere near them.

**Adam**: This dungeon takes around 20 to 30 minutes to get through, and it's a haze of platforming, obstacle avoidance, and key juggling. But if you're patient and dedicated, you'll make it to the third minotaur.

**Shane**: Again, it's just a reskin of the other minotaurs we fought, but this one has a ton of hit points. It takes forever to put even a slight dent in its health.

**Adam**: And we don't see a vat of lava anywhere. We were wondering where to throw the minotaur once it's all out of steam-

**Shane**: And then we realized we're fighting in what looks to be an arena, and that there's a metal grate surrounding the arena, like the center of the last minotaur room. And then we noticed that destroying these rock columns makes lava start to flow out from the walls and into the grate.

**Adam**: Oh, we hear you loud and clear, game. Destroy all the rock columns and toss the minotaur into the pooled lava grate.

*(Lava fills the room, killing both Hercules and the minotaur)*

**Shane and Adam**: F\*\*k you, game!

**Shane**: So, that didn't work. A little heads up on the whole "losing in the labyrinth" situation: if you die in one, you have to start from your last save, OUTSIDE the labyrinth.

**Adam**: So, let's say, theoretically, you have a problem in one of the labyrinths. Like, you accidentally get nicked by a trap that's nowhere near you, or squished, or don't make a jump. That means you'd lose your progress and have to start all the way from the beginning.

**Shane**: I mean, if you die at the minotaur at the end of labyrinth three a whole bunch of times because the game didn't properly tell you how to dispose of the enemy, that would mean you have to play the same twenty to thirty minutes over and over again. I mean, that would be crazy! (laughs)

**Adam**: Anyway, we finally figured out that you need to throw the minotaur into one of the lava waterfalls. No, not that one. It didn't actually work that time. Yeah, that's the one.

**Shane**: We got the third and final minotaur heart.

**Adam**: Oh, you better believe you know what we're doing next.

*(Rumble Pak prompt)*

**Shane and Adam**: Nah, we're good.

**Shane**: We return to, you guessed it, Hephaestus, the god of smithing. This time, he forges a rune that allows us to enter the chamber of the Titan that Ares released.

**Adam**: Certainly, this is going to be some kind of epic boss battle. Now, if you were to guess which of the two characters you'd use to take on a powerful Titan, who would you expect? Hercules, the demigod with amazing strength, or Iolaus, the fun little man with a stick?

**Shane**: This game hates you. The answer is neither.

**Adam**: Meet the Golden Hind, a character that was surely supposed to have a larger role in the entirety of this game, but, well-

**NPC**: The whole process was incredibly rushed.

**Shane**: Herc passes the new rune off to the Golden Hind, and things get weird. She's an archer, and her controls are really, really bad. I mean, you can easily pluck at enemies from a distance using a crosshair- you aren't moving, which is fine for the gauntlet of enemies leading up to the Titan's chamber. But when you get to the boss battle, good gravy.

**Adam**: Despite having a hasty tutorial when switching over to the hind, we're not really mentally prepped to do battle with the freshly-released Titan.

**Shane**: You have to shoot these targets way in the distance, which is easy enough to understand. What isn't, though, is that you can only shoot specific targets the game WANTS you to shoot at certain times.

**Adam**: We realized this when our archery meter on the right turned red very briefly at certain points while we were running around the Titan pit like a lunatic.

**Shane**: Oh, and that's very much part of the strategy here. If you're not moving around like mad while frantically figuring out what to shoot next-

*(The Titan kills the Golden Hind by breathing fire on her)*

**Adam**: What you have to do is find the target the game wants you to aim at, then stick around the area dodging the Titan's attacks. You gotta wait for a break in the action, typically right after it hurls a fiery boulder at your face. Then, while you have literally about two seconds, you stand in the sweet spot to get your red archery meter going. Now, try and aim the analog stick in such a way that the green aim bar matches the red archery bar beneath.

**Shane**: If this sounds complicated, it is. When you're trying to aim properly just so that the green and red bars line up, the adjustment is insanely sensitive. Just when you feel like you're about to get a good, clean shot, the Titan starts spewing fire again, and you gotta run.

**Adam**: Each target takes a few shots to successfully shoot down, making this battle last an eternity. It is by far the most frustrating boss fight in the entire game.

**Shane**: By the time you knock down the final target, you'll never wanna see a bow and arrow again. The Hind secures the heart of the defeated Titan, and we can save Zeus.

**Adam**: Or so we thought. Here's what happens immediately upon leaving the Titan's chamber.

*(The Golden Hind is immediately attacked by eagles)*

**Shane**: The enemies you defeated on your way to the chamber have all respawned. We were so disoriented and worried about being attacked again that-

*(The Golden Hind falls into a bottomless pit)*

**Adam**: Remember when we said the boss fight was so horrible you'd never wanna see a bow and arrow again? \*clears throat\* This game doesn't save after boss fights.

**Shane**: This time, we knew what to expect, and attempted to take our time crossing the bridge.

*(The Golden Hind falls into a bottomless pit after being attacked by eagles)*

**Adam**: Third time's the charm.

*(The Golden Hind falls into a bottomless pit after being attacked by eagles)*

**Shane**: Fourth time's also good.

**Shane and Adam**: Yay.

**Adam**: Now, we can finally save Zeus. Our friend forges the Titan heart into the medallion of Zeus. That, coupled with medallions we've received from each town, transport us to Zen- I mean Olympus.

**Shane**: Here, we teleport around, solve a series of simple puzzles, and collect colored crystals. When we get to the center of Olympus and attempt to use the crystals, we're told that an evil force is keeping our crystal-fueled teleportation pedestal at bay.

**Adam**: But wait! Who's that we see in the distance thar? I guess the developers didn't quite get the mileage they wanted out of the Golden Hind. We use her in a brief and completely disjointed event to shoot down a dragon model the creators likely had lying around. Can we help save Zeus now?

**Shane**: There's one more thing we need to do.

*(Rumble Pak prompt)*

**Shane and Adam**: Uh, I mean, it's the end of the game.

*(Rumble Pak noises)*

**Adam**: We power up our teleportation pedestals, and we're whisked to the final boss battle.

**Shane**: Ares awaits, and he-

*(Hercules repeatedly punches Ares)*

-really doesn't put up much of a fight.

**Adam**: He flees and decides to deploy one of the greatest final boss tactics of all time: using waves of enemies we've already fought.

**Shane**: Devious, and surely not a time-saving measure by anyone. Look at that framerate. Ares knew that time and space could barely contain the polygonal count of five characters on screen at once.

**Adam**: We wipe the floor with the groups of recycled assets, and then we wait with bated breath for Ares' epic final form.

*(Ares splits into three)*

**Shane**: Really? With all of the ideas and creativity that could be spawned from classic Greek mythology, we just fight three of the same character model we've already beat?

**Adam**: Fine. I guess there's only one way to finish a game produced so poorly under a publisher like Titus- that published *Superman 64*.

*(Shane and Adam sing the Superman theme during the boss fight and end cutscene)*

**Shane**: **IT'S JUST BAD.**

*(Hercules' disco walk cycle plays for a final time)*