Does This Happen To You?

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

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.

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

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.

1^st, 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.

2^nd, 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 1^st quarter 18-footer to put the Celtics down 10 to the Cavaliers in 2002.

3^rd, 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%?

4^th, 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.’

5^th, 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.

6^th, 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.

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?

The Vasgersian

It sounds like a deviant sexual maneuver doesn't it?  It's not.  Well, maybe it is.  Maybe someone out there is as weird as we are and figured out what we're about to tell you.  Note: that person needs help.  If you know them, don't turn your back on them.

If you're an NFL fan, you're probably a bit delusional about your team.  You believe they'll pull it out, or bring it in a big game, or even show the world that they are a force to be reckoned with on a Sunday or Monday night.  The reality?  Unless you are a fan of 1 of 3 teams over the past 5 years, you're delusional.  You're squad, in all likelihood, is in the perpetual mediocre cesspool of 'if we win our next 3, and they lose 2 and they lose to one of the teams we beat we can get the #6 seed'.  You need to know the truth NFL fan.  You want to know what the networks are doing to tell you where your team stands?

The networks that cover the games have a hierarchy.  For Fox, it goes like this:

-Buck/Aikman- According to Troy, Joe Buck has never been wrong.  

-Albert/Johnston/Siragusa - The Goose says: 'they didn't even get a hand on him on that play'.  (5 seconds pause because they are worried that Goose will shout something else) Albert says - 'so, the Falcons will try the extra point...'

-Stockton/Baldinger- The Baldinger pinky needs its own horror movie.

-Rosen/Ryan- 'Do you know us?  We just call the game and offer insight.  Sorry we're this low.'

-Pitts/Boselli- Pitts plays tricks on Boselli.  He says things like: 'if you were an expansion team now, what position would you draft first?'

-Brennaman/Billick- 'Trust me Baltimore, I know quarterbacks."

-Vasgersian/JC Pierce: (Fan) 'Who?  Is that the guy from Celebrity Blackjack?'

If you go an entire season without getting a Vasgersian dropped on you, your team is relevant.  But, if you tune in, and you are treated to the melody of Matt Vasgersian and JC 'The Carpenter" Pierce, your team is off the radar.  Sorry Seattle Seahawks and Washington Redskins.  The networks dropped a Vasgersian on you this weekend.  Skins fans, you think you're squad is in the hunt right?  7-4 seems like a good place to be doesn't it?  Well, the good people at Fox are renting a regulation harness, a pulley system, and some high tension wire.  Then they are dropping a hot, sweaty Vasgersian on your chest while you try to sleep.  It's a shock.  Minding your business and then you get smacked in the mouth with a little:

MV: 'Matt Vasgersian and JC Pierce with you for the second half in Seattle.  And JC, the Redskins are moving the ball but they're not scoring a ton of points.'

JC The Carpenter: 'You're absolutely right Matt.  The Redskins just aren't coming away with points.  If you're Jim Zorn, you've got to be concerned about that.'

(cut to Redskins fan standing in his living room staggering like a boxer getting a standing 8 count.  He's holding a beer in his left hand and a chip with some dip in his right hand.  The dip falls to the floor in slow motion as a sad high-voiced song plays like one of those in the movies that mean a character has sacrificed himself to save someone else and they have to let him go.  As the dip hits the carpet, deep drum beat.  The fan casts his gaze to the ground.  He looks back up at the tv with a hollow look of disbelief.  On screen, the referees gather to decide if a player was offside or if there was a false start.  JC says that a false start is 'inexcusable right there'.  The refs determine that it was an off-sides penalty.  Pierce explains why no offensive player should ever false start.  The fan closes his eyes because he now knows the truth.)

NFL football fans beware.  The Vasgersian is lurking.  It could happen at any moment.  Look at your roster, your schedule, and your results this year.  Make an honest assessment.  If you prepare yourself, the shock of a Vasgersian won't be as traumatic.  We can save lives.

