Action 52/Trivia


 * Cash Cow Franchise: Very much averted. Active was clearly expecting Cheetahmen to become the next Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or at the very least the next Battletoads. While it could perhaps have enjoyed some success, as many agree that the basic concept was kind of cool if not especially original, having the only way of obtaining it be as part of a $200 cartridge pretty much killed that idea from the word go.
 * Creator Killer: This game's infamous execution cemented Active Enterprises as Snark Bait right away, and they only got partway through Cheetahmen II before they effectively vanished.
 * Evidently, the failure of the game was especially hard on Vince Perri, who completely dropped out of the public eye when Active shuttered.
 * Follow the Leader: According to The Other Wiki, Action 52 was conceived when the creator observed his son playing a pirated 40-game multicart from Taiwan. As the cart itself was popular in his own neighborhood, he decided to create such a cart legitimately.
 * Cheetahmen was this to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
 * Franchise Killer: Honestly, the guys at Active should have known not to pin their dreams on Action 52's success. They had to have played the game at some point, right?
 * Manual Misprint: Taken Up to Eleven, as several of the manual descriptions bear absolutely no resemblance to the actual game. Several examples are rather Egregious:
 * The manual describes Crazy Shuffle as a matching game, but it's actually a game where you shoot stuff in a hedge maze.
 * Bits n Pieces is described as a puzzle game, but is actually a game where you jump on stock movie monsters.
 * In the manual, Jigsaw is described as being Exactly What It Says on the Tin. However, it's actually a carpentry-themed platformer.
 * Real Song Theme Tune: The intro uses a sample of Rob Base's "It Takes Two".
 * Stillborn Franchise: Active Enterprises had plans to create a Cheetahmen animated TV series and toy line, but the very moment Nintendo of America refused to let the game be published on the NES, it was all over.
 * What Could Have Been:
 * As stated in the main article, the creators had big dreams of making Cheetahmen into a big franchise, now, had they put all that wishful thinking into developing one functional game, instead of 52 broken ones, they might have maybe, possibly gotten somewhere. Mayhaps.
 * It could have been possible if they started with the action figures and the show rather than the game cartridge...
 * It's been discovered while digging through the coding that they might have planned 60 games for the cartridge early on.
 * Working Title: On a prototype of the game, Cheetahmen was called Action Gamer.
 * SuckerFreeGames, a small group of 3 people, bought the intellectual rights for Cheetahmen in 2010 . They plan to release a sequel for Cheetahman 3 for the Xbox Live Arcade.