Articles by Danny Rupp
Danny works professionally as an architect and serves as managing editor here at CH, which means he shares many of the duties of being an editor but without the fame and recognition. He also writes about RPGs, videogames, movies, and TV. He is married to Sucilaria, and has a personal blog at Incorrect Blitz Input. (Email Danny or follow him on Twitter).
"The City is Afraid of Me."
Thanks to TheMainEvent, who showed me this excellent news. Apparently in a trailer for 300 (which I’ll be seeing tonight around 8:15) there is a hidden image of some importance. The image appears at 1 minute 52 seconds (3:38 in reverse time) into the youtube uncut and extended trailer.
Yep, that’s right! It’s pretty much unmistakable as Rorschach from the Watchmen comic.
The image seems to be of Rorshach… a major character from WATCHMEN, Zach Snyder’s next project. Although – there seems to be some question about whether or not that image is genuine.
Well, I guarantee you it is. At Butt-Numb-A-Thon, Zach let me have a peek at his iPod, where that image was stored at the time, with a good deal more images, that I didn’t get a peek at. After BNAT – I asked Zach if I could have a copy of that image for my personal desktop, and Zach being the sweetheart he is, gave in – asking that I not post it, til a later date. Given he’s snuck the image onto YouTube, I guess he won’t mind if I give y’all a better peek.
(via Aintitcool news)
You can see the high-res, excellent quality image at aintitcool – here. What this better quality image provides is a clearer look at the classic Watchmen badge on Rorschach’s coat, which pretty much eliminates ANY doubt (if you still had any at this point). Don’t get too excited, this is just one of the test shots that the director has done in preparation for the film, but still it’s pretty bad ass, and very cool of him to sneak it in there.
We're Back!
Welcome everyone! We greatly apologise for being down from approximately 6pm yesterday until around 2:30pm today, but rest assured we’re back up and running perfectly fine now! If you notice anything isn’t working how it should be or something’s missing, please let us know here. I’ll leave the explaining of the story and exactly what happened to Dave for now, as he has a more intricate knowledge of it then myself.
FFXII : When Elementals Attack
The most delightful thing about Final Fantasy XII is that, when it rains, there are these big ball of energy elementals who wander around various areas of the game. Their primary purpose is to look at first glance like an average level friendly mob, but upon hearing one of your characters have a wet-dream about casting a spell, they will float over and fry your ass like it’s the daily special. Combine this with the game’s revolutionary Gambit system (which sets it up so that your character automatically cast spells – cure, protect, haste, etc – when they need to) and you have one joyous romp through pain-land.
For some reason the Elemental does indeed ‘habla espanol’, this is not biting racial commentary. Or is it? [Read the rest of this article]
Don't Hate the Makers, Hate the Game
Since Burning Crusade launced in January, I’ve read a lot about World of Warcraft despite not actually playing it anymore. One of the most apparent things I’ve seen is that there are even more complaints about class balance now then there were before the expansion released. It seems like Blizzard is really toying with spells, abilities, and talents as they seek that ever-elusive level of everyone complaining equally. Very surprising to me is that it has gotten to the point of players organizing in game riots and protests! Then I read over at AFKGamer a frack-ton of complaints about how Blizzard has messed up the game and Blizzard has neglected classes and is ruining any semblance of balance that there might have been.
This is a new world of videogaming, with MMO’s having frequent expansions, a slew of forums (even run by the companies) for players to ‘provide feedback’, and a crazy-ass fast paced world of technology where you can die just trying to keep up. This world is what leads to be people complaining again and again about Blizzard nerfing items, classes, and the game in general. It is not Blizzard that you should be complaining about, it is the game. If priests are too weak it is part of the game, if an item that used to be awesome is now crap it is inside the game, if your spell used to take 3 seconds to cast and do 500 damage and now it takes 10 seconds and does 30 damage, IT’S THE GAME. The entire problem with the player-base of World of Warcraft is that everyone complains to and about Blizzard and not enough people are complaining about the game. My response to all of these people is to stop playing!
