By 2003, many Toonami fans have heard of a little thing called "The Toonami Mobile Game Unit" or the TMGU for short. If not, I suggest you check out this little feature from the TDA, in which a fellow Toonami fan visited the event during the summer of 2002, when the TMGU was more elusive. However a year has past and the powers that be have decided to revamp the Toonami event for the new year (2003), and I've got the lowdown on em'.

First of all, I visited the TMGU last year when it came to my area. It was pretty fun all around; I played the game; won a shirt, a poster, and a key chain (not to mention those promotional Powerpuff Girl stickers they were giving out as well), and left with a smile on my face. The one prize that escaped me however, was that a watch, which I must admit; I wanted in the worst kind of way. So when I noticed on Toonami.com's newly revamped TMGU section that the traveling truck would once again grace my petite state of Rhode Island with it's presence once again, I quickly made the necessary changes to my calendar. Soon July 8th approached and I was on my way to the event, thinking I knew what to expect.

Lets start off with the commercials. The previous year I saw one, maybe two promos for the TMGU. The promos were better this year, airing numerous times with information being posted online about where the truck would be going next. Last year there were very few promos and no online guide as to where everything was going to go down. I either would find another promo with the address and date, or I wouldn't be able to attend! This year there were TONS of commercials for the event! Everywhere from at 12am on Comedy Central, to noon on Nick. Even Adult Swim had the promos; which were strangely absent during Toonami (go figure). The roughly one minute ads featured Tom 3 explaining the TMGU and the prizes, while driving a pretty slick space car which was towing the TMGU trailer to earth. Nice promo, wish I had mad capturing skillz like Tyler to nab it for everyone's viewing pleasure, but I digress!

The promos also carried my first negative point however; They had the wrong address on them. Confusion began before I even had set off to go, the commercials said the event was in one town (in my case, North Kingstown) and Toonami.com said it was in another (Exeter); I didn't know what to think. In the end we wound up at the company who was hosting the event's main building, who pointed us down the road to one of they're other shops where the set-up was.

We eventually found our way to the event (it wasn't in either the place the promo state nor the place listed online). Set up in a parking lot of a sponsor company (a local garden company) things pretty much seemed the same as it was the year prior. Same trailer, albeit with new decals of Tom 3 and the Absolution 2, and Toonami's Gothic logo, same game seats, and there's still TVs all around to show you "Toonami's Best shows" (I'll complain about that one in a bit). However there were some new things like a HUGE blow up Tom 3 (which aside from it's initial cool-factor was slightly frightening) and a little tent in which you can sit with friends and wait or play a Bandai sponsored game they were trying to promote.

Some nice improvements involved the new game that they had. Last year's game "Core Quest" pretty much required you to use a computer mouse to move Tom around a cave avoiding obstacles. "Tunnel Rush" the new game requires you to use actual controllers (much like Play Station® controllers with more buttons) to fly around a shuttle of your choice actually shooting at objects. The set-up for the game was pretty simple and slightly uninspired, at least compared to last year's. Apparently Tom and Sara had captured the fastest ships in the galaxy (which included a G Gundam ship, a He-man ship, a Zoids ship, a Transformers ship, and a Toonami ship), and it was your job to test them on a 'test tunnel' of sorts. The only way you know the premise is from the TV screens as your standing line, in which an incredibly obnoxious announcer told you what was what. Something about it made me think I was attending an auction instead of a Toonami event.

Another thing I noticed as I was standing in line was that they were only showing clips from certain Toonami shows, almost all of which aren't even on Toonami anymore, most of which haven't been since January. I kept seeing Transformers: Armada and He-man promos as well as Yu Yu Hakusho and Ruroni Kenshin promos and bumpers. There was also a "music video" (if you can even call it that), which featured DBZ clips, Transformer Armada clips, He-man Clips, and Gundam Wing clips (which really surprised me seeing how the show hasn't been on Toonami for almost a year now).

I finally got my turn after waiting in line forever due to disorganization (there were rows for each seat, during this event people would continually cut in and go to any available seat instead of the seat in front of them). I also noticed that they weren't timing anyone, or keeping track of the scores. The game play was rather simple, if it wasn't for the controls, I'd peg the game as an online feature to Toonami's web site in the future. After playing the game and scoring enough for the watch (which was my main goal) I learned that they didn't have any other prizes other then shirts. Apparently "they hadn't gotten their shipment of prizes" which was a major disappointment on my end.

I'd driven all the way out there, so I decided to played the game a few more times. I eventually learned that they could have easily stuck with a mouse and gotten away with it, since the controls only require a button to fire and movement. I also learned that about 3 out of the five controller's buttons were already stuck down due to over usage-which made game play a little more difficult. Why they would have retrofitted the trailer with new controllers when the prior set up was just fine, I haven't the slightest. Perhaps they'd envisioned a more complicated game - or still envision one in the future.

In the end I walked away with a new Toonami T-shirt, a little Bandai dice piece for the game which to this I haven't a clue to play. I'd garnered a cumulative amount of points to have walked away with a watch, a backpack, and a shirt; but only left with one of those things. No posters this year, which was kind of a bummer seeing how last year's posters were really nice [4 years later that poster still looks brand new]. I waved good-bye to that frightening Tom balloon and drove away, not really disappointed, but not overall happy with the experience. Had it been executed as it was setup to be done, the whole event would have been great and topped last year's. However, whoever was running the event in my location this year failed to accomplish what the goal appeared to be.

The prior year they blasted Toonami music and speeches from the speakers which cumulated in a really neat Toonami vibe, this year they played the radio...so the whole Toonami feel just wasn't there and repeating the Transformers and He Man promos to death really didn't help.

Of course if you've never been to the TMGU and you're a Toonami fan I suggest you check this out if its in your area, because after all it still is a Toonami interactive event that is at best entertaining if done correctly. Overall I give this event a C+. Woulda, Coulda, and Shoulda been a great experience, but in earnest it wasn't a truly bad one. And hey...at least I got a shirt out of it.

-Discloner