Tempestra vs Videoman (Villain)
Table of Contents
What’s the Theme Here?
Villains that come out of video games to menace the “real” world. And both happen to be from cartoon adaptations of comic books.
You might also want to know what’s up with the (villain) thing. You’re probably thinking “if its like Leatherhead from TMNT where he’s good in some universes but bad in others, why not indicate the universe?”
Read on and it’ll become clear. It’s interesting.
Tempestra
Hey, its the evil lady that came out of the arcade cabinet in Shredder’s Revenge!
Or, for the Turtle fans out there, the evil lady that came out of the arcade cabinet in Rescuepalooza.
Or, for the hardest shelled Turtle fans out there, the evil lady that came out the arcade cabinet in the 80’s cartoon, specifically in the episode Leonardo vs Tempestra.
Though the most mature of the Turtles, Leo is still a teenage mutant (though the Mirage series eventually brought the Turtles into their 30’s, if you can believe it) and has his own flaws and hookups. Case in point, he extents his tireless quest for ninja mastery to video games. Leo is the kind of guy that needs to get all the achievements before moving on to another game. During a late-night arcade run (the Turtles assure the audience that they have permission from the owner to be there after hours. The original script probably just had them break in until the editor decided they didn’t want to encourage kids to pull B and E’s on their local arcades. TMNT already encourages kids to play in sewers and study oriental assasination arts so they probably didn’t want to push their luck) Leonardo finds an arcade cabinet he’s never seen before–and he’s seen them all. He remarks that he’s beaten all the games in the arcade at least twice. But suddenly there’s this strange arcade machine called Tempestra’s Revenge.
The machine challenges Leo like it’s Black Knight 2000 and Leo can’t resist taking up the gauntlet.
You know what’s sad? The days of arcade machines calling out passersbys. We have been reduced, as a culture.
Leo gets his shell kicked and becomes obsessed with beating Tempestra’s Revenge. He’s got to win! He’s gonna beat Tempestra’s Revenge!
He grinds all night…but he pulls it off. He’s the Turtle with the most skill, after all.
And for his troubles, Tempestra pops out of the machine and announces that Leo has released her from her imprisonment. How did she end up in an arcade machine? What is she, exactly? It’s never made clear. Maybe she’s a ghost? She looks like she wouldn’t be out of place in an episode of The Real Ghostbusters.
Instead of rewarding Leo, Tempestra announces that she’s going to rematch him…in real life this time.
Man, imagine if that’s how The Last Starfighter played out. Poor kid racks up the high score…and he’s worded by the Kodan Armada popping into reality and nuking his planet.
Leo doesn’t do so hot against Tempestra, because she’s video game Storm and he’s cartoon parody Daredevil. You want to know who wins Storm vs Daredevil? You know what happens when a blind dude is struck by lightning?
He dies. The blind dude dies.
To make matters worse, Tempestra has a strict 1p only policy. To prevent the other Turtles from helping, she floods the sewer, trapping them in their lair. Leo’s only backup against Tempestra is April, and this is way before everyone decided that she actually knows how to fight.
Leo eventually defeats her by exploiting two of her weaknesses–her tempestuousness and her need to recharge herself after using her powers. He tricks her into using too much power in creating a small army of living video game minions for the Turtles to fight. Weak and vulnerable, Leo throws the circuit board of Tempestra’s Revenge at her, which traps her pokeball style.
Moral of the story–fight smarter, not harder.
But then she came back!
It happened in the episode Night of the Rouges where Shredder decides to try the Sinister Syndicate strategy against the Turtles and assembles a team of their worst enemies to finally turn the into turtle soup. His team includes Tempestra, the Rat King, Leatherhead, Chrome Dome, Slash, and…Antrax and Scumbug, two bug-themed bad guys who were created for the episode and were never seen again after it…
I guess they really wanted to push some toys. I would have put in Dirtbag and Groundchuck.
At the end of the episode, the Rogues run for the hills, meaning that Tempestra was still at large when the cartoon series concluded. So good on Shredder’s Revenge including her as a level boss and finally bringing some conclusion to her character.
