TheTrenchcoat Chronicles

Category: Entertainment

  • Australian V-Tech student reacts to V-Tech Rampage

    Australian V-Tech student reacts to V-Tech Rampage

    Virginia victim blasts V-Tech:

    This article is about an Australian girl who was at Virginia Tech at the time of the massacre. She had the following to say about the V-Tech Rampage game.

    AUSTRALIAN Virginia Tech student Eleanor Brentnall survived the university massacre in which 33 people were killed and 29 injured.

    After returning home to recover with family, the rising basketball star has been made to relive that horrific day by a video game created by a Sydney “sicko”.

    “I can’t think why he would do something like this,” Ms Brentnall, 19, told The Daily Telegraph yesterday.

    “I’m embarrassed this guy is from Australia. He gives us a bad name.”

    Ms Brentnall, who has returned to her family home in Melbourne, said yesterday her Virginia Tech classmates would be devastated.

    “It’s easy for someone who hasn’t ever been put though something like that to sit at home and make a video game as some kind of sick joke,” Ms Brentnall said.

    “He should be thinking of the families that lost loved ones. Obviously he hasn’t had a great amount of life experience to be doing something like this and he probably just hasn’t thought it through.

    “‘My team-mates knew people who were killed and injured and everyone is just devastated by this.

    “An apology wouldn’t mean anything coming from him because he is asking money for it.”

    Don’t worry, Ms. Brentnall. The sane among us realize that this shouldn’t reflect badly on all Australians just because of one degenerate assclown.

    Speaking of said assclown, this article goes on to explain why he has obtained such levels of assclownery…

    Unemployed western Sydney man Ryan Lambourn, 21, developed “V-Tech Rampage” and has demanded $US2000 ($2400) to take it off the internet and another $US1000 to apologise to victims and their families.

    His website was shut down yesterday but the game is still available on the internet.

    Mr Lambourn, who lives with his father at St Clair, posted this message on another website: “LOL (laughing out loud) my site is down because they got too many angry emails and they won’t put it back up with vtech still on it.”

    Unemployed and still living at home. That speaks volumes.

  • Editorial on V-Tech Rampage

    Editorial on V-Tech Rampage

    32 slain, and it’s just an online game to him:

    Here’s a Virginia reporter’s take on the V-Tech Massacre game…

    My urge was to buy a ticket bound for the land Down Under, to kick some Aussie.

    Ryan Lambourn, a 21 -year-old Australian man, has designed an online game. Players walk a gunman through a college-campus bloodbath.

    “V-Tech Rampage” begins with a murder designed to occupy police. You stop to mail a message to NBC after evading cops. Next up, “To Norris Hall so the real fun can begin.”

    “I understand people’s objections… and don’t care,” Lambourn wrote in a posting online, using the online alias PigPEN.

    His online name fits. It’s tough to say what art is, but this slop is hateful porn.

    I played the game to see if Lambourn had anything to say about the tragedy I covered for a terrible week last month. There was no moral, just a path where progress equaled easy murder.

    “I was kinda trying to prove a point with how easy it was,” Lambourn wrote online.

    I’m kinda not buying that.

    The Aussie’s game isn’t the first to make sport of the Blacksburg slayings. A website hosting the game has drawn more than 125,000 visits.

    The same site also features other pieces of Flash animation about Virginia Tech. One is a graphic cartoon of the killings that was posted on April 18 – two days after the massacre.

    That animation, “Virginia Tech Shootout! ” was the work of Karri Esala, 20, of Finland. I asked him what he thought of Lambourn’s game.

    “I think making a game of the shootings this early is in very bad taste,” Esala said, “but that’s how it’s intended to be…. Let’s wait a couple of years and there will be a major movie studio making money on the V-Tech shootings, too.”

    Other offerings at the site include “The Suicide Bomber,” where you play the title character; “Oklahoma City Escapades,” where you play Timothy McVeigh, and “Sniper’s Revenge,” starring you as John Allen Muhammad.

    In Lambourn’s game, it’s easy to spot the reference to Liviu Librescu, the heroic Tech professor who blocked a door from the killer to shield his students while they escaped through second-story windows.

    Librescu was shot and killed. He was 76, a Holocaust survivor. Last month in Blacksburg, I read messages to him at memorials, including: “You saved my best friends…. I will never forget.”

    Lambourn memorializes him with an anti-Semitic remark.

    Curiously, I’ve yet to find a game about the 1996 Port Arthur rampage that left 35 people dead in Australia.

    Too close to home, mate?

