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Gimme some sugar, baby: Army of Darkness sounds on the iPhone
Long before I was an Apple nerd, I was a horror nerd. More specifically, I was an Evil Dead/Sam Raimi/Bruce Campbell freak, and even maintained a website devoted to their 1993 masterpiece. I'm both surprised and excited to see my two obsessions collide in the form of an iPhone app devoted to Army of Darkness [iTunes link], the third of the Evil Dead series. Sure, some people use their iPhones to be more productive and create spreadsheets, but sometimes you just need a simple app that screams "shop smart, shop S-Mart!" or "see this? This is my BOOMSTICK!" The app is a simple soundboard app, consisting of 16 audio clips from the film that can be played at the touch of a button. There's also a "slideshow" mode where you can hear all the clips in a row accompanied by an image slideshow. It is definitely not the most full-featured iPhone app, but for the horror fans out there it will make a great addition to your iPhone dock. The app is free and, as far as I'm concerned, essential to every iPhone. If you like it, be sure to check out the other MGM soundboard apps [iTunes link] with audio clips from Robocop, Silence of the Lambs, Fargo and Rocky (all free except for Rocky, which is $0.99). [via iPhone Savior] Thanks to Seth for the tip!
Top 5: Spooky Gaming Moments
In order to survive on these tough tubes, one usually needs to develop a biting sense of sarcasm. You know, where we make a statement and then italicize the second part of the sentence to indicate that this is where the funny is. When you work in cynicism, sentimentality and unfettered joy are difficult to host. You can't be contemptuous one moment but filled with child-like joy the next. Thus, we tend to judge the value of holidays based primarily on if it grants us a day off from work. Yet one holiday that seems to entertain even the crabbiest of bloggers is Halloween. Around the world, the lead-up to October 31st has us enjoying the orange and black decorations, scanning late-night cable for horror movies, and attempting to rationalize buying abundant amounts of candy at the counter of the drug store. Sure, we can be as bitter and weathered as we allow ourselves to be, but there's no denying the joy of carving pumpkins, piecing together a costume, and perhaps even enjoying a good scare or two. As gaming is always finding new ways to entertain us, fans of things that go bump in the night have no shortage of spooky games. Developers have been attempting to give us frights ever since the obscenely terrible Halloween for the Atari 2600. Good gameplay can survive regardless of technology, but generating a convincing scare is usually dependent on quality audio and visuals. Since top-notch technology and mature content have inconsistently been attributes of Nintendo, our favorite line of consoles is slightly lacking in good scares. But while the Silent Hills and Fatal Frames of the other guys have given us plenty of sleepless nights, Nintendo's consoles are home to a handful of underwear-changing moments. Here's the Top 5 moments that, speaking in strict technical terms, give us the heebie-jeebies. NEXT >> #ninbutton { border-style: solid; border-color: #000; border-width: 2px; background-color: #BBB; color: #000; text-decoration: none; width: 100px; text-align: center; padding: 2px 2px 2px 2px; margin: 2px 2px 2px 2px; } .buttontext { color: #000; text-decoration: none; font: bold 14pt Helvetica; } #ninbutton:hover { text-decoration: none; color: #BBB; background-color: #000; } The Top 5 is a weekly feature that provides us with a forum to share our opinions on various aspects of the video game culture, and provides you with a forum to tell us how wrong we are. To further voice your opinions, submit a vote in the Wii Fanboy Poll, and take part in the daily discussions of Wii Warm Up.
Hallowindow projector rig turns your home into a haunted house
With Halloween just around the bend, Mark Gervais' creation is just too timely too ignore. Originally conceived around this time last year, the Hallowindow projector rig turns your peaceful, totally plain home into a nightmarish haunted house with just a beamer, a white sheet, a source, some speakers and Mark's own animation DVD. All's that left for you to do is hop on past the break for a pictorial setup guide and pick up the Hallowindow DVD from the read link. Oh, and before you pass this off as just a gimmick, give the video (also waiting after the break) a look. It's spooky, we tell ya.