She even brought Tokka and Rahzar with her!
I hope the success of Shredder’ Revenge rubs off on her and the next Turtles universe adapts her in some way. She’s a great way to get the Turtles inside a beat-em-up game. Imagine an episode where she puts them inside a game and they have to fight off Shogun and Tora–the two bosses created for the NES port of TMNT Arcade. In fact, when I heard that Tempestra summoned two cameos as minions, I thought for sure they would be Tora and Shogun–but I’m not complaining. I love Tokka and Rahzar. Who doesn’t?
Tempestra’s Powers and Abilities
Tempestra has two related but distinct powersets. She has powers themed around natural disasters and powers themed around video games. Her weather powers are what can be expected from your typical weather witch. Her favorite move is to shoot bolts of purple lightning strong enough to blast down into the sewers and pin Leonardo to the wall. And keep in mind the 80’s toon Turtles have some pretty good strength for a pack of manlet Leprechauns. In the episode Atlantis Rising, Leo pulled off this:
The Turtles may prefer to fight people with slapstick and use their weapons more on trashcans and oil drums than bad guys, but that doesn’t make them wimps–not at all.
By hitting water with her lightning, Tempestra can alter it. She kept the other Turtles out of her game with Leo by causing the sewers to flood, trapping the Turtles in their own lair. Donatello had to build a diving bell for them to escape. They couldn’t just swim out, because amphibians though they may be, Donatello pointed out that the water outside was pressurized to the tune of 3,000 PSI. To put that in perspective, atmospheric pressure on the surface, the kind you and I experience everyday, is about 14.7 PSI. She also used her lightning on a water fountain created by a busted fire hydrant to freeze it and trap Leo, but Leo burst his way out because as stated, Turtle power is no joke.
She can also alter the weather just by pointing. She created thick fog just by pointing and even an earthquake strong enough to create fissures.
The rest of Tempestra’s powers have to do with being a living video game character. She can turn into a bolt of purple energy to quickly travel, levitate and throw arcade cabinets (she never levitated anything else, so I’m going to assume that she doesn’t have telekinesis, rather, she can control arcade cabinets as part of the deal that comes with being a living video game character), and summon minions from out of her video game. In the show, she summoned three giants–a dragon, a monster made of ice, and a monster made of electricity. The dragon was defeated when Mikey sprayed it with water, the electricity monster when Raph threw metal scrap on it which caused it to short circuit, and the ice monster was defeated when Donatello batted its ice ball projectile bat at it, knocking a chunk out of its body, then smashed the rest of it to snow with a strike.
80’s toon Donny is an underrated powerhouse, almost as much as Mirage Donny.
He does machines. And if you don’t like it, he’ll do you, to.
The minion fight, by the way, has some of the best animation of the series. I know that’s not saying much, but if you’re a shellhead check it out, you’ll like it.
When Tempestra was dusted off for Shredder’s Revenge, instead of summoning three giant monsters, she summoned two other minions–Tokka and Rahzar! Neat cameos! I love Tokka and Rahzar. One day we need to a get a series where they’re the Bebop and Rocksteady. You know, the dedicated mutant minion morons for the Shredder
While Tokka and Rahzar weren’t as powerful as the giants, they had the benefit of being less of a drain on Tempestra’s powers. Summoning the giants zapped her batteries to the point she couldn’t even fly. And what’s more, after being destroyed, she could summon Tokka and Rahzar again and again. She’s also intangible while they’re summoned, though a major caveat–she can’t do anything while intangible. She can only float around, and when Tokka and Rahzar are destroyed, she’s forced out of her intangibility.
Note that while made out of energy, she does have a corporeal form that can be defeated with enough force. That’s how she’s done in in Shredder’s Revenge, after all. You hit her enough times, she will drop.
Tempestra’s greatest weakness is also, in a way, her greatest strength. She’s like an energy vampire. Doing things drains her of energy, and at a certain point she becomes weak and helpless. In such a state, she can be trapped in the circuit board of her arcade cabinet and presumably other circuit boards as well. All Leo had to do was throw it at her like a pokeball.