People We Think Are Bamas Part VII

We're a day late and a dollar short on this week's bama post.  Our bad.  We had a thing with a thing and the guy with the thing didn't come through.

Here is this week's bama:

We cannot stand this chooch.  Ugh.  The worst thing that has happened and we mean THE WORST, is that 2 big national writers: Bill Simmons and Peter King, started singing Collinsworth's praises for some reason.  Now this deluxe, grade A bama, is somehow a revered analyst.  How?  Why?

Did you see this poor man's Chris Doehring (obscure white wide receiver reference) on the Olympic coverage?  Actual analysis by Collinsworth in studio with Bob 'The Jockey' Costas:

Collinsworth: 'I mean... being in that water cube... I mean when Michael Phelps got going... it was just incredible.  (semi-laughter and chuckling)  When he took off, it was like 'look out' (semi-chuckling).  And his mom was grabbing my arm (everyone chuckles), I mean I thought she wouldn't let go.  She was like a pit bull... she's going nuts.  Everyone there is just going crazy for this guy.  It was something special.'

Really?  This guy is your analyst?  We would rather have had anyone else sitting in that chair talking about how special it was.  Literally, pick anyone.  Oh, so you think that the greatest swimmer of all time setting world records and winning 8 Olympic gold medals was special?  When were you made the mayor of Observation Town?  

NBC planted this bama in the stands to stand near Phelps' mom.  He displaced one of the hot and also jacked sisters.  That's not cool.  You bama come lately.  They've been rooting for this dude since he was a lanky lisp from B-more who was all tawkward (tall and awkward).  Now here comes one of the 13 worst professional wide receivers of all time after he wins 7 gold medals?  Please.  Don't touch me Collinsworth, I'm afraid you'll drop me and have that dumb smile afterward to play it off like you aren't a huge reason your team hasn't sniffed the playoffs in 47 years.

As an NFL analyst, he's just a guy.  He says everything in this condescending 'uh, actually, here's the real story' tone.  Like he's doing us a favor by opening his mouth.  Don't do that half smile you chooch.  Just don't.  When he's in studio, he also kind of leans back and and turns his head in an annoying way.  It's the same thing that someone does when they want to make a point calling out your point as factually inaccurate but they don't want to hurt your feelings.  He's such a bagadouche.  He also over-uses 'I mean' which annoys us.

Quotes that we can recall:

'I mean, that division is wide open right now.  I don't know who's gonna come out of there.'

So you don't know who's going to win the NFC north when every team is around .500?  How about some reasons why one team will or won't?  No thanks, just be the good old boy and make that 'I'm in a living room talking to a football novice who doesn't know the difference between divisions and conferences'.  Ass.

'I just don't know about them right now.  You've gotta think, what are they gonna do going forward?'

So the Oakland Raiders are a mess?  What?  Did anyone hear about this?  Apparently, they have had some organizational dysfunction of late.  No clue.  You are both Woodward and Bernstein.  Ass.

'I watched the tape... I mean... Right now, he's pretty impressive.'

So you sir, are espousing, in so many words, that Adrian Peterson is a good running back?  I'm not sure how anyone has ever gotten through an NFL game without your expertise.

'It's gonna be interesting.  You've got Brett Favre... playing in this game... against Matt Cassell and the Patriots.  Anything can happen.'

Sir, your analysis has dazzled the masses yet again.  Not only have you set the matchup for us, you have delved into the infinite nature of the space-time continuum.  Your assertion that no one can truly predict the outcome of future events with any certainty, is proof positive of your taught control of the principles of conditional logic, as well as your firm grasp of the futility of man attempting to harness his own destiny.  Plus, your mastery of the interpersonal dynamics of opposing quarterbacks is spot on.  By simply naming the participants, you have more than set the stage sir.  You have brought up the house lights and focused the enraptured audience on the fact that these combatants will indeed participate in said contest.  Ass.

This dude sucks.  People need to realize that.  He is a bama because he was terrible at football and his semi-chuckle would get him punched in 47% of bars nationwide.  Shutup bruh.