 I've been at this channel project thing for over 7 years now and somehow there's still some weird stuff that I haven't fully covered yet, like Stone Protectors. Yeah, I've talked about this one briefly in the past, but this is another one of those early to mid-90s animated TV series inspired from the success of stuff like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and it only lasted 13 episodes, yet it somehow managed to have a line of action figures and a Super Nintendo game. There was even a Sega Genesis game that was finished, but ultimately cancelled by the publisher since the show was a flop. To sum up, Stone Protectors was meant to build out the seamy and decadent underworld of Troll dolls, since in the early 90s they managed to get popular again for some reason. So the trolls live in a kingdom made out of crystals and it gets attacked by this dude named Zock, so in a desperate attempt to keep the great crystal safe, Empress Opal, who's just a regular human woman and not of the Troll race, I guess, splits the crystals into six pieces. Zock managed just to get one, but the other five go to, you guessed it, a rock band made up of five Troll dudes, but these aren't just any Troll dudes, you're totally righteous and tubular, radical gnarly, yeah, whatever, you get the idea. And just as you might expect, Stone Protectors is a beat-em-up in the same vein as stuff like Pirate of Dark Water or Mighty Morphin Power Rangers or the Tick or Gimli's Wildcats, you get the idea. It's not a fast-paced spectacular feast for the eyes with a killer soundtrack like Turtles in Time for instance, but it isn't pure drudgery like the Tick. It's right in the middle, if not a little ahead of stuff like Wildcats, but a little behind Pirates of Dark Water, for instance. Of course, you can play as any one of the five band members with each having the usual common beat-em-up strengths and weaknesses, like the faster guy who has weaker attacks and the slower guy with stronger attacks. The big thing this game has going for it is that it's two-player co-op, and that's probably the best way to play through this one today. You get six lives to get through ten levels, and while there's zero continues here, there's tons of chances to get extra lives through points, and just by regular old one-ups lying around. B jumps, Y is a strong attack, with X and A being quicker attacks, and you can also hold any of these buttons down for a charged attack, and each attack button has a completely different move for each character, so that's pretty cool. At least it shows they didn't completely half-ass this game. There's weapons here, too. You press A to pick them up, and they range from stuff like a flamethrower to a whip to, what is this, a hockey stick? Hockey exists in the Troll universe? I guess that figures since these guys look like they're straight out of Mutant League hockey. When helps set stone protectors apart are two different sets of bonus moves you can do. There's the usual beat-em-up special moves that cost life to use, but what's neat is that the game actually teaches them to you as you progress. For instance, with this guy, you press back forward, up down, then R, and he turns blue, which, uh, makes them hard to see, I guess. Okay, so they're not all that great, but there are some good ones here, like this guy who turns into Sparkster from Rocket Knight Adventures for a second, that's pretty cool. There's also what the game calls musical moves, which don't cost anything. Those are much more difficult to implement since they're, like, a quarter roll, starting with down and back, then pressing L at the exact right time, but if you're able to execute them, they do massive damage. Overall, I'd say they did a really nice job differentiating the five characters, giving them different ranges of speed and reach. It's not like King of Dragons level of good or anything, but it's still appreciated. Another thing that makes stone protectors stand out is the, uh, unique art style. Sure, this game is great looking to a certain extent, especially the settings and backgrounds, but the sprites are just a little on the garish side. It's like they tried to cram in as many colors into one character as they could, like some kind of microwaved Lisa Frank Play-Doh nightmare. But hey, I mean, it's very faithful to the source material. It's just that the source material is, uh, kind of ugly. Still, again, you can see there was real effort put into this game. The opening cutscenes are an example of that since they feature some sharp-looking pixel art, and there's some cool foreground effects you don't usually see, especially in licensed games. And the settings are pretty interesting. Like, what, did I suddenly end up in Aladdin somehow? Oh, and of course, since this is a beat-em-up, there is an elevator stage. The big flaw with this game is that it's so long. Ten levels is just way too much for a game like this, and it really starts to drag, especially once you get to level eight, which is, yes, another elevator level, only this time you're going back up instead of down. How's that for variety? I give the game credit for packing it full of moves your character can do, including ones the game actually tells you about, which gives you an incentive to keep playing. But still, this could have been done in six or seven levels, which would have made the total playthrough time less than an hour instead of over an hour and a half. But yeah, Stone Protectors is surprisingly solid. I mean, it's not gonna touch stuff like Final Flight 3 or any other really good Capcom or Konami beat-em-up, but hey, there's five different characters, each with a ton of moves, and the game definitely has a interesting look to it. Yeah, I still prefer a few other beat-em-ups to this one, like the aforementioned Pirates of Darkwater or Sonic Blastman 2, but it's much better than stuff like Legend or the Tick. If nothing else, hey, it's two-player co-op, so you can enjoy this one with a friend. All right, I wanna thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.