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One Motivated Virtua Cop And His Rifle 1999-03-31 Erik | I am quoting entirely from an article describing Mr. Carneal's mad skillz in issue 25 of Adbusters. Wacky and misguided as I am, I'm certainly not implying causality here (though the article is)- this kid was fucked up long before House Of The Dead 2 got a hold of him. I'm just interested in how well trained he was in reflexive violent action. |
| "Kids who have played lots of video
games often demonstrate that they can kill with remarkable accuracy in real life, even if
they have never held an actual gun.
"In 1997, in Paducah, Kentucky, 14-year old Michael Carneal stole a .22 caliber
pistol and ammunition from a neighbor's locked garage, brought it to school and opened
fire as a prayer group was breaking up in the school's foyer.
"He fired eight shots. The FBI says that the average US law enforcement
officer, at a distance of seven yards, hits with fewer than one bullet in five.
Michael Carneal fired eight shots at a bunch of milling, scrambling, screaming
children. He got eight hits. Five of them were head shots... Even more
astounding was the kill ratio. Each kid was hit once. Three were killed; one
was paralyzed for life. Never, to my knowledge, in the annals of law enforcement or
military or even criminal history can we find an equivalent achievement.
"It turned out that while the kid had never fired a pistol before stealing that gun,
he'd been a video game fanatic [they seem to be talking about arcade gun games - erik]...
"The natural inclination [of, for example, a soldier in combat] is to fire a burst of
shots at each target until it drops. [The skills developed in games] teach you that
in order to win the game, you have to hurriedly go on to the next target. You can't
wait for this one to drop. When Michael Carneal was shooting, he fired one shot at
each kid.
"All the witnesses say he held the gun in two hands. He had a blank look on his
face. He never moved his feet. He never fired far to the right or the left or
up or down. He simply fired one shot at everything that popped on his screen."
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| | Welcome To The Whorehouse 1999-03-31 Erik | We were contacted in early March by the
editors of Gamespot and asked to produce what may become a monthly column. We wanted
to think that, after thriving for so long on the fringes of even amateur game commentary,
we'd be immune to the lure of big money and fame. We were wrong; we sold out faster
than Ex-Lax at a pants crapping contest. If it's any consolation, the editors at
Gamespot apparently didn't realize exactly what they were getting into. I can trace
the erosion of their initial enthusiasm to the delivery of the first draft of our column
entitled Computer Gaming World - Fag Planet?
Our editor, Greg Kasavin, was friendly, but firm, in his rejection of our
work. He told us that he had two basic problems with the piece, the first being that
it is a Gamespot policy to avoid direct attacks on other magazines, especially sister
publications owned by the same company. His second and bigger problem was the whole
fag part. He felt it was irrelevant at best and probably virulently
homophobic. We accepted his criticism without really reading it carefully, and, as
lucid as his instructions seem in retrospect, our enthusiasm for the work got the better
of us, mistakes were made, and two days later we delivered our second draft: Next
Generation Is Staffed Entirely By Queers.
Greg's reaction, like America's response to tyranny in the Balkans, was swift and
decisive. He resent us his rejection of our first column, adding only some
underlines and swear words. Then he read it to us on the phone.
Chet was confused and dispirited and bowed out of the entire project. I felt I
finally had a good grasp of what was expected and spent the next two weeks crafting,
revising, and polishing the article I finally delivered: The Holocaust: It
Never Happened. Susprisingly, even though I had spent several nights of
feverish activity removing all references to both PC Gamer and Tom Cruise from the piece,
Greg was consumed with a passionate anger that he expressed in a series of biting emails
and phone conversations. I assured him that the fourth time would be the charm and
that he didn't have to worry and that Chet was back on the team, but his disgust was
intractable. I'm not sure who actually wrote the column, but we signed our name to
it, and cashed the check, and we'd like to thank Greg for all his hard work and for that
brief period of support near the beginning.
So what does this all mean for the Old Man and our content? Well, certainly you
won't see us calling Gamespot employees whores anymore. Even if it wasn't explicitly
stated in our contract, we wouldn't do it. That's about it. Also, we can't say
anything negative about any company that advertises in a Ziff Davis publication.