But with vampiric hunger comes the ability to vampirize. Tempestra can absorb energy. In the show, she began sucking the electricity out of a nuclear power plant after running low and when nearly defeated tried to make the plant explode so she could eat the energy. She can consume a nuclear explosion and all your quarters.
Tempestra also has a huge ego and it was how she was ultimately defeated. After seeing that Tempestra could run out of energy, Leo taunted her and caused her to overreact and put too much power behind her summons. The moment her ego is threatened, Tempestra will strike out with more force than is healthy for her.
Oh, and uh, she’s got one more power that’s not really part of her weather or video game powersets–she can zap a sign and change what it says and where it points. She did this to send trick Leo and send him away from the nuclear power plant she planned to feed on.
The ability to flip signs. I bet that’s not on the superpowers wiki.
I can imagine the conversation in the studio.
“So in this scene, Tempestra switches the sign to send Leonardo the wrong way.”
“How does she switch it, exactly?”
“She uh…switches it. Makes it point the other way.”
“So she flies down to the sign, picks it up, turns it…ah, we already spent a lot of money on the minion fight. Can’t we just have her…zap it? She’s magic, right. Have her use a magic spell.”
“She…might not be magic. Her origin is ambiguous. She might be an alien from another dimension, like Krang.”
“Well for this scene she’s magic.”
Videoman
I’ve always missed how large the Marvel universe used to be. And I don’t mean in terms of bigatons, I mean in term of settings and themes. You used to have Transformers, Rom, Conan, and Dr. Who all in the same universe as Spidey and the X-men. It was all so vibrant and fun and I’ll always miss it now that we’re in an Avengers-dominated and Avengers focused world.
And remember the brief, weird, fad-chasing characters Marvel used to make? Like how Dazzler was born from the small Xanadu led disco revival in the 80’s. Or do you remember Nightcat? Marvel tried creating a superheroine whose gimmick was that she was a “real” pop star in the Heart vein. It didn’t work out so well. And remember when woman’s lib got big in the seventies and Marvel’s answer was to push Shanna the She-Devil, the Cat (who would later become Tigra,) and Night Nurse?
Or just look at Luke Cage and Iron Fist. Blaxpolitation man alone didn’t take. Kung-fun man on his own didn’t take. But Blaxploitation man plus Kung-fu man equaled one of the best duos in comics. They were the grind house duo and they were brilliant.
You don’t have that anymore. The closest you get is some Reddit OC monstrosity. Remember the New Warriors reboot that got such bad heat Marvel strangled it in the crib?
Come on, Marvel. There’s plenty of fads to milk. You gave the world Hypno Hustler. Now give us Crypto Hustler.
But lets return to a better time.
The year is 1981. Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends is on the air, and while it would only have 24 episodes, it would go on to be a highly influential series not just for Spider-Man shows but for superhero cartoons in general. It was peak bronze age kino hitting that right mix between goofy and serious. It was a good show, which is probably why Dan Slott would later have his waifu Morlun the multiverse vampire (It’s Morlun time!) kill Spidey, Iceman, and Firestar and Ms. Lion cry on their corpses. It was jealousy, you see. Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends will be watched by generations to come. It will always be known as the first (big) Spider-Man cartoon. Slott will be known to future generations as that guy Disney did a hit piece on exposing how he does not work and is entirely carried by the artists unfortunate enough to be shackled to him.
One day I got to do a match with the Amazing Friends. I’m not sure sort of trio they could fight, but one’s got to be out there.
Anyway, who is Videoman, and why does he have a (villain) after his name?
In the episode Videoman, Electro plants several Videoman arcade games across New York City. This game attracts a following. Flash Thompson in particular is a fan. But these arcade machines are secretly part of an evil scheme. When enough of them are set up, the boss of Videoman, Videoman, springs to life, exits the machine, kicks Flash Thompson’s ass as payback for killing him in the game one-too-many times, and then carries out Electro’s true plan–the theft of large quantities of silver, gold, copper, and a special non-conductive alloy developed for space exploration.
