Category: Entertainment

  • Trench plays the Columbine RPG

    Trench plays the Columbine RPG

    So last night, I finally decided to download Super Columbine Massacre RPG to put the designer’s words to the test. I played it about halfway through and I can honestly say that the designer is full of crap.

    In the Q&A the designer said, “You must CHOOSE to kill in SCMRPG.” Well, you have to be damn nimble on the arrow keys to avoid killing anyone. And once you do come in contact with an “enemy” your only option is to kill. There is no “run” or “escape” option that comes with most RPG’s. Not only that, but if you want to survive the “hell” level, you need to increase your level or what’s known in RPG’s as “level building” or “grinding”. How do you increase your level? Why, by killing more kids, of course. So the designer made it near impossible to go through the game without killing someone.

    The enemies all have names like “Preppy Boy”, “Cheerleader”, “Jock-Boy” (of course), and “Black Boy”. After you kill, the victim makes a gurgling noise and the screen says, “Another victory for The Trench Coat Mafia”. When you get items from your victims, it calls the shooters “brave boys”.

    Halfway through the game, you get to the point where the two cowardly scumbags, Harris and Klebold, kill themselves. After they kill themselves, you get a “touching” montage of Harris and Klebold through the years.

    This is not a game designed to make you think or open a dialogue about school shootings. It’s nothing more than a tribute to the two cowardly scumbags, and probably a revenge fantasy of the designer.

  • You’ve created a monster

    You’ve created a monster

    Q&A: Creator of Super Columbine Massacre RPG:

    The same writer who interviewed Columbine survivor Richard Castaldo about the Columbine RPG video game has now interviewed its creator.

    Q. What inspired you to create a game about Columbine?

    A. Firstly the shooting itself. This may seem like a tautology to even mention but it’s resoundingly true. Columbine marked me deeply. I was in a Colorado high school then. I was a bullied kid. I didn’t fit in and I was surrounded by a culture of elitism as espoused by our school’s athletes. I saw so many similarities between the situation there in Littleton and my own. It was very much like being terrified by one’s visage in the mirror. At the same time, it was empowering to see two oppressed, marginalized kids rise up–but we’ll get into qualifying this later because I think there is a dangerous oversimplification to be made by saying this.

    Emphasis mine. Empowering to see 13 unarmed people get killed by a pair of psychopaths? 13 people who had nothing to do with their killers. And who were they oppressed and marginalized by? The ever anonymous “jocks”? Empowered. You have some nerve to be empowered by the deaths of those at Columbine.

    Also there’s something innately comedic about making a violent school shooting into a game with tiny, cartoonish sprites and text-based menus that make firing a TEC-9 feel like casting a magic spell. Part of the point of SCMRPG is that it parodies video games–much like the Broadway version of “Backdraft” from the film “Waiting for Guffman” parodies films adapted for the stage.

    There’s nothing comedic at all about the situation. I can have a pretty sick sense of humor myself at times, but the comedic value of making a game about one of the darkest moments in American history escapes me.

    Q. Would you call this a serious or educational game?

    A. I’m not sure the two are mutually exclusive. I feel like parts of the game are very emotionally powerful–something I wanted to push in a medium best known for innocuous icons like Mario, Sonic, and Pac-Man. The game deals with difficult coming-of-age situations like rejection, isolation, ridicule, and depression. Behind all the pixels is the fact that people really died–including angry two boys who were at times very thoughtful, sensitive, and intelligent young men.

    Yeah, so thoughtful and sensitive, they had no problem with slaughtering so many that had no personal connection to them whatsoever. And they could have had the IQ of Einstein for all I care, it doesn’t change the fact that they were mass murderers.

    This next one is my “favorite”…

    Q. Do you think there are certain topics that should be taboo for video games?
    A. Absolutely not. Foremost, the concept of “taboo” is a laughable one in a society that pretends to care about free speech. I stumbled across KKK versions of Super Mario Brothers, a game about escaping the World Trade Center as the towers collapsed, and a shooting game that takes place at the Branch Davidian. I knew then that I was in good company in making this game.