If they are still playing, they will not take it seriously, they will even get angry and aggressive about it! If you even remotely hint that they should stop playing they will retort that something must have been wrong with your play experience. “Sounds like someone solo’d their way to 60.” “You didn’t play enough of the game.” NO. I simply got tired of all of the problems with the game, and especially all of the people complaining about those problems. Actually, I got more tired of the incessant complaints about things that aren’t really problems at all! Players will more readily accept that there is an issue with a class then that they simply do not now how to play it, and this leads to a lot of clutter about things that don’t really need fixing.
What needs to happen is a general re-alignment of people’s perceptions about MMORPG’s and the companies that create them. Do not complain about anything the company does, it’s their game and their decision, if you don’t like it – stop playing their game. They’ll get the idea. World of Warcraft is definitely a terrific game, one of the best, and it entertained me and my friends for hours, days, months, and years on end. The art, design, writing, originality, creativity, and allusions to all sorts of nerd-culture are fantastic; I really love the game to death. I just don’t play it anymore, and from the sounds of it most you shouldn’t either.
Inq. of the Week: McKellen vs. McKellen
Last week’s Inquisition asked what your favorite Gaming-related tv show/episode or movie was, and it looks like the majority voted for the excellent episode of Dexter’s Laboratory titled D&DD. Good choice!
This week we are asking perhaps the most important question ever asked in the history of the universe:
This is probably the greatest showdown of all time. On one side you have the greatest Wizard ever to exist, greater then both man and elf, he has lived 300 lifetimes of man and rides upon the lord of all horses, Shadowfax! On the other, you have one of the most powerful and notorious mutants in the world, who’s powers seem limitless in their control of magnetism and manipulating metals. The great equalizer is that they are both portrayed on screen by the one and only Sir Ian McKellen.
So this I pose to you, readers, who would win in a fight? Feel free to elaborate on the finer details of the combat in the comments to this post!
JLA the movie
You all know by now that I just can’t pass up relaying comic book movie news. Found at Angry Zen Master, news that Warner Bros. has decided to hire writers for a Justice League movie and I assume DC comics will have a big part in it too. This echoes rumors recently of both Brandon Routh and Christian Bale saying that they’d really enjoy doing a joint feature, but with Flash and Wonder Woman movies in the works I’m not sure that any director or producer would be able to successfuly complete a movie starring so many big characters in the stretch of 2 or 3 hours. It would certainly help that Batman, Superman, and probably by that time WW and the Flash would all be introduced and fleshed out, but I’m afraid they would fall back on mimicking the first X-Men movie a good deal.
Variety has a full article about the news and some history on JLA.
Feature film is bound to include some combination of DC’s most iconic superheroes, although the studio wouldn’t confirm which ones they might be. It’s unlikely that the studio and DC Comics, a division of Warner, would opt to feature second-tier characters.
Perhaps, with the 3-4 main characters already introduced and set up, they will skip right to the X-Men 2 phase and cut right to the awesome.
Warner also must deal with myriad producers working on the Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman franchises.
Studio dropped its efforts to make “Batman vs. Superman” in order to focus on relaunching “Batman” and “Superman” as individual properties, which it has done.
Filmmakers Chris Nolan (“Batman Begins”) and Bryan Singer (“Superman Returns”) are each on board to helm the next installments in the two respective franchises. Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” is eyeing a 2008 release and the next “Superman,” 2009.
Hopefully in any future installments involving Batman they continue to use beautiful old Baltimore, Maryland as a great representation of Gotham City!
My Ears are Bleeding (literally)
Back at the dawn of February there was some discussion of comicbook movie adaptations, and not surprisingly he-who-should-not-be-named was…well, named. The dark one, the spawn of satanic movie-making, Joel Schumacher. I will refrain from repeating his name any further, as on the third time I’ve heard he springs forth from your VCR and suffocates you with neon glowsticks. [Read the rest of this article]
Nintendo to the Rescue
Just incase you don’t troll around digg or reddit, I wanted to share this excellent story of how Nintendo really is one of the best companies in the world. The woman titled her post “Customer service gone shockingly right“, and that is exactly what happened. She had noticed that the optical drive on her Wii (which she purchased on release day back in November) was always loud and didn’t sound quite right. One day she decided to call Nintendo’s customer service line and send it in to get fixed.
She asked for my phone number. I gave it to her. She did a bit of a verbal double-take and said, “Are you here in Washington?”
“I’m in Redmond, as a matter of fact [location of Nintendo of America's campus],” I replied.
