MEDIOCRE

Reminds me of when Marvel ditched Capcom and teamed up with EA for a crossover, resulting in several people dying before Marvel vs Capcom 3 came out (I assume). Penny Arcade had the following to say:

GABE: Marvel left Capcom and went to EA for new characters?
TYCHO: Why wouldn't they? EA's games are virtually defined by their compelling characters.
GABE: Alright, name one.
TYCHO: That's easy. You've got car, snowboard guy, shooting guy... I could do this all day. Baseball guy.
GABE: Wow. I get it now, yeah. Who needs Megaman or Strider when you've got snowboard guy, and car.
TYCHO: And football guy.
GABE: Oh, I fucking LOVE football guy.

They needn't have bothered speculating - EA created a bunch of new characters and the game tanked.

According to Wikipedia, Heathcliff's universe has (I believe) more characters than Mario and Sonic combined, so it only makes sense that someone somewhere would think this was a good idea. Someone somewhere thought Mario Kart was a good idea too, and even when I was a kid I thought it was a horrible idea: why would they be racing each other? Then again, one of them was kinda a lot of fun.

Fuck this; no Cleo, not interested.

I watched Heathcliff when I was six or seven and my grandmother wanted something harmless for me to watch while she did her crosswords.

I remember nothing about it except for the theme song. A few examples on Youtube prove that it was always incredibly boring. Oh no, he's got a fish! And he's a cat! WILL THE ORIGNALITY NEVER FUCKING STOP

Yeah I was about to say that I remember the themesong but I think that's because I saw it on here or something; I never remember the cartoon outside of the intro. I guess Heathcliff was the more "xtreme" version of Garfield, since he was a rebel alleycat instead of a rebel housecat, and to be fair he did come out first. So a racing game based around Heathcliff and the gang would be oh god why am I still writing this.. zzzzzzz

The amazing thing about Heathcliff i that he predates Garfield by at least 5 years (comic first appeared in 1973). Kind of like how Oreo was originally a knockoff of Hydrox (1908 vs 1912).

Or Steve Jobs' career.

The wikipedia article is a great read though. I'd check around deviantart but I don't think anything beats EvilHomie's Heathcliff DA.

Oreo and Hydrox is an interesting analogy, but according to wikipedia Heathcliff and Garfield lived much different lives, unlike two cookies that were totally the same. Heathcliff is more like a character from Grease sort of cat, with the ladies always chasing him around and getting into real-life shenanigans whereas Garfield is more of a Stephen Wright kinda cat, sometimes kicking a dog off the table or making fun of his owner and making a deadpan joke about it but never being in any sort of relationship or love triangle.

But Hydrox wiki's pretty good too: "Hydrox aficionados had bombarded Kellogg's with thousands of phone calls and an on-line petition asking that production resume." Of course there's Hydrox aficionados.

Yeah, I watched Heathcliff. I think it was still airing when I was in preschool. I don't remember much; Heathcliff was an asshole, the Catillac Cats lived in a junkyard, and Cleo was pretty hot, you know, for a furry I mean.

It was no Inspector Gadget or Ninja Turtles, but I imagine it was at least better than Garfield.

Garfield had a pretty emotionally powerful Christmas special if I remember, up there with the Peanuts anyway. The Garfield And Friends animated series was kind of weird but I remember it as being probably the only kids' cartoon to bleep out "fuck." It was in some song about a shark that attacks garfield on vacation or something. He goes on more adventures than three panels can allow, but it wasn't anything all that special, save for Lorenzo Music's amazing voice talent.

But the "And Friends" part was really really bad if I remember.

I never really saw the show but sometimes I'd read the comic back in the 80s if my dad had gotten bored on the train home and picked up an abandoned Boston Herald (the Globe fancied itself too classy for Heathcliff). From what I remember he was kind of like a combination between Fritz the Cat and Dennis the Menace, with just a bit of Jughead.



Incidentally, this had me on one of the Garfield Wikipedia pages and I discovered that Jim Davis himself has publicly made the exact same comments about Lyman being buried in Jon's basement that my friends and I used to make in high school. He's apparently silent on the status of their relationship though, we always assumed that Jon, who is obviously deeply closeted, snapped in some way when Lyman made an advance on him, and whether accidental or deliberate his death at Jon's hand was the end result.

Ha I had to look it up! Totally forgot about Lyman and thought maybe that was the guy who created Heathcliff and there was some argument about who ripped off who ending with Davis murdering him in real life. :(

My friends and I had a similar theory about the older brother on Happy Days, who mysteriously disappeared to go off to college and never ever came back, that he never went to college! Instead the Cunningham family just had him chained up in the basement. And that's why when Fonzie drops by, they didn't do the more obvious thing of subletting his room, but instead creating what was probably an expensive and impractical housing annex in the garage! The rest of the family knew, of course, and really the sounds from the basement only came during feeding time late at night, when the Fonz would either be in his separate chamber where he couldn't hear anything or at Arthurs.

(meant as reply to IZ)

Do I dare ask about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? :)

Yeah, that sounds about right RoUS. Heathcliff was a swag alpha cat who loved to get his beast mode on; the complete opposite of that fat, passive-aggressive cuck, Garfield.