    I wouldn’t call it good company, but it’s the same company.

    And to top it all off…

    Q. Are you concerned about the impact a game like this might have on the people directly effected by the events at Columbine?

    A. This is actually a more difficult issue for me that my detractors might otherwise imagine. Yes, that is a concern of mine. I realize it’s very difficult for someone affected directly by the shooting to understand or appreciate my point of view in creating a videogame from what is no doubt the most painful experience in their lives. Nonetheless, film directors are embraced for “getting it right” on the Holocaust and I think anyone, including CHS families, who really look at this game will understand that I don’t advocate or endorse the violence but rather am calling for a deeper understanding of the shooting itself. Anyone who rejects outright the search for an alternative perspective is either a fascist or is hopelessly entranced by the emperor’s new clothes.

    The difference is in a movie you’re only a silent witness, not an active participant. Would you design a game where you play as a Nazi and get to put the Jews to death? You probably would, but most people with an ounce of sense wouldn’t.

    You know damn well that the people playing your game, for the most part, are the mutants who worship those two scumbags and get a thrill out of getting the chance to play as their heroes. And I highly doubt your sincerity that you’re agonizing over the feelings of the victims and their families. As you said previously in the interview, “you sleep quite well at night.”

    Here’s what the victims’ families had to say

    “It’s wrong,” said Joe Kechter, whose son, Matt, was murdered in the Columbine library.

    “We live in a culture of death,” said Brian Rohrbough, whose son, Dan, was gunned down on a sidewalk outside the school, “so it doesn’t surprise me that this stuff has become so commonplace. It disgusts me. You trivialize the actions of two murderers and the lives of the innocent.”

    And Judy Brown, who has been immersed in the Columbine controversy along with her husband, Randy, called it a “sad and sick thing to make a video game out of a tragedy where 13 innocent people were murdered.”

    So I guess you can call me, the victims, and their families, fascists for not giving a rat’s ass about the perspective of two mass-murdering scumbags.

    You’re not trying to open a discussion about the shooting like you claim. This is nothing more than your concept of hero-worship. It’s nothing more than a tribute to them, and you act like you’re doing society some great service. The only way you could do society a service is if you left it.

    I hope you get to meet your heroes.

  • Richard Castaldo talks about Columbine RPG

    Richard Castaldo talks about Columbine RPG

    Columbine SurvivorTalks About Columbine RPG:

    For those of you who don’t know what an RPG is, it stands for Role Playing Game. It’s a type of video game that deals mostly in fantasy scenarios. Popular RPG franchises would be Final Fantasy or Suikoden. Think of it as Dungeons and Dragons but as a video game. And yes, someone made one based on Columbine. I’ve seen it, but I haven’t played it. I’m not about to download that to my computer.

    Anyway, Richard Castaldo, who I first mentioned here did an interview with Kotaku, a gaming site, about the Columbine RPG. I won’t reprint the whole thing, but I found this segment of the article most interesting…

    Do you think it glamorizes what happened at Columbine?

    There is a part where after the character’s representing the killers in the game die, and then the game shows an extended real-life montage of what happened that day. And it shows their blood-soaked corpses, and isn’t pretty. Which to me deglamorizes what they did. I’ve heard of some stories where some students try to make folk heroes out of these killers, which is very disgusting to me. I think people who have that mindset and then play this game and see that part it would make it real for them. As opposed to having this sort-of romanticized version that some people have.

    But, at the same time there are some dialog in the game that comes up after you kill the students that refers to you as being “brave boys”, which i would hope was supposed to be ironic, because clearly what they did was not brave or heroic in anyway, it was quite the opposite. It has you killing students with absolutely no protection whatsoever. Which is what actually happened. So if the killers (or anyone else for that matter) thought that what they were doing was heroic in any way they were deeply fooling themselves. People ask me all the time, “Did you know them?” And my answer is of course no, i didn’t. And, I didn’t do a damn thing to either one of them. So, I think the game kinda highlights that. That there was no real rhyme or reason why specific people got killed.

