Da Bomb Squad: Machinima Terrorists (Rated M for Meatspin)
72 replies, posted
I felt like I should tell this story, since it's been so long and all of the parties involved have moved on to bigger and better things. Some of you may remember it, if you were around here circa 2007. I actually made a small thread about this in 2009 but nobody noticed. Also, this happened three years ago, so some of my details and chronology might not be quite right.
WARNING: This all took place in the Age of Meatspin, and as a result many of the following videos contain glimpses of the famous image. Proceed at your own risk.
[b]Da Bomb Squad: Machinima Terrorists[/b]
[i]Part 1: Lit Fuse Films[/i]
Many of you probably know of Lit Fuse Films, creator of "War of the Servers" as well as a number of other popular machinimas. Well, before there was Lit Fuse Films, there was Mighty Crane Films, a smaller group comprised of some of the same members, most notably Facepunch user [b]Zachariah Scott[/b]. Mighty Crane Films is notable for creating "The Ballad of Black Mesa," a kind of weird iPhone ad parody where they make a song out of Half-Life 2 noises. For some raisin people really liked it:
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTbL5elVXrU[/media]
The trouble was, Zachariah Scott was a huge asshole. He regularly visited the Videos section of Facepunch and would mercilessly berate anyone who tried to make a machinima that he didn't think was good enough. He thought (perhaps not entirely unfairly) that he was God's gift to machinima, and wasn't afraid to throw his weight around.
Of course, not everybody was down with this. Chief among them was a guy named RespectSchmaa, or Schmaa for short. I don't think he goes to Facepunch anymore. But Schmaa had a hobby, which was to make shitty confusing videos and upload them under the title "The Ballad of Black Mesa."
Here are a couple; they have more historical than entertainment value at this pont:
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ky3DkTbSZlo[/media]
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJ6Id3KSiyQ[/media]
Naturally (I guess) this drove Zachariah absolutely insane. He frequently complained to the moderators in order to try to get Schmaa banned for stealing the name of his movie.
Problem was, the mods hated Zachariah. He and his colleague [b]Festival[/b] were the instigators of more flamewars in the videos section than we cared to count, and his attitude was not unlike that of a Hollywood diva demanding special treatment from the police. So we tended to drag our heels on it, and ended up banning Zachariah more often than not.
Eventually, we got bored of simply banning the guy, and a group of gold members and mods teamed up with RespectSchmaa to form...[b]DA BOMB SQUAD[/b].
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-J3qIxYBx8[/media]
Our first production was entitled The Ballad of Black Mesa (Director's Cut). The first half was a scene of Half-Life 2 rebels getting killed by a strider and turning into ghosts. The second half was Fat Alyx getting crunk.
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBIsmpyNFiQ[/media]
The video was posted on Facepunch, to rave reviews from moderators and gold members. Enraged, Zachariah and Festival accused the mod team of conspiring with the golds against Lit Fuse Films. We, of course, said that was ridiculous, and they was just being paranoid. Amusingly, Zachariah began to blame all attacks on his movies and website (and there were a few) on Da Bomb Squad, even though we basically only made YouTube videos.
But our work was not yet done. It was time for us to produce our MASTERPIECE
[b]C.O.M.E.T.H. V: The Ballad of Black Mesa[/b]
The "C.O.M.E.T.H." part comes from a series of machinimas made by a kid named [b]pcpwn[/b]. They were these really bad stop-motion dealies with Counter-Strike characters having gun battles, complete with inappropriate hardcore punk soundtracks and 10-year-old voice acting. He was a pretty huge dick too, and had been hyping up the release of his next movie, C.O.M.E.T.H. V, so we decided to pre-empt him on it. I tried to find the movies on YouTube but I couldn't. I think he may have deleted them.
The film also took shots at Zachariah's leading sycophant and defender against Da Bomb Squad, [b]g_monkey[/b], who had found a weird monkey head model on the internet and used it to represent himself in his own videos.
Anyway, here's the clips:
[b]Trailer 1[/b]
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jli-EYswhfE[/media]
[b]Trailer 2[/b]
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuwT66s2Yp8[/media]
[b]C.O.M.E.T.H. V: The Ballad of Black Mesa (Part 1)[/b]
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfJnZuoW0bU[/media]
Note the little interlude there with choice bits of Zachariah's critiques in the Videos forum.
[b]C.O.M.E.T.H. V: The Ballad of Black Mesa (Part 2)[/b]
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5jG2UkIf7I[/media]
The movie was followed by a shitstorm of epic proportions.
Zachariah flipped out again, and was permabanned. In the refugee camp, he appealed directly to Garry, claiming he was the victim of a moderator and gold member conspiracy against him. Garry said he couldn't do anything without knowing the people responsible, so Zachariah produced a list of supposed conspirators. Some had been involved in the project. Most were completely innocent.
Meanwhile, Da Bomb Squad's top agents, realizing that without Zachariah there would be no fun to be had, kidnapped Garry's nephew and put their worst vague accents to use in this threatening tape:
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7tvWBN8z3E[/media]
I don't think Garry ever saw it. I'm not sure what happened to his nephew.
Soon afterward, Michael K. Clements, head honcho (I guess) of Lit Fuse Films, sent Da Bomb Squad an angry email threatening legal action in response to Da Bomb Squad's use of the Lit Fuse Logo on COMETH 5:
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kkWFfrrep4[/media]
Strangely, no litigation ever materialized.
