Tuesday, September 16, 2025

Radd is Radicalized for DEATH BATTLE!

                            

Radd, the Totally Rad Hero of Kid Radd

Kid Radd was created by Dan Miller, it can be read on its unofficial mirror


Welcome back to the blog! After over 50 blogs, I'm FINALLY covering a fully-fledged sprite comic. Oceanfalls does have a lot of sprite elements, but this is 100% pixel art through and through. While Radd does have his own respect thread (which I recommend checking out here), it's been a decade since its creation so I'd say he's due for a modern research.

I'd also like to go on a tangent for a moment because this blog is up there as one of the most annoying to research. It's not because it was bad or anything, but rather something totally self-imposed. Kid Radd features a lot of animated elements, but the entire panels aren't simply GIFs I can copy. Thus I had to do a lot of screen recordings to capture the animations. Mind you that I had to start the recording RIGHT as I turned the page. If I didn't, the MOV would start at a freeze frame. That and poor timing in general resulted in a LOT of trashed recordings. Of course the MOV to GIF conversion was also tiresome, but not nearly as much.

Background

"Radical!"

Welcome to the world of the classic 1987 platform game, Kid Radd. The hero of this game is, of course, Radd! By mid-80's standards, he's an overall cool dude.

Within his game, he and every sentient being inside it is known as a sprite. As the protagonist, he's the game's hero sprite. All of Radd's actions are controlled by the one playing his game. While his moves aren't his own, his thoughts are independent.

Initially, he's opposed to being unable to do anything on his own. The player doesn't have to suffer taking damage and dying all the time like he does! However, as the player continues replaying the game, Radd's confidence skyrockets and he comes to respect his master. He's so good at the game, that Radd rarely ever loses lives anymore. He gets used to the routine of fighting enemies, beating his evil brother Gnarl, and saving his story-designated girlfriend Sheena. Getting a smooch from her is what motivates him the most, but seeing as Sheena barely knows him, Radd never has the chance to by the end.

Every time his system is shut off, he's sent to a vast blue void. He thought that beating the game would let him escape it; that this was all just a test and he'd move to a higher plane of existence or something. He supposes he's just stuck in this game then. Radd finds himself spending longer periods of time in the void whenever his human finishes another replay. With these extended periods of drought he finds himself bored of the game again. In the end it's always going to be the same run and gunning, Sheena won't be his girlfriend, and once it's all wrapped up he's back in the void.

Then one day something different happens.

Radd winds up back in his game, but he can't move. His player isn't there to control his directions. As if the situation couldn't get any worse, an enemy Bogey waddles up to Radd to break the news to him: the player has left the game ages ago. That alone broke Radd's entire sense of purpose. He can't fathom why he'd up and abandon him and his world like that! Did he get bored of him? Did something happen to him? Regardless, it's not all bad, as Bogey tells him that without the player there's no need to worry about breaking any rules. That means Radd can move however he pleases. Plus, Bogey's not that bad for an enemy sprite.

Their moment of respite is suddenly interrupted when a portal opens in their game. Captain QB, a character from an entirely different game enters their world on behalf of an organization known as the Moderators. The Moderators are a group dedicated to freeing sprites from their game worlds to live their own lives. As it turns out, Radd and Bogey aren't in their original game cartridge. Someone copied his game into a file and put it on the internet as a ROM.

Before Radd can make a choice, the two are whisked out of their game by Captain QB. Radd also learns too late that opening a portal into a game damages its source code. When a portal closes, the game collapses and self-destructs. Although all other sprites in Kid Radd have been evacuated, Radd is furious that his world was destroyed. He cares that his game's sprites' lives were messed with without their consent, but most of his pals are doing better off. Bogey is living a more comfortable life and Sheena works for the Mods now.

As it stands he can't return to his world, so he has to make a new living. Without a human to take the wheel, Radd's ambition dwindles and he becomes a slacker mooching off of Bogey. He does manage to get a job as a chatroom avatar at least… which shatters his image of humans after observing how immature and stupid they are. Later on Radd learns that there is a way sprites can travel to other games without destroying them. That ultimately leads to Radd being arrested by the Mods.

As Radd deals with his imprisonment, he's surprisingly set free by a hitman who was hired to kill him. After beating him, Sheena arrives just in time to help him escape from the Mods' domain. It turns out that the hitman was hired by the Moderators themselves. Just as she resigned from the organization, Sheena overheard the higher ups planning to take over the web, and apparently Radd is the one anomaly that's a threat to their goals. These machinations mainly belong to Crystal, a high ranking member who manipulated the organization to pursue her selfish goal of achieving immortality. With the Mods' original leader GI Guy missing, the group prioritizes conquest over helping sprites.