    And that’s from someone who was there that unfortunately did not come out unscathed.

    So, think about that the next time you think that the killers weren’t cowards.

  • Home Room

    Home Room

    A while back, a reader recommended I see the movie Home Room.

    I just finally got around to watching it. It’s about the aftermath of a fictional school shooting. Without going into too much of the story, I thought it was a great movie.

    On the surface, it looks like a movie made for teens, but this is something that parents with school-age kids should definitely watch just for the last 20 minutes of the movie alone.

    It was a little too Breakfast Club for me overall, but it was much better than the bore fest that was Elephant.

  • Mr. Thompson Goes to Delaware

    Mr. Thompson Goes to Delaware

    Bill would limit sale of video games:

    Our favorite idiot lawyer from Florida is on the move again. This time he’s in Delaware trying to help State Rep. Helene Keeley, D-Wilmington South, get a law passed that would restrict businesses from selling M-rated games to minors. Never mind the fact that most legitimate stores won’t sell M-Rated games to anyone under 18 and that the majority of kids who get these games are getting through their parents. Jack never lets facts get in his way. Like this little nugget of misinformation from Jack…

    Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the Colorado teens who massacred 13 of their fellow Columbine High School students in 1999, “literally trained on the game ‘Doom,’ ” Thompson said.

    Sure, they did Jack. Just forget all those tapes they made, showing them at a homemade target practice. I myself, and millions of other people, have played Doom and never picked up a gun in anger but again let’s not let facts get in the way.

    Jack also had this to say about the free speech ramifications…

    Thompson, meanwhile, said the First Amendment debate is misplaced.

    “This isn’t even speech,” Thompson said, holding up a video-game display box. “This is software that enables a machine to allow a player to play a game.”

    Does he really believe the lies that he’s spewing forth?

    When will politicians, especially Democrats, stop getting in bed with this assclown? It’s making them look worse than they already are.

  • I saw the weirdest cartoon the other day

    I saw the weirdest cartoon the other day

    Daffy Duck was a Green Lantern…

    No, really.

  • The 2005 Trenchie Awards

    The 2005 Trenchie Awards

    I wasn’t going to do one this year since the site has become more focused in its subject matter, but by popular demand I bring to you the 5th annual Trenchie awards.

    Best Movie I saw in 2005: Without a doubt, it has to be Sin City, which will probably cause at least one person to stop reading my site. It was the only movie that actually got me out of the house to go see a movie in the theaters.

    Worst Movie I saw in 2005: Strawberry Estates. This was an independent horror film that was absolutely painful to watch. It looks like it was filmed by 13-year-olds with their parents’ video camera. It introduced me to the evil That is Ron Bonk. Jade’s honorable mention was the remake of the Amityville Horror. She said no matter how many times Ryan Reynolds takes off his shirt, she still couldn’t watch that movie all the way through.

    Best Album of 2005: Advance and Vanquish by 3 Inches of Blood. This actually came out in late 2004, but 2005 was not a good year in albums for me and I bought it in 2005, and it’s the album I listened to most in 2005. If you like old school metal like Manowar, you’ll like 3 Inches of Blood.

    Worst Album of 2005: Angel of Retribution by Judas Priest. Maybe there was too much hype leading up to the release of the album where Rob Halford was reunited with Judas Priest, but it was definitely a disappointment. Only two good songs from what should have been the Album of the Year was disappointing.

    Best TV Show of 2005: House. Duh. Honorable mention goes to Bones and How I Met Your Mother.

    Worst TV Show of 2005: Law and Order. The entire franchise. I never liked CI. Regular L&O has gone seriously downhill since Jerry Orbach died. And SVU has been having these inane shows that start off with SVU type crimes and go off into these weird liberal preachy tangents that have nothing to do with SVU crimes.