“Well then, let’s not bother with the RMA and the shipping labels and all of that. Just bring it on in to Nintendo,” she said.
Wh-what…?
That’s awesome. Correction, that is beyond awesome, it is one of the best things Nintendo could possibly do. It really makes sense, in a sickeningly obvious kind of way, that a company should easily be able to service people who live near their headquarters in person and with much less hassle. BUT when you consider the situation were you to call Sony and you happen to live, um, wherever the heck Sony is (looks like California is their Playstation headquarters…but it took a minute of digging through their sites to find that out) then I would be quite surprised if they tell you to come on in with your (very likely) malfunctioning PS3. Maybe I’m wrong, but nonetheless, everyone knows that Nintendo of America is in Washington state, most gamers could even narrow it down to Redmond without even looking it up. I’ve known that since I was 6. The larger the corporations have become the less-and-less they want to deal with customers on a personal basis, hell the customers don’t even want to deal with the corporations on a personal basis because of how crap their customer support and employees tend to be anyway.
The shining light on top of this ivory beacon of excellence really comes from the fact that the Nintendo sales woman actually said:
“It’s going to be about 30 minutes, though,” she went on. “I’m really sorry.”
I’ve waited more time then that on the phone with a company smaller then Nintendo, and gotten much less from it! I hope you all enjoy the story, and there are pictures to go along with it for the “sad, sad, cynical” people who don’t believe her. It could still be fake, obviously, but Nintendo doesn’t seem to be in the practice of lying.
Let's Talk About Lost
The eighth episode of Lost‘s third season aired last night, and a lot of people are back into the full swing of the show and enjoying every minute of it. One of the best sites to visit every Thursday morning about the show is the Washington Post’s very own Celebritology column, and they are particularly giddy about the whole thing, they also tend to have some decent insights into what’s going on or some good questions to ask about what might happen. This week’s article contains a great link to a video from the episode a week ago with some more backwards played audio to freak you out even more!
An issue I have these days is the fact that I hear a decent number of people bashing the show, but I very rarely hear any constructive criticisms. Most of them devolve to the level of pointless and inane like this Violent Acre’s post, with just a note to the creators with a ball of ‘spit’ on it. The typical argument is simply that the show has lost all direction and is no longer as good as it used to be. To me this just says that people are trying to be ahead of the curve, if the show does end up fizzling by the end of Season 3, they can look back and boost their own egos by proclaiming loudly, “I called it first!” or “I told you it sucked!” [Read the rest of this article]
Inq. of the Week: Solid Snake Casting Call
Last week’s poll has come to a close, and disappointingly about a third of you don’t watch Battlestar Galactica so you couldn’t really participate, but I say to you all: Watch the show! I was like you up until January of this year, holding out and not watching for whatever reason. Then the season 1 and 2 dvds fell in my lap and we ended up watching all two seasons in under 2 weeks! It is highly recommended.
The results were very interesting, with a 4-way tie between Roslin, Starbuck, Tigh’s Wife, and None of the Above. Most surprising to me was the lack of votes early on for Baltar and Gaeta, and hopefully the rumors of Starbuck being off the show are either false or it’s at least done well. (The Game’s note- Roslin? Really? You guys have seen the cancer episode, right?)
This week’s Inquisition is a Casting Call for the Metal Gear Solid movie, but instead of doing a bunch of characters we’re going to focus on the front-and-center Solid Snake! Hideo Kojima and others working on the movie have announced nothing about casting, directing, or scripts yet so everything is free for speculation. Even if anyone who has anything to do with Ghost Rider will be working on the movie, the casting of Solid Snake can make or break the deal from the beginning.
If you search around you can find a ton of actor names linked or hoped by fans to be in the roll, from Tom Cruise to Mel Gibson, all the way back to good old Michael Biehn (of Terminator and Aliens fame) or the voice of Solid Snake himself, David Hayter. Indeed there are a good number of images comparing the older versions of Snake with images of Gibson and Biehn (pictured below) from their movies, listed as inspirations for the character from various sources.
Today we ask you, the readers:
As it is certainly possible for there to be actors we haven’t even heard of who could fit the roll perfectly, I’m leaving this poll open to submissions. Discuss your votes and thoughts in the comments.