Why Electro wants these things should be clear to those of you who didn’t sleep through physics class. Silver, gold, copper, are great conductors, and with a non-conductor for insulation, Electro can create a super-transformer through which he can absorb the entire electrical supply of New York City and become Super-Electro!
Remember, Max was an electrician before he became Electro. He’s a dummy, but it’s because his WIS is low, not his INT.
The Amazing Friends don’t have much luck fighting Videoman, mostly because they can’t do a thing to him. Being made of energy, physical attacks just pass right through him as if he were a ghost. He even Trons Firestar and Iceman, imprisoning them inside a copy of Videoman on the computer in Electro’s base. It’s up to the star of the show to save the day, and save the day he does. Doesn’t he always? He tricks a super-charged Electro (he, of course, got to build his super-transformer. What, you thought they weren’t going to supercharge the badguy for the finale?) and Videoman into blasting each other, which causes them both to explode and vanish.
But no one stays dead in comic books, not even in comic book cartoons. Videoman would show up again in Origin of the Iceman in the half of the episode not dedicated to showing Iceman’s origin and showing off the X-men, who at that time didn’t have a cartoon of their own. Videoman would emerge through a Videoman cabinet in the city dump and discover that he could absorb electricity to make himself grow larger and more powerful. He then fought the Amazing Friends…without Electro.
Come to think of it, Electro didn’t show up again after he exploded and vanished…I guess I was wrong. You do stay dead in comic book cartoons! Also, Max really outdid himself with Videoman. He was juiced on the power of an entire city, traded zaps with Videoman, and he’s the one that didn’t come back. I wonder if Videoman wouldn’t have gone Frankenstein’s monster on him given enough time?
Videoman also learned a new trick in The Origin of the Iceman–summoning two minions from out of arcade machines to fight on his side. He summoned a Pac-man clone with an adorable little fang to help keep the lawyers away which ate chunks out of entire buildings and could shoot lasers out of its eyes and a clone of the bonus UFO from Space Invaders. You can tell its the UTO from Space Invaders because it made the WEE OH WEE OH WEE OH sound.
But his cool minions led to his defeat. He made them just as powerful as he was–and just as independent. Thinking back to how they defeated him the first time, Spidey and Firestar led the UFO and Pac-man into Videoman’s line of fire. The result was that Videoman’s minions started to fight Videoman, and all three pixelated terrors blew up.
And that was the end of Videoman–though I think they should bring him back. Batman 66, Wonder Woman 77, Superman 78, throwback books are hot so why should DC get all the fun? Bring out Spider-Man 81.
Videoman never got to Tron Spidey in the cartoon, so have him finally do it. Maybe he Trons Spidey and the Green Goblin and it becomes a reference to the first Spidey video game? I’d read it.
Or put him in the next Spidey game. How cool would that be? You could introduce Electro, have him plot to create a being out of pure electricity as a way to test whether or not he himself could become pure energy, and boom, Videoman! Imagine him summoning pixelated bad guys to fly around the city. It would present a lot of variety for mooks, could be a lot of fun.
At least give the poor dude an action figure. He’s probably the only Spidey related bad guy to still not have an action figure of some kind. Is it because he’s 2D? Don’t worry about it then. Put him in as a bonus figure with Electro, problem solved.
I love Videoman. He is such a pure idea. And he reminds me of Eck. Eck was a fun little visitor from another dimension. Why are two dimensional beings thrust into three dimensional reality so cool? Videoman, Eck. Mr. A. Square, Paper Mario, there’s just something about them…
…Oh! Oh yeah, I was supposed to explain the (villain) thing. Well, you see, Videoman isn’t the only Videoman to show up on Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends. After he was sent to the great Atari landfill in the sky, another Videoman came along, this one a superhero.
In the episode The Education of a Superhero, the evil Gamester (think of him like Arcade but he looks like a bad guy from Birdman. He’s another character created for the show) takes a page from Electro’s playbook and sets up mind-controlling arcade machines all around NYC.
Shades of Polybius again!
