Caltron Take Me Away!

Action 52 isn't a bad game. It's over 4 dozen bad games. It's also clear case study of what happens when your ambition is considerably larger than your actual talent or resource pool, but that's not where I'm going with this.

Action 52 was unique among NES multicart compilations in that it actually was 52 original games, developed either in house or by some Alan Smithee studio, for the expressed purpose of being on this particular compilation title. Most multicarts, back in the day, at least the ones that made it to these Atlantic Canadian shores, were of the pirate variety, often coming with handfuls of existing games, dumped entirely without permission, and sold in stores that either didn't know what they had, or just didn't care... and then purchased by confused parents who most certainly weren't on the up and up about the licensing issues behind games, and just saw x-number of games in 1 as a great value.

I'm not saying these multicarts were "bad," per se, but they did often contain Ikki (sometimes renamed, so as to trick you into thinking you're not about to play Ikki... then bam!). Just throwing that out there.