    Best Wrestling Moment of 2005: The Night Matt Hardy returned unexpectedly to the WWE to attack Edge. Too bad they screwed up the development of the angle from there on out.

    Worst Wrestling Moment of 2005: The death of Eddie Guererro. Vaya Con Dios.

    Best Video game of 2005: Suikoden Tactics. A strategy game from the makers of the RPG series. It kept me addicted for weeks.

    Worst Video game of 2005: Suikoden IV. I’m a huge fan of the series but unless you’re using a cheat disc like Codebreaker, this game was painful to play.

    Dumbass of 2005: All the people who rushed to the gas pumps in the wake of Hurricane Katrina due to fears of a gas crisis. Thanks to you, we actually had a gas crisis for a while.

    Most Inane Political Agenda of 2005: All the “Free Tookie” idiots.

    Biggest Jackass Celebrity of 2005: Like there was any doubt on this one. Between the couch jumping and the personal attack on psychiatry and Brooke Shields, it has to go to Tom Cruise.

    That’s it for 2005 kids. Who knows if there will be a 6th annual awards entry.

  • The king is dead, long live the king

    The king is dead, long live the king

    Tenn. Killer Played GTA:

    I knew this was going to happen. I think we all did. Our favorite Miami ambulance chaser Jack Thompson has reared his ugly asshatted head and has come out and said that he will “swear under oath” that Ken Bartley played GTA. Bartley is 15. It’s almost like shooting fish in a barrel to say the kid played GTA…

    The revelation is considered significant by Thompson because initial accounts of the shooting show that the teen did not go to school with the intent to kill, and it appears that an event triggered the teenager into committing homicide, which was programmed into the brain via rehearsal in Grand Theft Auto. Here’s what the press release stated:

    …as it appears, based upon initial accounts of the shooting, that the 15-year-old boy did not go to school with the intent to kill. As has happened in other instances, as in the triple homicide in Fayette, Alabama, by an 18-year-old obsessive player of the cop-killing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, a highly-charged emotional event can serve as a trigger for such a shooting. These killing games allow an individual, unwittingly, to rehearse for homicide. When pushed by fear, the game’s rehearsal function becomes the young brain’s “default setting.”

    Jack Thompson has ascended to ranks of assclownery of the likes that have only previously been obtained by Michael Moore. And Mr. Thompson reaches it in the same way, by being a morbid opportunist using as many tragedies as possible to further his viewpoint.

    Back to the point at hand. I’m sure it was GTA that made Ken Bartley kill. I’m sure it had nothing to do with a substance abuse problem.

    Congratulations, Jack, you have usurped Michael Moore’s throne and are now King of All Assclowns. Hail to the king.

  • Devin Moore Sentenced to Death

    Devin Moore Sentenced to Death

    Man Gets Death for Killing Three in Ala.:

    Devin Moore, the 18-year-old who was convicted of killing two police officers and a dispatcher, was sentenced to death.

    If you remember, Moore’s attorneys tried blaming his actions on Grand Theft Auto. But the defense attorneys are already looking to appeal on the grounds that the video game “evidence” was excluded, and the fact that the jury was all white while Moore is black. 🙄

    An all-plaid jury would have convicted him. He killed three cops. He deserves to die.

    Take that, Jack Thompson.

  • Death Recommended for Devin Moore

    Death Recommended for Devin Moore

    Jury recommends death for Alabama man convicted in cop killings:

    The death sentence has been recommended by an Alabama jury for Devin Moore, the so-called “GTA Killer” who killed two officers and a radio dispatcher at the Fayette police station in June 2003. For those of you who may not remember, defense attorneys tried blaming Moore’s obsessive playing of the video game Grand Theft Auto on the killings. Luckily, he was convicted of the killings. The final decision on sentencing is up to the judge and is scheduled for September 30th.

    Hopefully, Alabama will live up to its reputation and execute this piece of human filth. And what do you know, Alabama still has the electric chair.