He enslaves all who gaze upon his arcade games…except for a scrawny glasses-and-pocket-protector nerd named Francis Byte. Francis is so focused on the video game and in such a state of flow that the mind control doesn’t work on him. The Gamester supplies his arcade machine with more power, but Francis still doesn’t notice the mind control, and so the Gamester applies more power, and more, and more, until finally the arcade machine explodes in Francis’ face. But instead of being blown to bits, he’s blown to bits…and bytes. Francis Byte becomes…Videoman!
He’s…basically the exact same as the evil Videoman. He shoots pixels, attacks pass through him, he can travel through wires, etc. He never absorbed energy or created video game minions, but odds are he could. He even looks the same, except his eyes didn’t glow as often as the evil Videoman. He might even have more powers than the old Videoman. Spidey helped him discover that he had hot and cold rays–powers that the old Videoman only had after draining energy from Firestar and Iceman–through one of my favorite superhero related exchanges.
“Use your hot and cold rays to free my friends!”
“But I don’t have hot and cold rays…”
“Have you ever tried?”
Francis tried to help the Amazing Friends fight against the Gamester, not only to free the enslaved New Yorkers, but to free his crush Louise (who, in a rarity, actually reciprocated the little nerd’s feelings), but he was a newb at superheroics and only got in the way in spite of his best efforts. When the Gamester realized his crush Louse was in his clutches, he used her to force Videoman to work for him until the Amazing Friends freed her. Realizing he had been more of a hinderance than a help throughout the adventure, Francis is down on himself until Spidey tells him that there’s a place for young superhumans to hone their powers–Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters! Thus Videoman joins the X-men! Remember, this was back in the 80’s when the X-men were about helping young superhumans, even if they weren’t mutants, and not about establishing an ethnostate and securing the existence of mutantkind and a future for mutant children.
Francis was actually going to be part of of a proposed X-men cartoon. Yeah, Videoman was going to be in the first X-men cartoon alongside, if you can believe it, Carol Danvers. Too bad it didn’t come to pass. Imagine if it did. Imagine people clamoring for Videoman to be in the X-men movies. Imagine Francis Byte becoming a break-out character.
Truly we are the worst timeline…
So how come Francis ended up a copy of the original Videoman? The show never explains it, and Francis’ remarkable resemblance to the first Videoman is never remarked upon. Spidey acts like he didn’t fight a guy that looks exactly like Francis twice before.
My autistic headcanon is that in universe 8107, anytime a person would get superpowers from an electric source, they become a Videoman. It’s just a rule of the universe. And that would include Electro. Francis could switch between man and Videoman, so maybe Electro was the same way, only he figured out how to use his Videoman powers in his human form.
If they ever make a Spider-man 81 comic, and if they ever make a Videoman story, they could bring back Electro as a yellow and green Videoman to fight Francis with the original Videoman acting as a wildcard in their struggle. Francis and Electro end up trying to win over the first Videoman, and eventually he goes with Francis because all Electro does is threaten him while Francis offers to play video games with him. They become Videoman 1 and Videoman 2, the 1p and 2p tagteam.
I think it would make a better story than having a vampire murder the Amazing Friends.
I’d like to use Francis for a fight one of these days. He was a fun character. So keep a look out for Videoman (hero) on the fdbpb page. He’ll be on it one day.
Videoman’s Powers and Abilities
Electro did disturbingly good word creating Videoman. If he wasn’t such a goofball, he could easily graduate to Avengers/Defenders level threat.
Videoman is composed of electrical energy, and unlike Tempestra, this gives him intangibility. Most attacks pass right through him as if he was a ghost, a ghost in the arcade machine, if you would. Ice balls, fire balls, web shots, they all pass right through him like facts through a Biden voter’s brain. He crackles with electrical energy. No one ever touched him on the show (probably because it doesn’t take a genius like Pete to figure out that touching the glowing electrical guy is a bad idea) but its reasonable to assume results would be shocking. With one slap (I hesitate to use the word punch in this case) of his pixelated pincer claw, he blew up a vault door. That’s a lot of watts!
