Before writing this article I told my friend how excited I was to start this section of my "memoir". I really was excited to reflect an enthusiasm about this game that I would never be able to replicate ever again. I wanted to talk about arguably my two favorite characters of the game, both of whom were added at the same time. As the picture partially indicates, this section discusses the playable character Raven, and the final villain fighter, Plasmus, of Teen Titans: Battle Blitz, one online game I have fond memories of back in the day.

I compare my eagerness with Battle Blitz with the popularity trajectory of the National Basketball Association (the NBA). A formerly un-watchable basketball league thanks to brawling and a lack of charismatic superstars, the NBA suddenly found a growing audience once it had players Larry Bird and Earvin "Magic" Johnson playing for the Boston Celtics and the LA Lakers. But the league's stature catapulted to stratospheric heights upon the advent of superstar Michael Jordan. Especially after the US Dream Tream showcased itself to the world in the 1992 Olympics, you can clearly see an upswing of popularity of the game all over the globe. Kids now wanted to play basketball to Be Like Mike [Jordan], Magic or any other NBA superstar.

When I first started playing Battle Blitz I had a positive response to it because it looked presentable, the fighting was simple for me to grasp and l liked the character pool was not bad despite only having ONE playable character when I started. The additions of Raven (and in a way Plasmus) are the equivalent to Michael Jordan entering the NBA; suddenly I became a giddier, more excited fan of the fighting game.

How do I describe my first impressions of Raven? Easily my #firstvideogamecrush. Complementing her already lithe frame with a leotard to accentuate her (admittedly pale) legs, this new heroine admittedly made me feel a bit gaga. But Raven wasn't just a pretty face; she too was a bit of a mystery. She was wearing a cape with a hood, concealing the upper half of her face. In a way, I could see her, but not wholly so. The Raven I'm controlling hasn't exactly revealed herself completely. It added to the intrigue.

Further adding to her enigma factor was Raven's moveset. Remember, I didn't know anything about the Teen Titans and what each superhero and do, and back then I never saw a hero quite like Raven. Helped by the fact that I didn't understand the word "telekinesis", I didn't exactly know what Raven was doing when I used her special move, the first one was in a short a projectile attack. My thoughts were "so she is launching a black gear thingy towards the enemy, floating mid-air... the hell?" She could also do a "telekinetic spin", which was a lot like Jinx's twirl but with shorter range. Like her projectile attack the items she's spinning around depends on the location. Again, nice touch. Her last move made her a tad bit badass, where she jumps into the air, does a little backflip, and throws down (as my friend would put it) "a bunch of garbage from above towards the enemy's head". Probably could have used a more emphatic sound effects when the trash landed onto the ground, but oh well - a bit nitpicky on my part. She may have a somewhat similar skillset as Robin, but Raven did it with flair for my tastes. She looked very powerful. Long story short, I couldn't peel my eyes (or attention) off of Raven; she was hot, mysterious and unique, really a one-of-a-kind superhero in my (then-very) limited knowledge of superheroes.

As much as I love to talk about Raven, I would not have been into the game as much had it not been for Plasmus, the final villain character you have to fight against. Now, when going through the gauntlet of villains in Battle Blitz, you notice that the next foe is harder to beat than the last, either because of the larger HP pool (esp. Cinderblock) or because later foes hit harder (Mammoth). Logically, the next villain after Cinderblock has to be even harder to kill. Plasmus is that villain.

There's a lot to say about this gooey adversary first. He is the only champion to be unable to both jump and kick. He is also the slowest character in the game. But he makes up for it beautifully because he is the largest character in the game (both in size and HP bar), and he has four special moves as opposed to three. His first move makes him toss out sludge to the area in front of him; already he has an area-of-effect move. But it doesn't stop there. He boasts the only homing projectile in the game with his sludge crab. Even if you jump over it the crab will just turn the other way and bite you. The best thing is to just conservatively block the crab. Thirdly Plasmus has a quick claw attack forward that takes as much space as his first move. Finally he has "Sludge Explosion" that is essentially his ultra-area-of-effect move; though the windup time is very slow, once he launches the sludge it is impossible to dodge. Like the crab attack, blocking the attack and take the reduced damage is the best option.