    Word.

    I haven’t played the game yet because I wasted most of my tasteless game outrage on SCMRPG. But now, after reading this editorial, I’m definitely going to give it a try over the weekend.

  • V-Tech Rampage site shut down

    V-Tech Rampage site shut down

    US uni massacre game website taken down:

    Well, well, well. It seems that one Mr. Ryan Lambourn has had his site taken down. The site that was hosting the flash-based game V-Tech Rampage has been shut down by his web host, Liquid Web.

    Not only that, but somebody has taken it upon themselves to post Mr. Lambourn’s home address and phone number online.

    However, the game is still being hosted at Newgrounds.

  • V-Tech Rampage hits the press

    V-Tech Rampage hits the press

    Ryan Lambourn

    Outrage over Virginia Tech game:

    V-Tech Rampage has made it to the mainstream press, in Australia anyway. The game’s creator, 21-year-old Ryan Lambourn, is just another mutant.

    Lambourn said that while he felt remorse for those who had lost friends and relatives in the massacre, he also had sympathy for the gunman.

    “No one listens to you unless you’ve got something sensational to do.” he said. “And that’s why I feel sympathy for Cho Seung-hui. He had to go that far.”

    That’s a great message to send, isn’t it? If you don’t get your delusional way, go out and kill a whole bunch of people. Pathetic.

    Let’s throw in some disrespect for the victims as well…

    The game text also refers to “Emily”. Emily Jane Hilscher, 18, was Cho’s first victim. The subject of his infatuation, she was shot in a dormitory.

    “Emily stayed overnight with her boyfriend, Karl, again last night. He’ll be dropping her off at school as always …,” the game text reads.

    And sprinkle in a little bit of internet tough guy…

    Players who fail to shoot the characters get the following message at the conclusion: “Mediocrity. You let Emily get away!

    Are you always full of shit, McBeef? Try again, this time don’t be such a wuss.”

    Mix it all together, and what do you get? Just another attention whore mutant trying to cash in on a tragedy.

    Or as one blogger put it…

    “People like this need to be publicly beaten,” reads one blog comment. “This asshole is possible the worst little piece festering of pond scum in years.”

    Word.

  • SCMRPG creator condemns V-Tech game

    SCMRPG creator condemns V-Tech game

    It seems that one Danny Ledonne, creator of the ever tasteless Super Columbine Massacre RPG, is even down on V-Tech Rampage. He left the following comment at Game Politics…

    Inevitably, comparisons between SCMRPG and VTech Rampage are being made right nowÂ? For myself I wish to point out that SCMRPG was never a for-profit endeavor and thus I never posted statements like that which is on the VTR game’s homepage:

    I will take this game down from newgrounds if the donation amount reaches $1000 US, i’ll take it down from here if it reaches $2000 US, and i will apologize if it reaches $3000 US.

    This quote seems to indicate that Ryan has no intention of leaving the game up permanently or having a channel for discourse (as I have done) but instead has unfortunately chosen an artist’s statement that reads more like a hostage note

    I would like to ask bloggers to consider not whether a game about the Virginia Tech shooting SHOULD be made but how we might go about making a game that accomplishes more than VTR does with the subject matter.

    Wow, when you’re being talked down to by the original tasteless homemade game designer, you must have something wrong with you.

    And to answer your question, Danny, a game about Virginia Tech should not be made. Just like there shouldn’t have been one made about Columbine.

  • Virginia Tech-The Game

    Virginia Tech-The Game

    Yes, I’ve heard about the Virginia Tech game where you get to play as Cho Seung-Hui. I haven’t played it yet, but I have the feeling I’m not going to be as outraged about it as I was about SCMRPG.

    It’s a flash-based game hosted at the bastion of bad taste that is Newgrounds.

    I get the feeling that it’s just some guy being an ass rather than some guy being an ass claiming he’s making an artistic statement.

  • None more negative

    None more negative


    I can finally cross one off the list of bands I need to see before I die. I’ve seen Black Sabbath and Dio, and last night Type O Negative was added to the list.

    Charlotte, NC does not normally attract the best metal bands since they get no radio play, so Type O coming to the area was something of a miracle for me. And they did not disappoint.

    They opened up with “Magical Mystery Tour” by the Beatles. They also played songs from every album. The one that surprised me the most was “Anesthesia” from Life is Killing Me, as that’s one of my favorite Type O songs of all time. From the new album, they played “Profits of Doom” and “These Three Things”.