Videoman shoots pixels as his main form of attack. Ah, the ubiquitous pixel! What could it be? A tennis ball? A power-up? A protagonist? A magic key to the world’s first Easter egg?
In this case, the pixel is pain and death.
When he first shot pixels, he targeted Flash Thompson for some payback, and Flash was sent out of the arcade, across the street, and through a wooden fence. No wonder he would become Venom one day, the dude was tough. Subsequent blasts were even more powerful and knocked down walls.
The pixel blasts usually come out as rapid-fire beams. Think of them as the biplane machine guns from Combat. On occasion, Videoman can also shoot pixels in wide arcs. Think of them as the formation biplanes from Combat.
Videoman can also project electrical energy and shoot laser eyes, as if the pixels weren’t enough.
If any of his attacks hit a person, Videoman can digitize and teleport a person into Videoman…the game, not the being. Think of it like Darkseid’s Omega Effect by way of Tron. Firestar was trapped once and Iceman twice (Spidey was never trapped, because he’s the star), and while they were able to use their powers inside the game, they weren’t able to escape until Spidey used his computer smarts to free them. In Videoman…the episode, not the game or the being…Videoman teleported people into a copy of Videoman on Electro’s computer base. In Origin of the Iceman, Videoman teleported people into a Videoman arcade cabinet in the dumps. Given that Electro created several Videoman games and placed them around the city, Videoman could probably imprison people within them, or maybe even other games.
Videoman is very advanced for an 80’s game. Electro could have made a fortune if he had stuck to making video games. It’s got a Pong level (called in the episode Pongo), which beat the shit out of Flash Thompson to the point he developed a phobia of Pong games, but not, interestingly, video games in general. The blessings of the narrow minded, I suppose. It’s got an Asteroids level where the asteroids and ships are trying to kill you, a Rad Racer level, and a generic maze level–though whether the maze has a dinosaur in it, I can’t say.
But the danger doesn’t come from the challenges within the game. Rather, the danger comes from being trapped. Winning does not mean freedom. We’re operating under mandingo rules, not gladiator rules. And as Electro pointed out, if the machine is destroyed or the power cuts off, that’s it, game over forever. The electronic information constituting the victim is dispersed. They’re deleted, destroyed, in a word, dead.
Videoman can be very cheap with his 8-bit Omega Effect. He once got Firestar with it by hitting the wall behind her with electricity–which then arced to her. That was enough to activate the power.
Videoman can also travel quickly by turning into a bolt of electricity. In this state, he can travel through the power grid. He can go anywhere so long as its wired. He can travel through lamps, fridges, mechanical printers, etc. He can also take things with him when he travels through the wires, presumably by turning them into electricity just like himself. He did this to cart around the materials Electro needed to construct his super-transformer.
Videoman has very broad energy-absorbing powers to the point that he can even steal the energy–and powers–of mutants. After zapping Iceman, he got an ice beam, and after zapping Firestar, he got a fire beam. How very Mega Man!
Spidey explained Videoman being able to steal mutant powers as being due to mutants having increased bioelectric impulses in their brains. These impulses provide the link between conscious thoughts and will and the manifested power. It’s why the ice and fire only come out when Bobby and Angelica will it to. I’m honestly not sure if this is how it works for 616 mutants, but apparently its how it works for 8107 mutants.
See? My weirdo superpowers terminology comes in handy in cases like this! Who else would describe how a living video game character can steal the powers of a mutant using such big, fancy words?
So basically, if a superpower is even slightly connected to electricity, Videoman can steal it, and if we scaled Firestar and Iceman to their 616 counterparts, Videoman would be very powerful as Firestar is able to produce the energy of a star and Iceman is an omega level mutant up there with Magneto and Storm, but that wouldn’t be fair. Fox echoes are not necessary as powerful as their counterparts. You shouldn’t scale, for instance, the 1610 Ultimates Hulk to the 616 Hulk.