Warcraft Orc art on European ghost train ride
Paul sent us this picture (thanks!) he saw on a ride at a traveling fair -- he doesn't say where he's from, but he does play on the EU realms, so we imagine this to be somewhere in the gypsy country of France (France has some gypsy country, right?), in among the carnies and popcorn. As you can see, it's everyone's favorite Warcraft image, "repurposed" into a scary ghost train ride. And if you click to embiggen the photo, you can see that it's not just Thrall on the sign. Apparently ghost train ride artists aren't scared by a little thing like copyright law.Of course, while non-Warcraft players would probably see a sign like that and think it's gross or scary, we know the truth: Thrall's a loveable badass. He's the guy you elected the supreme leader of Azeroth by a huge margin, so using him on a ride that's supposed to be scary kind of defeats the purpose. While most might leave that ride screaming in fear, we'll probably just leave it screaming, "For the Horde!"Update: I'm told that the art is not of Thrall but is instead Grom, something that has shaken me to the very foundations of the day I first bought Warcraft III. I always thought it was Thrall on the box cover. Oh well.Also, I apologize to Paul, our French readers, and the gypsies of the European continent. Paul didn't say where he saw this ride, and my overactive imagination pushed me to envision a traveling gypsy camp somewhere in the wilds of France. I meant no offense -- in fact, even though I'm a lifelong American (Midwestern, even), I feel a kinship with the traveling gypsies of the old country. That's probably why I thought it was them.
The Daily Grind: Has a MMORPG ever scared you?
There's a lot of content in MMOs that's easy to get used to. You head off to the regular raid and it's not that different from punching a clock at work. The creatures that once seemed so brutish and intimidating are as familiar as household objects. Even raid bosses, designed to be impressive, can often be reduced to a mere business of choreography.But sometimes there's content in MMOs that makes us jump out of our seats. This blogger clearly remembers the first time he encountered Circle of Thorns spectrals in a cavern, over in City of Heroes. The Circle mages themselves aren't all that intimidating: cowl-wearing flaming-eyed sorcerers, a bit like Jawas on steroids. But when you enter a mission expecting to find them and suddenly you're surrounded by unearthly shrieks and ghostly figures howling around you like the climax of Raiders of the Lost Ark, it's a shock to the system. Confronting the bat demon in Age of Conan was an adrenalin surge moment, too; that thing is big, and it appears very suddenly.Have you ever had a frightening moment in an MMO? Did any creature make your heart rate go up the first time you encountered it? Should MMOs build in deliberate shocks and surprises? Or are you made of sterner stuff?
A Death Knight with pink pigtails
Ever since we heard way back at BlizzCon last year that Death Knights would be available for all races, the lament has been heard: Gnome Death Knights will ruin it for everyone else. Death Knights are, by their very nature, supposed to be pale and scary and imposing, and given the fact that there are bound to be a ton of Gnome Death Knights out there just for hilarity's sake, the Death Knight starting area is going to look more like a nursery than a gothic bed of evil.But will it really ruin the lore? Daniel already pointed out very insightfully that Gnomes definitely have a dark side -- we all seem to overlook the fact that Gnomes can be Warlocks, and that doesn't make the Felguard they send after you any less scary. And while yes, on launch day, there'll be a lot of Gnome DKs running around (the starting areas will be chaos no matter what gets rolled), after that it should settle down for sure. After all, if Gnomes were all people wanted to play, we'd never see Humans or Dwarves on the realms, and there are plenty of those.So I'm all for Gnome Death Knights, pigtails or otherwise. If nothing else, it'll give us Horde something to laugh at -- right before we go in for the kill.