Simply put, Plasmus is the big bad guy, the last roadblock to complete the villain gauntlet. And the developers could not have made a better "final boss". You can forget about close ranged combat, as his claw attack is so fast and does a lot of damage; you cannot beat Plasmus in a match of fisticuffs. His ranged attacks can hit anywhere and everywhere, which made me for the first time play more defensively whenever he pulls out a Sludge Crab or when he uses Sludge Explosion. He forced me to pull out all the stops in my limited fighting game experience. So when I first brought down Plasmus (with Raven of course), I felt a surge of satisfaction and achievement.

The game ends with a message simply saying its congratulations of you beating the game, and to try beating the game with another champion. It's nothing special, but the video game journey leading up to it was great. Playing as Raven, my first video game crush, undoubtedly made things really interesting, and the game gave me the perfect final battle against the best villain in the game; the bout was nothing short of a dream matchup. More importantly, the additions of Raven and Plasmus made me feel really excited about the upcoming characters in Battle Blitz, the remaining three Titans who are still left out. How I reacted to them is the subject of the next entry.

UPDATE: A New Afterword (on Sept. 27, 2014)

I actually did start on writing my third and final blog for Battle Blitz nearly a year ago, but for one reason for another I couldn't bring myself to finish it. I guess that Raven was such an awesome character for me (as fighter and concept) that it led me to expect the moon out of the final three Titans: Cyborg, Starfire and Beastboy. To say that I was unimpressed with any of these characters is an understatement. Out of the three, Cyborg impressed me the most with his awesome laser cannon attack that reaches from one end of the screen to another. But beyond that flash of cool, there was very little to keep me invested in the game. Starfire was essentially a Robin clone with different sprites, and Beastboy was the worst Titan as a fighting character. 2 of his gap-closing abilities (as rhino and pterodactyl) always leaves him open for counterattack, and both do not do enough damage to warrant their use. His projectile attack, a gorilla-induced shockwave projectile, takes too long to wind up and again does too little damage.

Battle Blitz has grown quite a bit since my youth. There is now a final version released eons ago with which you can play all 10 characters (the 5 titans, and the 5 villains) in the game. That being said, if you play as a villain you are only going to play against the five heroes (and vice versa), so that means you won't have your hero vs. hero or villain vs. villain matchup.

I could go into how it feels to play the giant Plasmus or the unorthodox Gizmo (who, as stated in my first post for the game, needs to set up his glider prior to jumping), but such memories came long after my initial encounter with the Battle Blitz I first heard of and played, when I became so much more familiar with fighting games. I still want to bask in the nostalgia of my youth, when the only gaming items I had were a clunky Windows 2000 and a dark-turquoise Gameboy Color.

One final memory before I close this post. It was almost a custom upon visiting one of my childhood friends that we fire up the computer and play Battle Blitz in his house. We competed with each other as to how many points we can score by fighting against the villains (I neglected to talk about the scoring system, but hopefully the screenshots I provided indicate that it exists). To my eternal chagrin back then, I always had to play Robin, Cyborg and Beastboy (the guy heroes), whilst my friend always had dibs on Raven and Starfire (the female heroes). Looking back, perhaps this was not all too bad an arrangement, because I had 15 fights (3 heroes) to rack up points whilst the friend had only 10 (2 heroes), so I always won when we had the final tally of points scored (we took out a calculator for such an occasion, given the large numbers involved, then scribbled the scores down on a random piece of paper we found). But I still wanted to play Raven XP.

But regardless of who won or lost, or who had which characters, there was always the constant of excitement, anticipation and general fun when we headed to ye olde cartoonetwork.com, selected that Teen Titan's game in the site's game section, and descended into the cartoonish slugfest that was to come. Even after all the fighting games I've played since, namely installments from KOF and Tekken, that game always has a soft spot in my heart as my initiation into the world of fighting games.

Thank you, Battle Blitz, for the memories.