In order to learn more about what's going on, the sprites joined by Bogey and new allies track down the Seer, the being who warned Crystal of Radd's power. The Seer is the Y2K virus given sentience, who has since become an omniscient being with overflowing knowledge. The only advice the Seer can provide to defeat the Mods is to build an army. The Moderators have impressive numbers, but in the end they're predictable sprites following their code. Radd's gang doesn't need to match their size, so long as they can find enough allies with unique resistances or qualities that break the rules of cyberspace.

After the Mods interfere and take down the Seer, Radd and his friends start scouring the net to find recruits for their quest. With the aid of their scientist Dr. Amp, Radd is able to enter games without destroying them.

During his journey, Radd learns his attacks don’t actually have a limit to their power due to a programming glitch, making him the most destructive force in cyberspace. This would be cool news, but during the group's escape from the Seer's destruction Radd had killed a sprite for the first time when shooting down a Mod cruiser. Radd had tons of fun killing enemies thousands of times before, but this is the first time when one didn't respawn. Now he's burdened by knowing he's an unstoppable killing machine and that the humans made him this way.

As Radd's journey progresses, his team eventually converges with the crew of Captain QB. QB was double-crossed by Crystal and broke out of imprisonment with his pals. One of his allies is the missing original leader of the Moderators, GI Guy. GI Guy winds up betraying the group to take control of Radd's body to reach his goal of annihilating cyberspace and throw the humans' world into disarray. He brought Radd into an empty server to to test his destructive capabilities, forcing him to fire an attack he charged for hours. Although he wiped everything out inside, he miraculously survives. As the server begins to collapse, his friends thankfully arrive to his rescue.

As the story reaches its climax, the heroes have gathered a large game-exploiting army, Radd made up with previous foes like Gnarl, and whether or not it's due to their programming, Radd and Sheena do become a real couple. The final army battle takes place near a giant structure called the Chimera Point, which Crystal intends to use to fuse herself with the most powerful combination of sprites imaginable. Radd is too late to stop her, but the situation becomes far more dire once Crystal's form is unveiled. She isn't in control of her mind and body anymore, the Seer is.

The Seer strung Crystal along since the start in order to make use of her perfect fusion, and they have far more grand goals than just world domination. Cyberspace is made up of different layers created by humans. The Seer has control of all cyberspace layers, all except the one Radd and his friends hail from. Their layer seems entirely accidental—the self-aware sprites there shouldn't even exist. Once they can beat Radd and seize this layer, the Seer can work their way to gaining a body in the physical world, annihilate cyberspace and the humans' world, then destroy whatever is beyond the observable universe.

Radd has come a long way on his journey. Once meant to be an empty shell for his player to control, now a fully independent sprite who has developed his own desires. Now, his greatest ambition is to stop the Seer from destroying everything he holds dear. Utilizing his exceptional muscle memory from his time spent as the main character, he's able stretch out his four hitpoints for as long as he can. In the end, Bogey has to sacrifice himself to force Radd to refill his lifemeter. Together with the rest of the crew, they blast the Seer to kingdom come, permanently incapacitating them.

Once the remaining Mod soldiers surrender and the Seer's eyes across the net go silent, everyone tries to return to some form of normalcy. Sheena and Amp are reforming the Moderators themselves, Gnarl went on a whole journey of self-discovery, and Radd… isn't doing so well.

He takes Bogey's death the hardest out of them all, not just because he can't leech off of him for money anymore. Destroying enemies is what Radd was made for, yet he can never see himself killing one ever again. Bogey's demise makes Radd contemplate why humans made sprites so inherently violent. It's peaceful now, but knowing how sprites operate, chaos will surely return and all his crew's efforts will be for naught…

Thankfully, Radd learns that Bogey's code still exists, as killed sprites are essentially invisible ghosts. No sprite would be able to bring him back. So if no sprite can help resurrect his friend, there's only one option left… to contact his human from all those years ago.

Radd is able to locate and reach his player in an online messenger. The human assumes he's a crazy hacker at first, but he shockingly comes around to believing him (might be the alcohol's influence). He gives Radd the opportunity to ask some big questions, like why sprites are violent in nature. Obviously his player is just an average joe, so he can't answer that, but in a way human have that issue with "programming" too like bigotry.

Who knows if it will always be this way for humans and sprites alike. So why even bother trying? Well, they have to. If there's even a slightest chance they can make their society better, just take it.

And so, his human helps Radd's gang bring Bogey back to life by letting them enter his ROM. This ROM has its own versions of the Kid Radd cast, Radd included. Before Radd takes his leave, he gives this version of him a warm hug.

Before I move on…


I would like to clarify that anything featured in the 4th Wall Weeks where the characters spend a week doing gag stuff unrelated to the webcomic is strictly non-canon. I need to mention this because Radd actually receives quite a few feats and arsenal additions from these gag strips… including his strongest feat where he blatantly destroys the entire universe with cheese whiz. Fuck, I wish that was canon.