Since Da Bomb Squad's preferred proxies had been IP banned at this point, the above response to Michael K. Clements was posted by a friend of a friend of a friend, or something. She was quickly banned by mikfoz (who, incidentally, was completely out of the loop of this whole thing), and Da Bomb Squad struck back with a second awkward, poorly-acted tape:
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3_7qoWhWy8[/media]
I think Zachariah and Festival were unbanned eventually, but for the most part they were effectively gone from Facepunch. The Videos section was left to wallow in its own shit. And for a time, it was good.
For a time.
[i]Part 2: The Ballad of ScoutKing[/i]
In 2010, a few members of Da Bomb Squad came out of retirement to form DBS Auxiliary Ops in response to the existence of Facepunch user [b]ScoutKing[/b]. ScoutKing, like Zachariah, was a machinima artist. Like Zachariah, he hated machinima that wasn't up to his standards, and was unafraid to flame the shit out of people who posted movies he didn't like. Unlike Zachariah, he wasn't that good at machinima. He was most famous for "Rainy Days," a series that consisted of a Half-Life NPC sitting in a padded cell and talking about murdering people for a while.
[b]Rainy Days: Eye Candy[/b]
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GQUokEF-EA[/media]
It was the opinion of Da Bomb Squad that the the level of craftsmanship here did not warrant the degree to which ScoutKing threw his weight around in the Videos section. So, recalling the success they had had pre-empting the hyped release of C.O.M.E.T.H. V, Da Bomb Squad decided to make the film he had announced was coming next, Rainy Days 3, for him. Here it is.
[b]Rainy Days 3: Slow and Steady Wins the Race[/b]
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUhuMwBHz0M[/media]
In my opinion, though it lacked the epic scale and made a smaller splash than C.O.M.E.T.H. V, Rainy Days 3 was Da Bomb Squad's best work.
[i]Epilogue[/i]
So what happened to everyone? Zachariah and Festival chilled out and matured considerably, and I'm pretty sure Zachariah was hired as a cutscene choreographer for BioWare. Though I'm not sorry, I wish them the best.
ScoutKing found out I made Rainy Days 3 and he pretty much hates me now, except when [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdL-qe_8Lpo]I make fun of Fumples[/url], who he hates even more.
Anyway, that's the story. I hope that you liked it, and that Garry doesn't still care enough to exact his firey retribution.
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HweDmhJNOsE[/media]
This is pretty awesome not gonna lie.
Oh boy, good times.
The video with Garry's nephew was great.
This,
Is what makes facepunch great
Oh my god this is amazing, wish I was aware of this when it was happening.
This is what I like about Facepunch.
that was a nice read
Hopefully you took his ego down a few hundred notches.
Another piece of grand history to record in the bottomless bowels of the masterly woven quilt that is Facepunch. We had many things happen, some happy, joyous, others sad and sorrowful, while others filled with laughter or conspiracy. I am happy to be part of a group with such great history!
I cracked up at the Garry's nephew video. Nice job.
sounds like fun times.
talk about how the comic section was fucked over next.
Many laughs were had.
Man.
I really don't know what to say.
interesting story I guess?
Ah Christ that Rainy Days 3 vid made me laugh.
I think I was in Da Bomb Squad.
Or something.
Shit I don't remember.
[QUOTE=TH89;30816014]
ScoutKing found out I made Rainy Days 3 and he pretty much hates me now[/QUOTE]
Babe, babe, babe.
I still love you.
Also it was in 2009 when you parodied me.
I remember Mighty Crane back in the day.
[editline]1st July 2011[/editline]
You been making lots of historic threads recently, TH89. Aiming for some edutainment?
I haven't have a good laugh like this in a while, I remember some of this.
fncypntz made a video about fumples and scoutking too.
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDmLPtZrd_g&feature=channel_video_title[/media]
The fiasco with scoutking and fumples back in 09 was the only reason I ever visited the GMod videos section.
TH89 I know me and you haven't always seen eye to eye but I respect you ten times more for this. I cannot stop laughing.
[sp]Successful troll is successful[/sp]
[QUOTE=poopiecrap;30819049]I haven't have a good laugh like this in a while, I remember some of this.
fncypntz made a video about fumples and scoutking too.
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDmLPtZrd_g&feature=channel_video_title[/media][/QUOTE]
And that was the day, me and fumples made love.
Haha, I remember da bomb squad. Never got to see it happen with this account, but I used my old one back then. I never actually caught any of the backstory to this. I just remember watching ridiculously bad gmod videos that people liked for some reason.
I now know why.
[editline]1st July 2011[/editline]
Also rap about it TH89.
Actually that's it. I remember seeing the ransom video. Haha.
youre something special to me
:dong:
[QUOTE=poopiecrap;30819187]youre something special to me[/QUOTE]
Make love to me poopiecrap
[editline]1st July 2011[/editline]
Th89.
How could you leave out fumples backlash to your music video?
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1G_eMzYJFxY[/media]
dear lord
[QUOTE=poopiecrap;30819293]dear lord[/QUOTE]
Me making love to you or fumples video?
[QUOTE=ScoutKing;30819215]One, Two, Three, Four.
You're something special to me.
One,Two,Thee,Four.
Make love to me poopiecrap
[editline]1st July 2011[/editline]
Th89.
How could you leave out fumples backlash to your music video?
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1G_eMzYJFxY[/media][/QUOTE]
I love how he tries to parody TH89's video and fails.
I miss the old times :frown:
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