The Cheetahmen were intended to be the flagship characters for Active Enterprises, a small manufacturer of unlicensed Nintendo Entertainment System cartridges. Obviously based on the then-popular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Cheetahmen were three humanoid cheetahs, each wielding a different weapon and/or skill. Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... Active Enterprises was a Bahamas-based the company behind the Action 52 cartridge on the NES and Sega Genesis as well as the unreleased Cheetahmen 2 for the NES. They also had planned to create their own handheld console, the Action Gamemaster, but due to the companys failure, this... The Nintendo Entertainment System (North America, Europe, and Australia) The Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES, is an 8-bit video game console released by Nintendo in North America, Europe and Australia. ... The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles; (clockwise from left) Raphael, Leonardo, Michaelangelo and Donatello. ...

The backstory of the Cheetahmen was given in a 12-page comic book included with Action 52, Active's only released NES game. Mad scientist Dr. Morbis kills a mother cheetah while on safari in Africa, then takes her three cubs for his genetic research. Subjected to his experiments, the cubs grow into half-cheetah, half-human creatures. Once they learn of Morbis's evil plans, they turn on him, and he in turn creates an army of half-animal humans (known as "Sub-Species") to stop the Cheetahmen once and for all. Action 52 is a video game multicart released for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and the Sega Genesis (also known as the Sega Mega Drive) in 1991. ... Africa is the worlds second-largest continent and second most populous. ...

The three Cheetahmen were as follows: Image File history File links File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ...

• Hercules, named for the Hercules the Greek god, son of Zeus and a mortal woman. He is by nature a pacifist, but will fight with deadly force when the situation demands it. He doesn't use a weapon.
• Aries, named for the astrological sign Aries that is believed to dictate impulsive behavior (which was probably a misprint. As the group's combat expert, he was probably intended to be named after Ares, the Greek god of war). Aries learned martial arts from movies shown to him by Dr. Morbis. He wields two wooden clubs.
• Apollo, named for the Apollo the Greek god. He is the leader of the Cheetahmen, and was the first to question Dr. Morbis's intentions. He uses a crossbow.

The Cheetahmen was the "featured" game on the Action 52 multicart, and there were grandiose plans for a line of action figures and even a television cartoon based on the characters. (An advertisement for Cheetahmen action figures, displaying prototype sketches, was included in the aforementioned comic book.) These plans quickly fell through, however, when bad word-of-mouth and scathing reviews of the game began mounting up in earnest. A sequel, Cheetahmen 2, was finished but never released. Hercules and Cacus, by Baccio Bandinelli, 1525 - 1534. ... Greek mythological characters (Most of the gods and goddesses had Roman equivalents. ... Statue of Zeus The Greek sculptor Phidias created the 12-m (40-ft) tall Statue of Zeus in about 435 bc. ... Pacifist may mean: an advocate of pacifism. ... An astrological chart (or horoscope) - Y2K Chart — This particular chart is calculated for January 1, 2000 at 12:01:00 A.M. Eastern Standard Time in New York City, New York, USA. (Longitude: 074W0023 - Latitude: 40N4251), using the tropical zodiac Astrology (from Greek: αστρολογία = άστρον, astron, star + λόγος, logos, word) is... Aries (♈) is one of the constellations of the zodiac, and its name is Latin for Ram. ... Apollo (Greek: Απόλλων, Apóllōn) is a god in Greek and Roman mythology, the son of Zeus and Leto, and the twin of Artemis (goddess of the hunt). ... In video game parlance, a multicart is a cartridge that contains more than one game. ... Cheetahmen 2 was a game produced by the ill-fated Active Enterprises as a sequel to one of the many poor quality games on its multi-game cartridge Action 52. ...

Among NES afficionadoes, the two Cheetahmen games are renowned for being among the all-time worst games ever made for that system. Cheetahmen 2 in particular is buggy, incomplete, and widely regarded as virtually unplayable.

Spoofs

Here are some media files poking fun of Cheetahmen.

Birth of Evil

How exactly did Action 52 and the Cheetahmen come about? They are so unplayable, so bizarre, that one wonders if it was just one old insane guy in a barn cranking out games. This short film explores that possibility.

Download Birth of Evil

Screenshot from Birth of Evil