Experience and Skill


Sure, Radd can be incredibly gullible, as well as listless without his player to give him instructions. Even so, this is the guy who saved the entire internet. What makes Radd special combat-wise is his exceptional pattern-recognition skills he ironed out after being controlled by his player for so long. He's able to accomplish so much due to this repetition, and his experience in other games only added to his expertise. He has ventured into worlds across many different genres, including fighting games, jrpgs, and sidescrollers.


Equipment


Rocketboard

In his game the rocketboard is a power-up with a fuel supply of 10 seconds, after which it self-destructs. In Kid Radd 2, there’s a cheat code he can access to gain Infinite Rocketboard Mode, so now he can just use it whenever he wants.

Lucky Penny

Radd's quirkbound rpg friend Eliot gave him this coin that automatically saves him from one attack. This proved crucial in the final battle against the Seer when he was on his last hit point.


Abilities


Digital Physiology

His life is like a video game…… Now that he's informed that he can do whatever he wants without his player, he's able to act freely in any digital envrionment. Even when he works as a chatroom avatar, he can change his expressions when he clearly isn't supposed to. This doesn't just pertain to his actions, but his physics as well. Sprites' physics are entirely personalized because nothing in cyberspace has physics. The only reason he and other sprites fall is because "gravity" is part of their programming. So if the rules aren't real… anything is possible.


4th Wall Awareness

Radd communicates with the narrator and is aware that he’s in a comic. He can also yank stuff out of peoples’ speech bubbles.

Radd Beam

The staple projectile in his series. It has another variation I'll get to later.


Self-Resurrection

Radd only has a few lives to spare. Now that he's out of his game, if he loses all his lives it's permanently game over.

Damage Equalization

Radd's lifemeter displays his health points as the letters in his name. Each time he's hurt he loses a letter. The only way he can refill his lifemeter is by consuming powerups dropped by enemies. Once all four letters are gone, he loses a life. As a sprite, the way he responds to physical damage is different compared to someone not made of ones and zeroes. Regardless of how dangerous or wimpy the attack he's hit with is, the damage is ALWAYS equal to one health point.


Teleportation

When summoned by a human to be a chatroom avatar, he teleports to his job. This is pretty useful when Radd finds himself stuck in a game that’s impossible to leave.

Data Manipulation

Any focused Radd Beam above a certain threshold of power starts to channel the energy of cyberspace itself. With this power, anything destroyed by his attack will obliterate its code. Spooky, but his has more fun uses for toying with data. While he is a sprite, his body is able to be converted into different file types. For his job as a chat avatar, he becomes a JPEG of his floating head. He's also able to park himself in a save file, using it as shelter while homeless.

Immortality Negation

This is because he can destroy a sprite's code.

Self-Sustenance (Type 1)

Oxygen ain't a thing in cyberspace :V


Invincibility Frames

Bro is a retro platformer character. If he didn't have that brief moment of invincibility after taking damage, I'm sure it would be review bombed. Thankfully he retains this trait no matter which game he enters.

Technology Manipulation

Radd was able to contact his old player by patching his mind into an instant messenger feed.


Resistances


Techniques


Mega Radd

When the player holds down the attack button, Radd can shoot a Mega Radd. He can charge up this attack even while moving. If the player holds it down for 10 seconds, it can reach a max attack of 255, the highest binary number possible in an 8-bit system. It's said that a fully charged Mega Radd can destroy an opponent down to the cellular level. Later on, Radd breaks through his limits to deal over 4,000 damage and instakill a sprite. How the flip is that possible?!

According to Dr. Amp, a sprite's max power conforms to the system they're in. However, he hypothesizes that Radd's code was sloppily made and he wasn't specifically set a maximum number. Maybe it just says "keep charging until you've reached the highest variable possible". Depending on how long he charges a Mega Radd, it can reach the maximum attack power that's allowed. In a jrpg like Final Legacy II, he can reach the maximum attack power of 4,095. In a 16-bit game, he'd have a limit of 65,535. Adding digits raises the number exponentially. In the cyberspace of a 32-bit computer like the one Kid Radd is set in, his limit would be over 4 billion.

Outside of the game systems, Radd's destructive power is practically limitless.


Nut Punch

Johnny Cage.


