Friday, December 19, 2008

Does This Happen To You?


We liked the first one, so we put up part 2.

Saturday, December 13, 2008

A Fan in December

This is what it's like to be a Redskins fan on a Sunday in December. Produced by Gus Johnson's Whisper correspondent, Danny Rouhier.



Enjoy.

Friday, December 12, 2008

No Bamas This Week, Instead: A Video Game Countdown




This week, we are living bama free and are taking a break from our normal column.  Today, with some of our buddies, we were asked (because we are a relative authority on this), to compile a list of both the top NES (original Nintendo) and the top games on all systems.  The following is what was sent out to the group:

In a twist, I myself crashed.  I have now rebooted and believe I can come up with something for everyone.  I hope everyone enjoys this.

Nintendo Games for the original NES (note, you can play nintendo games online here: http://www.nintendo8.com/):

1) The Legend of Zelda
2) Metroid
3) Mike Tyson's Punchout (the version released after the rape charge had 'Mr Dream' at the end and was no where near as tight)
4) Dragon Warrior 
5) Super Tecmo Bowl
6) Castlevania II: Simon's Quest
7) Super Mario Brothers
8) Final Fantasy
9) Mega Man
10) Contra
11) The Adventures of Lolo
12) Kid Icarus
13) Baseball Stars (would be higher but it was frustrating because you would ALWAYS lose the saved data)
14) Star Tropics
15) Dragon Warrior IV
16) Wizards and Warriors (most underrated video game ever made) 
17) Maniac Mansion
18) Crystalis
19) Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse
20) Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
21) Rygar (this would be a top 3 game ever if there were continues or a password. You had to beat it in 1 sitting which lowers it)
22) Shadowgate
23) Super Mario Brothers 3
24) Ducktales
25) Faxanadu

Top video games on any system (PC not eligible):

1) The Legend of Zelda (NES).  I wrote an article about this for IGN.  It changed everything.  It was the Star Wars of Video Games.  Blended action RPG, smooth and layered gameplay, incredible story, perfect difficulty, graphically superior to it's contemporaries.  It was literally perfect.  Also, the cartridge was gold.

2) Final Fantasy VII (playstation): to give you an idea, this game has spawned 2 movies, 4 video game spin-offs, and millions of fans world wide.  Further, my boy ***** and I spent 199 hours and 59 minutes getting through half the game together.  400 hours.  The standard for all RPGs forevermore.  I literally just got dusty in my eyes thinking about how tight this game is.


3) Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (PS 2): They worked out the bugs so it played smooth, the soundtrack is INCREDIBLE, the things you get to do are amazing (you direct a porn movie with Jenna Jameson for example), the missions are great.  The series peaked right here.

4) Super Metroid (SNES): simply put, an amazing game
5) NHL 94 (Genesis): greatest sports game ever made
6) Mike Tyson's punchout (NES)
7) Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N 64)
8) Metal Gear Solid II (PS 2)
9) Mario Kart: think about the casual gamer.  Everyone, even ****** plays this game.
10) Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (PS)
11) Metroid (NES)
12) Halo (XBOX)
13) Tomb Raider (PS)
14) Chrono Trigger (SNES)
15) Resident Evil (PS)
16) Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (PS 2)
17) Panzer Dragoon Saga (Sega Saturn)
18) Final Fantasy III (SNES)
19) Goldeneye (N 64)
20) Super Mario 64
21) Dragon Warrior NES
22) Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (PS 3)
23) Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (XBOX)
24) Final Fantasy Tactics (PS)
25) Devil May Cry (PS 2)

 
Some notes:
*****= name removed to protect the innocent
-NHL 93 vs NHL 94: The one-timers, better control, in game-options, empirically, made 94 a better game.  You cannot argue against the heart though.  I understand where you come from on this ******.

