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).
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.
World of Warcraft Action Figures
DC Comics is branching out their action figure department, which as they announced recently will include World of Warcraft action figures. Thank god, is all I can say, as now when you’re simply forced to go on that family vacation to the middle of no-where with absolutely not contact to the internet, you can continue the adventures of Stumpy the wonder-dwarf!
It’s really not a bad idea, in all honesty, but everything depends on the quality of the action figures. So far DC hasn’t been skimping on the quality, but we’ll see how they fair when handling other company’s franchises.
The World of Warcraft collectibels will vary in size with multiple points of articulation. For the launch, four-figure assortments of 5-8-inch figures and two additional deluxe figures 10 to 12 inches in size will be available. DC Unlimited has let us know the initial set of figures will include a Blood Elf Rogue, Orc Shaman, Undead Warlock and Dwarf Warrior. The deluxe figures will include a Draenei Paladin and Illidan Stormrage.
(via Major Spoilers and ExtraLife – original press release at Newsarama)
We’ll post images of the ‘action figures’ as soon as they’re revealed later this month at New York’s American International Toy Fair.
Fallout 3 is in Good Hands
The Escapist has an excellent retrospective on our friends at Bethesda Softworks, which looks back at their entire history as well as what’s in store for their future. You should already know, but Bethesda Softworks is the company behind the Elder Scrolls series, most notably of late the award winning fourth game in the series, Oblivion.
Probably one of the most interesting things from the Escapist article is that it goes into how their game Gridiron (1986) inspired EA to get them to help produce the first Madden game, and everyone pretty much knows how huge that franchise is these days. The article also goes on to detail exactly how the situations leading up to Oblivion played out, as well as the events after its release like the micro-payments and the horse-armor fiasco. Executive Producer Todd Howard’s response to being asked about this topic is very enlightening: [Read the rest of this article]
This is How Wii Roll
I will take the beginning opportunity to explain to the un-educated exactly what a “boyfriend bomb” is. If you’ve already figured it out, then consider this an online IQ test and you’ve just scored above einstein but just below those cavemen on those Geico commercials. They’re stylin’ dudes…
Boyfriend Bomb (v) – 1.) The act of a female (that is liked by a male) suddenly (and typically very painfully) revealing that she already has a boyfriend. 2.) The total annihilation of an honorable man’s aspirations. 3.) The most devastating attack possible, after tech-rushing to tier 3 early game, in the Battle of the Sexes.
Usage: 1.) “Man I could stay up talking to you all night again any time you want, but my boyfriend likes me to be home so he can call and check up on me!” 2.) “Those four mixed drinks you bought me were delicious, they’re exactly like the ones my boyfriend always gets me…at least before we had three kids together.” (the latter is also a form of the rare, but terrifying, children-bomb)
The genuineness of the ‘boyfriend bombing’ has not yet been determined, but we’re fairly sure it is 90% conjecture and 10% pure fan-girl skeeziness. These odds do not, however, do not convince me one way or the other. The lovely lady featured in this week’s comic is the one, and only, miss Amber Night. The events proceeding the comic went as such: Dave posted his Wii number, a week or two later Amber acquired a Wii and posted her number also, Dave took stepped up to the bar first and sent our proxies picture above on over, Amber responded with her own Mii and “some guy named Bob S”, Dave messed himself, and came crying to me… [Read the rest of this article]
Supreme Commander Demo – Get it Now!
If you haven’t heard of this game yet, it is a new RTS game coming out later this month from Gas Powered Games (the people who brought us Dungeon Seige) that promises to be the revolution of the genre. It features (very) large and small scale battles with mechs, tanks, and ships (maybe planes?). The Demo was just released around 12:30 this afternoon so get it while it’s hot!
Edit: You can read Joshxorfz’s review of the demo here.
From the game’s website:
Set in the 37th century, Supreme Commander signals the next evolution in the RTS genre by being the first strategy game to deliver a truly strategic and tactical experience. You direct one of three warring human factions, the Aeon Illuminate, the Cybran Nation or the United Earth Federation, as their Supreme Commander, the ultimate power on the battlefield.
You can download the demo from FilePlanet, or from FileShack if you aren’t a subscriber or don’t feel like waiting until you’re dead to play it (thanks Abey), and if you do we welcome all comments and observations about the game!
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