    My only small disappointment was that their set seemed kind of short to me. I would hazard a guess that they played 90 minutes at most. It could just be that I’m not used to small club shows and that there were two opening acts.

    Now if only Iced Earth would come to Charlotte.

  • Culture of death

    Culture of death

    Kids submerged in culture of death games:

    I don’t know if this is a letter to the editor or not, but this may just be one of the most misinformed opinions about video games I’ve ever heard. It’s basically a commentary about how the media is to blame for crimes like Virginia Tech and blah blah blah…

    What is appalling is what most consider to be mass murder is now being exploited as a profitable venture. The video game entitled “Super Columbine Massacre” allows the gamer to play the part of murderers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold as they randomly shot their Columbine High School classmates in the halls, classrooms, library and cafeteria. This real-life portrayal of a murderous rampage that took the lives of 11, ending with the double suicide of the killers, has been turned into a marketable source of entertainment.

    Other games put the participant in the role of Lee Harvey Oswald during his assassination of President Kennedy. Another allows a shooter to take aim on Mexicans crossing the border. And yet another provides vivid instructions as to how to assassinate the president. All are presented in explicit and bloody detail. What is next: Terrorist-in- training videos?

    What does this say about our society when “entertainment” vehicles are available to anyone that wishes to become a murderer at the click of his or her mouse? What possesses someone who seeks enjoyment from killing in cyber space? And what stops a person from acting out these fantasies in real life? Sometimes these people are not stopped and what took place at Virginia Tech is the result.

    I can’t believe I’m defending games like SCMRPG and JFK Reloaded, but these games are niche games that you can’t just go out and buy at your local video game store. And SCMRPG is not presented in explicit and bloody detail. It’s cartoony at best, even though its message is disturbing.

    Also, to make the leap from video games to “Terrorist-in- training videos” is absolutely ludicrous. Let’s not forget the age-old classic of parental responsibility, either.

    If kids under the age of 17 are playing M-Rated games, it’s more than likely that the parents are letting their kids play it. But it’s much easier just to blame video games, isn’t it?

  • Jack Thompson, Dr. Phil, and Rush Limbaugh

    Jack Thompson, Dr. Phil, and Rush Limbaugh

    What do those three names have in common besides the fact that they’re overpaid talking heads? Well, two of them have placed the blame for the Virginia Tech massacre squarely on video games while one of them dismissed the idea, and it may not be the ones that you think.

    Ok, Jack Thompson is the one that you think. That should have come as no surprise.

    What did come as a surprise was TV quack, Dr. Phil. I was never a big fan of his to begin with, but I thought he had more smarts than this…

    Well, Larry, every situation is different. The question really is can we spot them. And the problem is we are programming these people as a society. You cannot tell me – common sense tells you that if these kids are playing video games, where they’re on a mass killing spree in a video game, it’s glamorized on the big screen, it’s become part of the fiber of our society. You take that and mix it with a psychopath, a sociopath or someone suffering from mental illness and add in a dose of rage, the suggestibility is too high.

    What came as even more of a surprise was radio blowhard Rush Limbaugh coming to the defense of gamers.

    Not every video gamer goes out and murders 33 people on the college campus though. There’s more to this than that, it may desensitize people, but it doesn’t turn everybody into mass murderers?

    People have a tough time accepting a relatively simple explanation for something of this scale. But how many people are playing video games out there? How many millions of people play video games, and how many millions of people have guns?

    As they say, politics makes strange bedfellows.

  • It’s not a First Amendment issue

    It’s not a First Amendment issue

    One of our favorite attention whores, Danny Leddone, creator of Super Columbine Massacre RPG, is going to be a guest speaker tomorrow night at Loyola Marymount University’s First Amendment Week.

    Tuesday will also feature another First Amendment event that will discuss video game violence in St. Robert’s Auditorium at 4 p.m. Participants will have a chance to play the controversial game “Super Columbine Massacre RPG” from 4 to 7 p.m. and listen to the creator of the game, Danny Ledonne from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. Ledonne’s game, available on the Internet, reenacts the day of the Columbine shooting through the eyes of the shooters, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Recently, the game was pulled from the Slamdance video game festival due to its controversial content.

    Again, I have to ask why do people keep making this out to be a first amendment issue? The government never said that he couldn’t make his atrocity of a game. The Slamdance Festival is not the government. The people who protested against the game are not the government. Read the following words carefully.

    ONLY IF THE GOVERNMENT SUPPRESSES YOUR FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION IS IT A VIOLATION OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT.

    Learn it, love it, live it.

    Don’t make me say it again.