-There are lots of fighting games not on the list.  the problem I have with them is that this is more about 'the series' than any one game.  Each one, inherently lacks depth and his repetitive.  The various Mortal Kombats, Soul Calibers (the most recent with Darth Vader is amazing), and Tekkens can never get you the involved gameplay that are so important to me and other hardcore gamers

-System Breakdown:

NES: 4, Playstation: 5, Super Nintendo: 3, XBOX: 2, Nintendo 64: 3, Playstation 2: 4, PS 3: 1, Sega Saturn: 1, Sega Genesis: 2

-I started to do a system by system breakdown but thought that might be too much.

-There are a few titles on there who's commercial success did not match the stature of the game.  The Panzer Dragoon Saga came out right before the end of the Sega Saturn.  It was an absolute achievement and only sold around 10k copies in the US.

-You should be able to see a bias towards older games.  This is intentional.  Everyone is very quick to throw the latest game atop the heap.  Games now, for the most part, are like big budget movies.  There really aren't that many that really make a lot of money because of increased production costs.  This is a bad trend in gaming.  Games are now rated on 'voice acting talent' the way they used to be rated on 'graphics and sound'.  There are some INCREDIBLE games out right now that are visually compelling and fun to play.  They mostly lose replay value because of elaborate cut scenes, dialogue etc.  Replay value is huge now because games cost $60.

-Final Note: I have beaten all the games on the above list that are beatable.

Your friend,
Gus Johnson's Whisper

Saturday, December 6, 2008

People We Think Are Bamas Part VIII

This week’s bama is Ryan Phillipe. Why? There are so many reasons why that it’s almost too overwhelming. You know how you know something is so obvious and then that obtuse chucklehead is like: ‘Gimme an example’ but you can’t think of one on the spot and you get so furious because what you’re saying is obvious and this biscuithead is being stupid? You know that feeling? That’s us with Ryan Phillipe.



1st, and most importantly, that ‘e’ at the end of his name is so dumb. Is it phillip-eh, philleep, phillip? No one knows. Guaranteed he changes it if he’s somewhere where he wants to sound cultured. You know when that bagadouche is in France he has them pronounce it all accented. Sickening. We hate that ‘e’ like Andy Reid hates facing a challenge decision.

2nd, bruh? Ummmmmm bruh? You did not just get out of the shower. Why is your hair so wet looking? The state of perpetual wetness is so bamafied. That constant moisture hair is the equivalent of Antoine Walker doing a 3 second shimmy after a making a 1st quarter 18-footer to put the Celtics down 10 to the Cavaliers in 2002.

3rd, His marriage and then mysterious relationship ending with Reese Witherspoon. We hate how overhyped Reese Witherspoon is. She is the Troy Aikmen of actresses (Note: Aikman the analyst not the concussed player who never threw for more than 24 TDs in a season. His equivalent is Don Johnson). People just accept that she is the truth. Whatever. But R.Philleep-A, and her were like this young power couple except that she got acting roles and he pretended that he was that b*tchbot from Cruel Intentions in real life. His death scene in that movie is like watching an 8AM Sunday morning pickup hoops game at the Y. It really burned the buntcakes of Gus Johnson’s Whisper that these 2 were always on tv and that their break-up was all mysterious. Without looking it up, name something else he has been in. The only thing we could think of is that doo-doo movie about secret societies at Yale and that was 37 years ago. Was Craig T Nelson in that? Probably. How much better does the T make Craig Nelson? 200%? 500%?

4th, He was on Inside the Actor’s Studio once and it seemed like he was so desperate to be there. The ballers are sort of like, sure, I’ll come by J. Lipton. You know that dude’s agent or PR person or whatever was hounding J Lip for weeks to squeeze Ryan Phillip-eh in.

-‘Hello is this James Lipton?”

JL: ‘Yes this is the J-Lizzy.’

-‘James, Tracy Masterson here from Team Phillip… PhilleepA… Phill-eep-eh… you know that dude with the wet and curly hair from that movie with the overhyped mouse chick that played Buffy on the TV show?’