Feats


Overall


  • After beating Kid Radd, he completely mastered it. Rarely lost lives and constantly kicked Gnarl’s butt.
  • He blasted Bogey 1,367 times in all playthroughs.
  • Radd was chased throughout the first two levels of Bunny and Chick Playland without dying, then game overed the player character when he entered the bonus room.
  • He defeated Deathbot 4999 built by Kobayashi the Discount Ninja hitman. Then he punched him in the nuts.
  • Radd destroyed two Moderator space ships chasing his group’s with a fully charged Mega Radd
  • He defeated Breaker from Fighting Heroes by spamming and abusing the fact that hits stun characters in the game. It counted as a 36 hit combo.
  • Radd beat the protag of Final Legacy II in a single hit
  • He escaped Kid Radd 2 as the game collapsed
  • Radd defeated Gnarl outside of his own game
  • He played through the entirety of Mofo with Itty Bitty and GI Guy, nontraditionally beating its Giygas-like final boss Geniac
  • Radd stopped the Seer’s viral conquest


Strength



Speed


Durability


Weaknesses

  • Gnarl hypnotized him with the phrase “you have the urge to do some accounting". Every time he hears that he becomes willing to work under Gnarl as an accountant
  • He's pretty sexist ngl
  • Radd is codependent to his player
  • His player mastering the game gave Radd a big head. That, and being the hero of his game gives him a sense of entitlement.
  • If Radd dies in a video game different from his own, his death is permanent
  • In his game the player did all the legwork combat-wise, so now that he’s free, he doesn’t have much experience using his moves on his own. Later he does think of what the player would do in fighting situations, act accordingly, and win
  • Very gullible, not smart in general. He frequently gets Kobayashi’s name wrong
  • It takes Radd several hours to reach his uber powerful internet-nuking levels


Matchup Potential


Radd vs Ralph (Kid Radd vs Wreck-it Ralph)


(thumbnail by Vibe Check)


Vibe Check


The connections are the following: They're both characters from video games who jump into other games while trying to figure out their own place in life. Both have a hard time making adjustments after finding out a major change was coming their way. Both end up stepping up and saving their world from an evil mastermind working behind the scenes that merged with the previous bigger danger. Both were unable to return back to their normal life if their game were to be broken/unplugged.

Wreck-it Ralph is one of my favorite Disney movies ever, but Ralph hasn't really had a matchup that clicked with me… that is, until I discovered Kid Radd. This could be a fight that takes advantage of how both travel across different video game worlds, leading to an awesome world-hopping fight that pokes fun at video game tropes and logic. I think the fight works best if it's in sprites, since it can really lean into the retro arcadey style of Ralph's game along with Radd's 8-bit charm. There could be a medium shift later on, like different sprite styles based on games they enter. There could even be a shift into 3D. While comedic, it definitely has room for heartfelt moments too, especially the ending. I'm confident Radd takes the cake debate-wise. VSBW does state that Ralph resists data manipulation, so he may be able to survive a greatly charged Radd Wave. However, he does have way stronger destructive output, likely better speed, and more experience just cheesing games. Still this debate likely wouldn't be constructed like the usual ones in DB considering how both are so reliant on their medium as video game characters.

AkumaTh


I don’t know exactly when I got into Kid Radd. Looking at the Middle Ground Forum, the oldest post about Kid Radd was in March 2007 and by that time it was over and I downloaded the Archive. Either way, it was something nobody has done in sprite comics. It used the medium of the internet to create a motion comic before the modern take on it. Through HTML and GIF files, it was able to create a style that I don’t think anyone could match outside of using Flash or Video Editing. A dream of mine is to see an animated adaption of this being done. Which comes to Wreck-It Ralph.

It was a fun movie and I enjoyed the sequel despite the critical reception. But overtime I began to connect the two. Both are the stars of their games. Both travel to other games. Both weren’t satisfied with the life they had and sought something else. It also played with the mechanics of the games as part of its story. Even with these similarities, there were plenty of differences. Radd was happy to fill his role. Ralph didn’t. Ralph wanted to be something different than an antagonist. Radd wanted to be the hero again. Not to mention one is two stories about being okay with yourself and saying goodbye when you don’t want to. Vs a story where a group of misfits have to defeat a world conquering threat.

And I kind of like that connection. Two characters with stories about various games interacting with each other with both wanting to be a hero. How one platform hero character would take on a boss character who really doesn’t have a Death Code into him. And while you could research this using the typical way you would in Vs Battles, this one I think would need a completely different look. Since both are so focused on their individual game physics, you would need to calculate things with that in mind. The speed of gravity changes with each one. How they interact in a different game.

Not to mention the animation potential since they both jump into different game worlds. You could have them transition to being 2D to 3D or Stylized like a different game. So much fun can be done with the two. And that’s why I like the match. The fun in researching the two, how you can have fun with the fight itself and honestly think of the usual physics issues in a whole different light. And honestly, the more people who get to read Kid Radd, even if you may think it is dated compared to what came out since, I think is always good to see a fun story told in a unique way.


NEXT TIME ON WCAB… whenever I feel like it


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Radd is Radicalized for DEATH BATTLE!

                               Radd, the Totally Rad Hero of Kid Radd Kid Radd was created by Dan Miller, it can be read on  its unofficial ...