Hitchcock marathon to ring in the New Year on HDNet Movies
Got any big plans for New Year's Eve? If not, HDNet Movies is hoping you'll spend the evening glued to the Alfred Hitchcock marathon that will be broadcast as 2008 rolls in. Starting at 3:30AM on December 31st, viewers can catch nine of Hitchcock's classics before the feature presentation takes over at 10:30PM. 'Course, we needn't tell you that Psycho will indeed be the main act, but horror aficionados will also appreciate the likes of Vertigo, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Birds and Rear Window (just to name a few). Reportedly, each of the movies were "meticulously converted from original film sources" in order to be shown in 1080i, and hey, if you've already made plans to get out of town, just pick up a capacious new DVR and catch up when you return.[Image courtesy of BuyCostumes]
University's Morgui robot deemed too scary for kids
Terrifying robots most certainly aren't anything new, and be it frightening or downright creepy, there's probably a bot out there weird enough to freak just about anyone out. Enter Morgui, the University of Reading-based robot that has been around for some time, but is just now getting the credit a bizarre skull that follows humans around should. The creation, which consists of a disembodied head, oversized blue eyes, and a classically evil grin, has been officially banned from testing around anyone under the age of 18 (permission notwithstanding) by the school's ethics and research committee, leaving the "Magic Ghost" to spook only mature audiences from here on out. Mo, as it's so aptly nicknamed, sports a metal head, the ability to detect visual / auditory cues, and sensors for radar, infrared, and ultrasonic detection as well, but oddly enough, it cannot detect human emotion, so you better not count on this fellow to have sympathy on your soul when you're screeching. The purpose of the machine is to judge how "people react to robots," and when the bot just so happens to lack any form of facial covering beyond a skeletal structure, we're sure the reactions are quite noticeable.[Via CollisionDetection]
NBC Universal announces Chiller, the HD horror channel
While we've already heard DirecTV's claim to carry 100 HD channels in 2007 (or something like that), we've just found that one of those hundred will be dedicated entirely to the horror genre. NBC Universal has just announced that its first 24/ 7 horror channel, to be dubbed Chiller, will launch in both SD and HD formats on DirecTV. Additionally, NBC plans on offering up Chiller content through video-on-demand, although we don't know if HD VOD plans are in the pipeline. Although long-term programming goals haven't quite been nailed down, users can expect a solid lineup of classic horror content when it launches on March 1st, including Friday the 13th, Twin Peaks, The Shining, Psycho, The Birds, Sphere, The Crew, and quite a bit more. Be sure to hit the read link for the full rundown of initial programming.
Fortune says Wii is "scary tech"
Is it the motion-sensing Wiimote? Is it the lack of HD visuals its competitors are banking on? Is it the Wii Channels interface and always-on WiiConnect24 online service? Nope, none of the above describe why Fortune has declared the Wii one of its "scary techs of 2006." It's the name. It's the name alone.Sorry guys, you are months late for that ship, which has literally sailed off, come back and sailed off again.[Via Joystiq]
Create your own miniature electric chair
Sure, we've got plenty of options to sit in when it comes to rewarding yourself, but what if you've got a mischievous trick-or-treater that really needs some payback for stiffing you in the candy department? Enter Lil' Sparky, the miniaturized (albeit potent) electric chair, handcrafted to scare the living daylights out of anything or anyone who dares to place its behind in it. Rob Cruickshank has officially "put the cute in electrocute" by wiring up a wooden electric chair that's powered by a single 9-volt battery and can deliver the juice to the unlucky participant with just the flip of a toggle switch. While we certainly don't condone the act of channeling unabated voltage through anybody's bones, be sure to peep the video of the electrifying chair in all its sizzling glory just in case the need presents itself. [Via BoingBoing]
USB teddy bear holds data, scares children
Generally, when someone makes a teddy bear-themed gadget, his/her intention is to overwhelm bystanders with cuteness. But whoever created this little guy, whose head has to be removed in order to access the internal USB drive, must have watched one too many Tim Burton movies. No word on how much it holds or if there are any plans to make these available for purchase, but with your own bear, a thumb drive, some thread and a closet full of skeletons, you can probably make your own without too much effort.
