loonyblog.

That’s the only thing I can think of to describe this World’s Finest trailer. If you never saw director Sandy Collora’s brilliant short Batman: Dead End (better known as Aliens vs. Predator vs. Batman — it’s really a fanboi’s dream), go see that first. But after that, check out this trailer.

It’s a mock-trailer, of course, and not a real film. And it probably wouldn’t work as a real film, so it’s just as well. But it’s such a fanboi’s wet dream, that it has to be seen to be believed. The film depicted in the trailer is an amalgam of various plotlines from both universes, but it’s basically a mix of the President Lex storyline mushed together with various scenes from various animated series and the Superman and Batman movies.

Much like Batman: Dead End, the production’s top-notch, or at least, it is for a fan film. Heck, for a fan film, it’s downright amazing, even more so than Dead End because of all the different stuff involved here. Go check it out. I still think a Batman vs. Superman movie is a bad idea, but this? This is different. I’d go see this movie in a heartbeat.

Just for the heck of it, here’s a photo of the setup:

The big black tower on the left there is Fred, my gaming machine, and the silver bullet’s Superboi, my desktop. Other names on my network: my iBook’s Highlander, Zoidberg is my firewire drive, Frotz is my iPod, my server’s name is Guinness, and Heather’s iPod is named Gandalf. Yes, I am a geek. But you knew that already.

(By the way, can I just say how cool it is that MT 3.0 will create thumbnails without ImageMagick? I had no idea until now. And that’s a pretty damn good quality one, too! Just as good as the one I had created in Photoshop!)

In case I hadn’t made it completely crystal clear, I, like so many other gamers, am chomping at the bit to get my hands on Doom 3. And as I have pre-ordered (and pre-paid!) for the game, I’ll be picking mine up on Tuesday (or on the weekend, if I can’t make it there before then). Of course, since it looks like I’ll be going out of town the following week, I haven’t decided if I’m actually going to play it until I get back, but when I do finally get around to it, I’ll have one kickass setup to run it on.

Here’s my rig:

So there you go. It’s not a perfect setup, to be sure, but it’s pretty damn good I’d say. Of the parts, the weak spot is really the CPU, but there’s no reason for me to upgrade at this point. The next time I upgrade anything will be a ways away, and when I do, I’ll get a new motherboard/CPU combo (and most likely go 64-bit at that point). But that’s not going to be for a really, really, really long time, since this can run Doom 3 at Very High Quality, and will more than likely kick ass at Half-Life 2 as well.

It took me a while, but I’ve finally got the temperature inside my case down to a relatively frosty 40 – 45 degrees C. A big part of that was my recent addition of the Thermaltake heatpipe and CPU fan, which are a huge improvement over my previous heatsink, which was AMD’s stock heatsink/fan. With that thing running, my case temperature was at least 10 degrees hotter, and my CPU was getting so hot (even without overclocking) that the system would force-restart on its own during CPU-intensive apps. Not good at all.

For anyone that’s curious, I’m using a CompuCable 2-port ADC to DVI KVM switch to share my monitor between my Mac and PC. This baby’s amazing. I get full quality on both machines with zero image degredation, and because both my monitor and keyboard have USB hubs on them, I’m not just sharing the monitor, but also the keyboard, mouse, printer, bluetooth and joystick adapter.

But I’m very pleased with my setup. Or at least, I am for now, anyway. I’m sure once the next-next-generation AMD processors come out I’ll be filled with geek lust all over again. But that’s what makes all this stuff fun.

Here you go, the second bunch of photos from my trip to the San Diego Comic-Con. In this batch are shots of nice costumes of characters like the Joker, Darth Maul and even an incredibly accurate marine from Aliens (complete with audible tracking device!), as well as some other random shots of geekiness, and the insane price list for autographs at the Star Wars booth. Check ‘em out.

The whole loonyboi.com network shifted DNS the other night, and in the process, a whole lot of stuff got temporarily broken. Things should be back to normal now though, so I’ll be posting my second batch of Comic-Con photos shortly.

I’m back from Comic-Con, and boy am I tired. I bought a few goodies, and saw some wacky stuff, and hopefully some time this week I’ll have the time (and energy) to post a full writeup. But until then, here are some photos from the show. I was only there for two days of course, so this is day one, with day two’s photos to follow later in the week. Enjoy!

Since the cat is more or less out of the bag on this one, I can finally say this…tomorrow I’m off to San Diego, to attend Comic-Con International, also known as the largest (by far) comic convention in the US. I’ll be there to show off Robotech: Invasion, which will be fully playable on the show floor, so if you’re attending, be sure to swing by to check it out (and say hi while you’re there!). We don’t actually have our own booth at the show, but we’ll be in Toynami’s booth, which is #3245, located at the concession area between halls D and E (I believe).

Anyway, I’m totally psyched. I’ve been to six E3s, but not a single Comic-Con, and I can’t wait. I’ll be naturally pretty busy with work stuff, but I’m hoping to find some time to be able to wander around with my digital camera. Look for pictures when I get back on Sunday.

As a change of pace, here are some minor news items for you tonight…

• It’s hardly minor, really, but Namco announced today that Katamari Damacy, the big rolling ball of crap game, is coming stateside. Hopefully it won’t go for more than $30, because I really can’t see myself paying full price for it. But if it is that low (or the price drops relatively quickly), I can’t wait to get my hands on it.

• Apparently the PS2 version of Viewtiful Joe will be released in Japan as Viewtiful Joe: A New Hope. No word on whether or not Viewtiful Joe 2: The Empire Strikes Back or Viewtiful Joe: Episode I: the Phantom Menace are on the way.
• In Active Xbox’s interview with Microsoft’s Larry Hryb is a list of the top 15 Xbox Live cities around the globe. Checking in with such cities as New York, London and Tokyo is none other than Brooklyn. Word.
• And lastly tonight, Nintendo, who long ago realized the value of a new paint job, has announced a new emerald-colored GBA and “starlight gold” colored GameCube in Japan. Hope those work out for them.

My new video card arrived this evening. While I haven’t actually fired up any games yet (haven’t had the time) I did do a quick run through of 3DMark03 just to see how my score improved with the upgrade.

Before, my score was around 1,500. After? It’s over 9,100. Now that’s what I call an upgrade!

(For the record, yes, I know that 3DMark isn’t the most relevant benchmark in the world…but I don’t care. It’s eye candy, and I’m not reviewing this for any serious hardware site, just my own edification).

Now here’s some good news…Bryan Singer has been announced as the new Superman director. Plus, he’s ditching JJ Abrams’ script! Having just watched X-Men 2 again recently, and listened to his commentary track, I’m really, really, really excited about this. Michael Bay wouldn’t have been bad, but this is a better fit all around.