Greg says he's going to send us that list soon. Other than that, and the fact that
ZD now owns both the Marvin Runyon and John Romero characters, you have our
guarantee that nothing here will change
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| Passion Of Christ, Tasteful Nudity Inspire Autistic Superhero Creator 1999-03-30 Erik | Thanks to the authors of Penny Arcade, Gabriel and Tycho Brahe. We haven't gotten along so well in the past, but this tip may do for our relationship what years of counseling could not. |
| Do you consider yourself creative? I did - I've
got the stupid beard and the clit piercing to prove it. Guess what, we're amateurs
at best and probably just idiots. There is a man called James H Vipond who spins
gold from some seriously misfiring synapses. Go read his page and start
your new life. If you're reading this sentence, that means you haven't left
to visit Mr. Vipond's site. Would it help if I told you that the very, very sexy SeanBaby is currently developing a fan
page devoted to James H Vipond's body of work? And that he's wearing either
extremely sexy or no underpants?
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| | Acclaim Gets Ugly 1999-03-29 Chet |
With Joe "I got cancer to motivate my team" Torre absent from
the Yankees spring training, Acclaim turned to bench coach Don Zimmer to do TV and Print
Ads for the upcoming release of Baseball 2000. While Torre is no beaut, Zimmer is
arguably the ugliest man in all of sports.
Zimmer on Torre's Cancer,
It's terrible, we thought Jeter breaking up with Mariah Carey would have motivated the
team, but it didn't seem to move them. Joe stepped right in and offered to get
cancer. During the post season this year I plan to contribute by choking on some
unchewed food.
Zimmer on Being a Bench Coach.
I choose where we eat at night, and during the game when Torre says things like "That
was a bad call", I respond with, "Yeah, that sure was a bad call". |
Arrrrr...g-g-g-g-g....
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| Men Masturbate To The Darndest JPEGS Of Kids 1999-03-28 Staff | Sometimes we yearn for the days when people just wanted nude pictures of old men. |
| First, sorry for the lack of updates. Erik and Chet have
been in NYC for the Live at The Apollo, Soul Train Awards. There was a slight
mix up: we thought we were going to be presenters and the Soul Train people thought erik
was an African American R&B singer called Mister Man. There may be similar
ugliness with our invites to the Hype Hair For Black Teens Presents The New Millenium
Ebony Achievement Awards cermemony next month.
Speaking of mix ups, we'd like make you aware of how some of our fellow travellers are
finding their way to this page.
First up is the always popular MetaCrawler
search for Nude Kid Contest. Note that we are sitting comfortably in the number
six spot, just barely edging out We
Jerk Off but coming in way ahead of Free Anal And Fisting Pics.
Next we have the misunderstood segment of the population interested in using Yahoo to seek
out information on sons
and sex, where we rank a pretty respectable ten, beating out both My Sons Teacher Takes Her Tits Out
In Class And Lets All The Boys Suck Them During Sex Ed and Newsweek.
Did you ever wonder what a monkey looks like naked? Well let's just say you're not
alone. The nice people that operate Alta Vista have decided that we are the world's
fourth most prominent resource for people searching
for monkey penis.
Is there anything sexier than Pokemon? If Pokemon
nude comes to mind, then, according to Yahoo, you should feel right at home here.
Many visitors have arrived at this very page while trying to combine their favorite
hobbies: pokemon husbandry and having sex with children.
Finally, we'd like to extend a cigar chomping, camouflage thong wearing welcome to those
of you reading this sentence after using your new computers to seek out Commando Sex.
Sorry to report, sir, we don't carry butt plugs. Might we interest you in a
gently worn copy of Shogo? It's too big to fit up even a burly commando's butt, but
it does stink like crap. Oh wait, erik does have a butt plug for sale.
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| Monolith - Day 150 And Waiting 1999-03-25 Chet | Tested a company, and guess what? They lied. |
| You are a small company. You have a game that you
are about to ship to retail stores. You publicly state that you are more concerned
about the single play aspect of the game then you are the multiplayer. You find out
there is a show stopper bug. A trigger in the AI has been switched to make the AI
not react. You decide to ship anyway.
You promise a patch that will fix the AI, but in the meantime (before they will
release the patch with the AI fix), why don't you buy our other game that has just been
released? Never mind that it is shipping with the same faulty network code,
the AI is built on a different system than our first game, so it is fine (hehe, yeah).