But Videoman is also capable of absorbing normal electricity, not just the weird electricity inside mutant brains. In The Origin of the Iceman, Videoman sucks the electricity out of powerlines, mechanical printers, and even tried to suck down the electricity of an entire power station next to Empire State University. Each time he absorbs energy, he grows. By the end of the episode, he was big enough to star in a Smacky Jackson comic.
Videoman doesn’t have much in the way of glaring weaknesses. You might think that, essentially being a servitor robot created by Electro out of electricity, that he would be kind of dumb, but he’s not. He was capable of operating independently in The Origin of the Iceman and thinking creatively. When he fought Iceman and Firestar, he knew enough to know to use his ice powers against her fire powers and later he summoned fake Pac-man and fake Space Invaders bonus UFO so he could 3v3 Spidey and his amazing friends.
If he has a weakness, it comes from fighting fire with fire. He was defeated in Videoman when Spidey tricked him and a super-charged Electro into blasting each other and was defeated again in The Origin of the Iceman when Spidey and Firestar kited his minions into him, which resulted in a three-way brawl that ended in mutual destruction.
He can also be momentarily forced into arcade cabinets–but only for the briefest of moments. In Videoman, Spidey did a cool move where, after realizing his webs went right through Videoman, he shot a web line through him, grabbed an arcade cabinet on the other side, and pulled it into him.
Smooth move, and it did knock him into the arcade machine…but Videoman just jumped out after a second, so no, you can’t trap Videoman by hitting him with an arcade machine.
So, Who Wins?
Videoman racks up the high score.
Start with them outside of their games fighting. Videoman can hurt Tempestra with his pixel shots, as they’re kinetic in nature, not electric, but Tempestra can’t hurt Videoman with her attacks. Wind blows right through him the same was hail, rain, earthquake debris, etc, and her lightning zaps will only empower him. If they’re both inside a game, they could probably hurt each other as in that case their attacks and beings are of the same substance, electrical energy, but Tempestra hates being trapped inside a game. She’ll escape the moment she can. She’s not going to enter a video game on her own and if Videoman zaps her into one, she’ll just pop out
While Videoman would have the initial advantage, eventually Tempestra is going to get the idea to drain him dry. While they can both drain electricity, I’m going to say that Tempestra has the better draining ability. She was going to power herself through a nuclear explosion, and while the power station near Empire State University could have had a comparable wattage to the nuclear power plant Tempestra was eating and could have derived power from a nuclear power plant as well, we can’t say that for certain. We also can’t say he can consume the power of a star because he stole Firestar’s power because his Firestar isn’t the Firestar from the 616 universe. So if Videoman and Tempestra start draining each other, eventually Tempestra is going to get the better of the exchange.
But, Tempestra can’t drain energy in an instant. It took her time to absorb energy from the nuclear power plant. Once she starts devouring him and shrinking him down to nothing, Videoman can just turn into a bolt of electricity and escape through the power grid and come back after recharging elsewhere. Anything on the power grid will do. Videoman will start playing keep-away with Tempestra, attacking her from out of lamps, televisions, fans, anything wired to the power grid. That’s going to piss her off. And she can’t follow him as she’s never demonstrated the ability to travel as electricity. The most she’s ever done is escape her game and be forced back into it. She doesn’t zip around like Videoman.
Eventually, she’s going to get frustrated enough to lose her cool. She’ll start blowing things up to prevent him from popping up and annoying her. She could blow up the entire arcade, even the entire city, but Videoman can just zap himself away through any wiring, recharge, and come back fresh in an instant. And in that instant, Tempestra is going to weakened. She’ll defeat herself, just as she did in the cartoon, because she’ll have nuked anything that could have powered her. And a fresh Videoman against a weakened Tempestra is no contest. He zaps her right back into Tempestra’s Revenge.
And if this becomes an army fight of video game minions vs video game minions, Videoman has the edge once again. He isn’t drained when he creates minions. He didn’t lose bulk at all doing so, and what’s more, his minions are each about as powerful as he is.
The fight would probably go like this:
It starts with a Flash Thompson cameo at the local arcade. After cringing next to the Videoman machine and remarking how he’s glad Spidey finally destroyed Videoman, he starts playing Tempestra’s Revenge and remarks that today is the day he finally beats it.
