Crap Shots – Additional Comedy
May 21st, 2010

Posted by Graham

For those of you who are already in on this complete secret (unless you read Twitter, or—y’know—the forums) this won’t be a surprise, but for everyone else this is new and surprising!

I am pleased to present: Crap Shots.

A twitter follower described Crap Shots to me as an after-dinner mint to LRR’s meal, and I feel that’s apt.

Crap Shots are little videos, usually <1 minute in length, that we throw together whenever an idea hits us, and isn’t really an idea that works for a whole video. Most of them involve myself and Alex (who oversees, edits and produces the series), but the only requirements for involvement are being nearby, so expect to see… everyone, really.

Right now they just have their own YouTube channel, but maybe we’ll start posting them here. They update Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so we’re not sure how that would work yet.

Here’s one that’s already pretty popular:

Please subscribe to the channel, and we hope you enjoy them!

Preview Pic – March 15, 2010
March 14th, 2010

Posted by Jeremy

Rejected ENN – Feb 17, 2010
February 18th, 2010

Posted by Jeremy

Every week, Paul, Graham, Kathleen and I get together to write ENN. Over the week, each of us actually writes stories separately, then we get together on Fridays to choose what to use, what to revise, etc. Sometimes the stories we throw out aren’t very good; other times, they are too obscure for a wider audience. Even so, sometimes very good stories have to be thrown out because there is just not enough space for them in the episode. Here are two of those stories for this week’s episode:

Nintendon’t (two stories on same topic)

Joystiq is reporting that an Australian software pirate who uploaded New Super Mario Bros. Wii to the internet a week prior to its release, has been found guilty and fined $1.5 million dollars. Nintendo obviously felt such piracy was a concern, considering the game has only sold 10-and-a-half million copies in the 90 days since its release. Shigeru Miyamoto, in his role as Father of Modern Gaming, said he wasn’t angry, just disappointed.

The Revolution Will Not be Digitized (too obscure)

SquareEnix has registered a trademark for Deus Ex: Human Revolution–a curious choice given that the Deus Ex IP is owned by competitor Ubisoft. Square Enix Alphomega Imperial Hot clarified to ENN that the trademark doesnt refer to a game, so much as his plans to create a gigantic, robotic Robspierre to set loose on the French publisher, insighting the Deus Ex team to revolt, and join his company. The robot is scheduled for release in 2015, alongside Final Fantasy XV.

Olympic Beard Growing
February 16th, 2010

Posted by Jeremy

If you’re like us, you’ve probably been glued to the Olympics for the past several days–as well you should be: they’re great fun to watch. I’m actually delighted by the fidelity of the online streaming this year, such that even without cable TV, I’m able to waste hours of my day watching events I don’t even care about. Such is the nature of the games.

The other advantage of the Olympics is we get to make another Olympic video — something that doesn’t happen very often. This one was conceived by Paul because he hates you. He knew that by dangling the spectre of his so-recently-departed beard before you, he would illicit squeals of joy, before leaving you with the stark realization that this was only a functional means to an end — not a full return to beardly glory.

While Paul’s original script called for this to be filmed over several weeks, we decided that would be a people-wrangling-and-venue-booking nightmare, so we instead did entire thing in reverse. Paul and I grew out our beards over about five weeks, and then used a trimmer to shave them off about evenly for each section of the video. Delays in filming pushed the actual shooting time by another week, which actually turned out to be problematic for me– I’ve never let my beard get as out-of-control as it was for this video, and up close it was pretty scraggly.

Anyway, there you have it. While you’re here, you should check out our previous Olympic video, which introduced Canada’s freestyle slacking team. If you’re new to the site, you might not have seen it, as it’s a couple years old at this point. You’ll also notice that our latest T-shirt pre-order ties in with that video, and there are only ten days left to order one in the style and colour of your choice.

Playing CO-OP WIth Area5
March 23rd, 2009

Posted by Jeremy

Many of you have noticed the appearance of an unfamiliar naked fellow in the middle of this week’s video. No, he’s not a relic of old footage from season one, nor is he Morgan and Bill’s new roommate. That is, in fact, Jay Frechette of Area5.tv, appearing in footage from their new show, CO-OP.

The folks at Area5 are more-or-less the old crew of the 1Up Show, who lost their jobs during 1Up.com’s transition from Ziff Davis to UGO. Instead of living the high life on the back of their severance cheques, these guys manned up and put together a new company, with CO-OP — a half-hour web TV series featuring commentary on the latest and greatest gaming has to offer — as its first major output.

I loved the 1Up Show, and am thrilled to see its spiritual successor in CO-OP. I’m also really happy that we could further extend a joke from the show’s fourth episode in this week’s LRR update.

At the time this week’s video was conceived, CO-OP still didn’t have an official home, though I’m happy to report that it has since been picked up by Revision3.com. That said, as independent content producers like ourselves, Area5’s dinners now depend on views, so I’d like to encourage anyone reading this to check out their stuff. They’re our friends, and people who’s content I’ve enjoyed for years, so I’d like to welcome them warmly to the world of independent video :).

Area5.tv

–Jer