There is an outcry from the online community. "People without Internet
access will be screwed, they will be buying a game that was shipped to retailers with a
known bug." How do you handle this? Why of course you promise that if a
gamer buys the game, fills out the registration card, and it is noted they do not have
Internet access, they will be sent the patch. Good answer. That will quiet the
Internet community and fool them into buying your second release.
One problem. I had a friend send in a registration card that very prominently
said he did not have Internet access and wondered if there were any patches available...
It has been 150 days. No CD. No patch.
Who could be so evil? Activision? EA? Nope. Small time developer
Monolith. They have beaten it into our heads that we should give them a break
because they are the small guys. Well what about giving a shit then? I cannot
think of a time that another game company publicly stated they would ship a patch CD and
then did not. Hell, Activision shipped the SIN patch if you asked, even if you had
Internet access.
Blood2, the Blood2 addon, and Shogo combined are smaller than Half-Life.
Now they have a new game called Sanity coming out. Let me give you the review
now: Lousy AI, the entire game can be played in 12 hours. I dare you, think of
a monolith game that does not fit that description. Oh, I forgot, it's okay that
they are fucking you over, they are a small company...
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| New 3DO Executive Has Truly Unfortunate Name 1999-03-24 Erik | This should definitively answer those of you wondering whether we're above this sort of thing. |
| 3DO has issued a press release in
which they proudly announce the purchase of a new Vice President of Sales called Robert
Gayman. They go on to involve his riotous surname in a large number of randy,
Three's Company style sentence mix-ups such as describing him as "the console-savvy
Gayman." We'd like to offer this suggestion for 3DO's next press release: Gayman
Likes Army Men. Or possibly Gayman Not Interested In Varginha
Incident. Or simply Gayman To Wed Keanu Reeves.
Trip Hawkins describes Gayman as "a proven executive" the implication being that
he was beaten up pretty regularly as a child, though not quite as much as his brother
Richard. Industry analysts are applauding the move as a way to redirect the
actionable, sexually explicit comments of high ranking 3DO officials towards Gayman's
fluorescent orange target of a name and away from female employees breasts. Industry
analysts also noted that their job title includes the word anal, and thought that was
pretty funny and suggested one more 3DO press release: Gayman Is Game
Industry's Most Enthusiastic Analist.
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| Kingpin Demo Released, Motherfucker 1999-03-22 Erik | Finally I get to gun down blacks, Italians, and the homeless. Actually, so far I've only been able to beat them to death with a pipe. |
| Xatrix's long awaited Kingpin demo was released this
morning. We'd link to some download sites, but why bother - they're all busy.
Maybe you should just go back to work. We managed to get it and let's just say that
those of you offended by the American Heritage Talking Dictionary should probably give
this one a miss. It swears - loud and often. Other than the swearing, the big
standouts for us are the amazing character design and the incredibly annoying way I can
beat a shotgun wielding thug to death with my pipe and not get to take his gun. Xatrix:
wat up wit dat, bitch? I also want to mention that I've officially added GED to my
name so that everyone is fully aware of my status as a recipient of what is, in a legal
sense, the equivalent of a high school diploma.
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| | Westwood Sends 20 People To Hell 1999-03-21 Chet | On March 27th and 28th, at Club-I™, a cyber café
in San Francisco, Westwood will force 20 unlucky souls to play Lands of Lore III until one
of them finishes the game. It's expected to take 24 hours or more, and that half the
participants will attempt suicide by the third hour. Hoping to coax at least one
gamer through this harrowing ordeal, game cubicles will be outfitted with a full
complement of grief counselors and at least one plus-size model to make fat people feel
good about themselves. For its part, Westwood promises that the 3rd installment of
the series will be three years behind the graphics technology curve which is, according to
a press release, "Two full years ahead of our normal five year
deficit."
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| | G.O.D. Games Impressed That Email Works 1999-03-21 Chet | G.O.D. games (who isn't sick of these pinkos?) has
issued a press release excitedly talking about how their last press release was
warmly received by the whoring game press. In a related note, the Internet is alive
with talk of OldManMurray.com. Just check any of my posts in the
comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action newsgroup or this
post about Joey Cora - we're getting mentions in the sports press! I
put our site's URL after every message! In another related story, OldManMurray is
now #47 when searching for keyword "upskirt" on Alta Vista. Amazingly,
we've overtaken "Upskirt Video For Sale." An official press release is
forthcoming.
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