He does so, and Tempestra pops out ready to challenge Flash to some irl gaming but he runs away screaming. “NO! NOT AGAIN! AHHHH!”
Tempestra is confused, but doesn’t have time to chase after Flash as Videoman shows up. Tempestra asks Videoman if they want to team up and wreck pixelated carnage on the city, but Videoman answers by zapping her and the fight is on.
Tempestra zaps Videoman, but sees that all its doing is making him bigger so she stops. She tries an ice storm, but neither the wind nor the hail has any effect. Videoman blasts her with a pixel, and she’s annoyed. She uses her weirdly specific arcade machine telekinesis to smash the Videoman machine into Videoman. This causes him to be sucked back into the came, but he jumps back out. Tempestra then smashes him between several arcade machines, and we cut to Videoman being pinballed between several video game cameos until he breaks loose.
“Go. Back. To. Your game!”
Videoman leaps into the arcade’s wiring and moves behind Tempestra. We need to set up that Videoman can move through the power grid as that’s going to come up later. He blasts Tempestra, but instead of hurting her, he moves her back into Tempestra’s Revenge. We need to set up that he can blast people into video games because that’s also going to come up later.
And because we need them to fight inside a video game. You have to have them fight inside a video game.
Cut to outside the arcade cabinet. The POV is as if you’re playing it. You can see the buttons and everything. Tempestra and Videoman move up and down at opposite ends of the screen shooting at each other in a pong reference.
“You DARE try and imprison Tempestra?!”
Tempestra tackles Videoman off-screen and they move to another cabinet, and another cabinet, and another cabinet. Cameos galore. Imagine them wrecking the first level of Donkey Kong, then its a bar fight in Tapper, then they fly over a city form Rampage.
Tempestra then explodes out of the last arcade machine.
“Free again! You are a fool, Videoman! If I can’t harm you, I’ll create something that can!”
Tempestra summons up some Foot soldiers armed with blasters (represented through their arcade sprites, naturally) and laughs as Videoman starts to take damage.
Could energy blasters hurt Videoman? It’s one of those “eh, maybe” deals, but for the sake of a good fight animation let it happen.
Videoman summons minions of his own, which, of course, are taken from classic arcade games. It’s an army fight–Foot soldier sprites ripped from the many, many TMNT games vs arcade classics–Pac-man, the Space Invader aliens, Q-bert, it’s like Pixels but it doesn’t suck.
Tempestra blasts away one minion, but when she tries to blast away another, she finds her lightning fizzling out. She looks at Videoman.
“I need energy…and I think you will do nicely!”
Tempestra and Videoman get into an absorb-off with Videoman shrinking and then growing a little to represent him fighting back before shrinking some more. When he gets down to Gary Coleman level, he blasts Tempestra with an ice storm and escapes through the power grid.
Tempestra wipes ice off her face, turns and sees her minions are being finished off by Videoman’s minions, and cuts loose. She creates a mega-storm that destroys his minions, her minions, and the entire arcade.
“You will hide from Tempestra no more, Videoman! No more!”
We zoom out to see that her storm has grown to take out a couple of city blocks.
The dust clears, and Tempestra slumps over exhausted.
“Let’s see you…pop back up…from that!”
But Videoman does so, coming out of a busted wire, and zaps Tempestra from behind, teleporting her away.
Cut to Electro’s base. He’s got Tempestra on a big screen trapped in a level of Videoman based on Tempest (naturally) where she’s in the center and getting blasted by the ship on the ridge. Videoman jumps out of the screen and stands next to Electro. “Good work, Videoman! Once we drain Tempestra of her power, we’ll use it take over the city, and then the entire world!”
But then, an explosion! Electro’s hideout has been breached! And there stands the Amazing Friends and TMNT, ready to do battle!
“Ready to do this, Spider-dude?”
“Certainly. After you, my Renaissance themed terrapin chums.”
And we close out on the TMNT leitmotif. You know the one. The “heroes in a halfshell, turtle power” notes.
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