It’s another bad car!

It occurs to me that everything I said about the T-Rex in the last one is also true, more obviously even, about cool cars. They’re a modern marvel for Superman to contend with. I’ll admit that I think the cool car in Billion Dollar Limited is cooler than this one, but this one is part plane, so that’s an even more modern marvel.

Anyway, in this cartoon the Bulleteers (cool name) have this high tech supercar that can fly and can just smash its way through anything. From their mountaintop lair (with massive speakers and a rock drawbridge and stuff, who are these guys?) they demand money or they’ll go on a rampage. They don’t get the money, so they go on a rampage. Lois heads off to investigate, and when she gets a chance she tries to bust up the car as well. Anyway, Superman stops them. You get it.

There’s a bit about six minutes and ten seconds in where Clark jumps off a building and the way he gets his footing to do it appeals to me. As I said in the Billion Dollar Limited one, I like when Clark’s flight has more weight to it. Details like this are what I want.

This one ends with Lois getting the scoop on the story, with no interference from Clark. Good for her. No wink at the end here, but they do walk past a “Buy Defense Bonds” poster that I think may be the first acknowledgement of the War that these shorts have had.

Somehow, another year has ended. The Dark Lord Char’Nagh swoops down onto the Earth to try to repair some of the damage we’ve done, but can even that impressive entity combat our stupidity?

Anyway, 2025 has not been my favourite year. It began with the worst depressive episode of my life, which lasted for months, and even once I got through that, I’ve not exactly climbed out of the hole. There’s just always a thing to make it harder. In my personal life and especially in the world at large, there’s just always something to make things harder.

I’d say the most important thing I did this year was finish The Demon of South Gloria, my set of wordsearch puzzles about fighting a demon. I am certain there is an audience for this, though I haven’t exactly struck them yet. I was hoping I’d find that project so successful that it’d make sense to do another set. It hasn’t really done so, but it still could. The reviews I’ve had on it have been nice anyway. So, I’m hoping to make a sequel in 2026 anyway. Two sets of puzzles have maybe twice as much chance of catching on, right? That’s what everybody says, right?

I haven’t posted many Rocket Racer Thoughts in 2024, but that’s not because I haven’t been thinking them, I’ve just had other things I had to do (including doing some minor Rocket Racer work elsewhere on the Internet that will be discussed next year). But I want to get at least one official Bob Farrell post on the site in 2025, so here I go:

A Rocket Racer Video Game Would Be Cool

You start with an open world New York, like in those Spider-Man games that are so popular. It’d be very possible to create a more mission-based setup with each being a well-crafted location for skateboarding, but in this hypothetical I want an open world game. And the thing about those games, I assume, is that it is fun to swing around like Spider-Man. Having to get around in an open world game is tedious if you don’t have a fun way to travel. Well, you know what has been a fun way to get around in a bunch of video games over the years? Skateboarding! And you know who can not just skateboard like normal, but he has a rocket-powered skateboard that lets him go straight up buildings and even fly. That’s fun.

So we have an Open World NYC that you traverse on your rocketboard. It already seems like fun to me (admittedly a man who doesn’t play games like this). But what next? Well, I figure there’s two kinds of currencies in the game: Money and Respect. Money you get by doing missions. There ought to be a wealth of side-quests where you can rob banks or catch bounties or any of the things that Bob usually does when he needs money. Apart from taking care of your family (which would need to at least be mentioned) money could probably be used to finance upgrades to your equipment and get new powers and stuff.

Respect would be about how the public sees you. The more you are respected, the better missions you can be hired for. A bank robbery you can probably do on your own, with no respect, but if you want to get hired for a cool casino heist that pays millions? For that you need to be impressive to potential hirers. And, for the record, I’d make a cheap way to earn respect to be performing stunt moves on your board in view of onlookers. You’re skating down the road and you do a cool flip, someone is gonna be impressed.

Story? I dunno, typical Rocket Racer stuff. There are probably factions (the mob, SHIELD or whatever, stuff like that) and you’re trying to make money by working for them. The more they respect you, the better the jobs they give out. Eventually you have to pick a side and probably betray the mob to work with SHIELD or vice versa. There’s gonna have to be personal stuff involving friends and family. Speed Demon could be a recurring foe. You want more detail than that, hire me? I’ll try to do a flip if that helps.