JL: ‘Uh… yes… what can I do for you? I have to go prep for my show. I’ve got Kevin Spacey, Daniel Day Lewis, and Merrill Streep coming in this week…’

-‘We were hoping that you could squeeze Ryan Philipsa onto your show. He’s been making this pouty face for 20 minutes in my office and says he’s not going to eat until he gets on your show.’

JL: ‘Aaaiiight den, hit up my assistant and we’ll lock it down. One.’

5th, he has kids. Imagine if that was your dad. Imagine him trying to teach you how to throw and catch? Can you picture him doing the thing with the football where he holds it sideways, puts it right next to his shoulder, leads with his elbow and shotputs it halfway between you and him then does an awkward laugh? We can picture that and it annoys us.

6th, Who are his boys? Who does he hang out with? Do you think he has guys over to play Halo? What about to screen movies? Like when the Dark Knight comes out on blue ray, who is he calling to watch it on his huge screen? Guaranteed he won’t even watch it because he’s still salty that Heath Ledger got the part and he didn’t even get a call for Dancing with the Stars 6.

Smell you later Ryan Phillippe, you are a D1 All America Bama.

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

BCS... Really?

'Yes it's true... this man has no d*ck'.



That's Dan Beebe (not to be confused with Don, or that show Bebe's Kids which tens of people saw).  He's a bagadouche.

Here's what D Beebs and his crew from 'usually over-rated but actually tight this year' Big 12 (note: the Holy Roman Empire should have no impact on collegiate football.  Further, the use of Roman Numerals is awkward in general and is something that overly 'look how smart I am people' use to keep the rest of us down. Use numbers bruh.) did:

They couldn't decide who should play for the Big 12 title game against Missouri.  3 teams, Oklahoma, Texas, and Texas Technical University (note: It's actually just 'Tech'.  Isn't 'tech' an abbreviation for something?  Like, 'he's a tech guy', 'Tek from Real World, 'I'll deploy the Technobots).  So the rich men who are made rich by the BCS, waited for the BCS rankings to come out, and summarily decided that Oklahoma should play in the Conference Championship Game.

Forget the corruption, back-room glad-handing, and millions of dollars changing hands.  This is a gutless move.  This is the conference waiting for someone else to share their opinion, then coming out and saying: 'yes... well, we agreed all along.'  Without gut.  Here are some other gutless actions:

-Lou Diamond Phillips saying that Meg Ryan was dead in 'Courage Under Fire'.  Hard for us to criticize LDP, dude was Chavez in Young Guns, one of our favorite movies ever.  But come on bruh.

-The decision to release Final Fantasy 13 on XBOX 360.  There are XBOX people and there are PS 3 people.  They can hang out and play the other system but it is NOT cool for the signature games to just walk across to the other system.  This isn't 'red rover'.  The FF series is a Playstation series, just the same way that Halo is an XBOX thing.  Oil and water.

-The sensei from Karate Kid finding another karate guy and trying to ruin Daniel-san's life.  The kid won the All-Valley Karate Tournament.  Let it go broseph.

-Andy Reid passing a note to someone else who had to pass it to Donovan Mcnabb.  The note read: 

'Do you think you're benched?

Yes ______

No______'

-Lindsay Lohan going lesbian.  Just chicken.

-The people that make those top 100 video countdowns and always disrespect 'Smooth Criminal'.  Never gets talked about.  #1 in our opinion.


-Comedians who say 'Give it up for the ladies!'

-People not from New York who root for the Yankees.

-Networks who get all uppity about their content on youtube.  God forbid people see shows they like.  No I do not think there will be more traffic to cbs.com because it's the only place you can find NCIS.  Chooch.

-McDonald's for buying Roy Rogers and not keeping all the Roy Rogerses open.  The Frisco Bacon Cheeseburger is the greatest fast food sandwich of all time.  Unacceptable that it's gone.

Who's Got More?