The Download Munkey : Finder of Things …

If the Allies had been swept clean off Europe during World War II and The Third Reich had undertaken an invasion of USA, what weapons of war would the The Third Reich field in this alternate history? Watch this trailer to find out

© Codemasters

Massive zeppelins for the biggest airborne invasion

© Codemasters

Double-barrelled tanks (Afraid the video is too dark - it’s somewhere on the left side of the screenshot).

© Codemasters

Flying wings

© Codemasters

An armada of Bismarck class battleships

© Codemasters

Oh, and a massive flag

Download the trailer from gametrailers.com or visit the official site for Turning Point : Fall of Liberty.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
World in Conflict Trailers
Paolo Parente’s Dust Game
Bismarck 3D Renders by Kyoshi Harada

An additional 3 wallpapers for the John Woo produced anime Appleseed :Ex Machina from the official Warner Videos’ Appleseed : Ex Machina HD DVD site in 1024×768, 1280×1024 and 1900×1200 resolutions.

© Warner Video

While the first wallpaper of the duo Deunan Knute & Briareos Hecatonchires is definitely my favourite, what’s interesting is the third wallpaper featuring a new character in the Appleseed sequel - Tereus, a Bioroid (artificial human) E.S.W.A.T member created with Briareos’ DNA resulting in him resembling the latter before he was transformed into a cyborg after sustaining severe war injuries in World War Three. On top of that, Tereus has inherited Briareos’ excellent combat skills as well as his personality (including his attraction to Deunan).

Three high resolution artworks for the fans below. Click on the images to view the full versions - detailed enough to see the brand on the hubcap of Deunan’s bike

© Warner Video

Many thanks to Fred from M80 / Warner Brothers for the links to the artworks above and informing me of the existence of the official site (the intro video contains the some of the best action sequences of the 2:18 teaser - also available on MySpaceTv) . Below’s two captures from the teaser. Click for high resolution versions.

© Warner Video

Fred also notified me of a Appleseed : Ex Machina trailer remix contest for US residents. While non-US residents can of course register to play around with the nifty trailer remixer, they are ineligible for the grand prize for an all expenses paid trip for 2 to WonderCon 2008 in San Francisco to meet the makers of Appleseed : Ex Machina As a concession, non-US registrants like me get to watch a few extra clips from the film not seen in the teaser video.

Below is a screenshot of what you can expect to play with at the trailer remix site - 15 video clips and 6 MP3s in total for you to mash-up and express your creativity.

My favourite video clips are: Clip 9 where Briareos tackles the target range with dual SMGs (Seburo MN-23s?) firing and Clip 12 where the acrobatic Deunan singlehandedly takes out a minigun-toting foe. And Clip 8 is just plain cool - ejected brass cartridges and empty magazines falling in slow motion and slick action sequences - pure style in this one

© Warner Video

The 1 min soundtrack snippets are pretty listenable too - love the soaring instrumentation of Tetsuya Takahashi’s Synchronicity and the manic breakbeats of Shogo Ohnishi’s Speed Star. Preview the tracks below.

Ex Machina
Mission
Speed Star
Synchronicity
Sortie
Buddy

Download the wallpapers at the official Warner Videos’ Appleseed : Ex Machina HD DVD site or create your trailer remix @ www.appleseedtrailerremix.com. The contest ends on 07 February 2008 so check out www.appleseedtrailerremix.com if you’re interested.

© Warner Video

I’m pretty hyped up about Appleseed : Ex Machina right now, hope it’s as good as the lovely Deunan says it is

Oh yeah, this is the last post for this month (and this year) - going to be on holiday till next year so posting will resume on 8 Jan 2008

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Official Japanese Appleseed : Ex Machina Wallpapers
Appleseed Wallpapers @ Madman Entertainment
The Best John Woo’s Stranglehold Trailer - The E3 2005 Trailer.
Stranglehold Wallpapers

The sequel to one of the most controversial FPSes is currently in the works and is slated for a November 2007 release in US.

The original Soldier of Fortune (SOF) also published by Activision garnered quite a lot of controversy back in 2000 for its “realistic” 26 Gore Zone GHOUL animation system promising multiple ways to take down your adversaries as well as for its excessive graphic violence, both which were considered novel features at that time. SOF however, pales in comparision with today’s games in terms of violence, gore and realism - exploding heads seemed more silly and OTT than realistic when I played it a few years back.

The original SOF was also quite fun being a semi-realistic FPS with real-life weapons and emphasizing more on action than tactics. Which tactical FPS pits you against a Mil Mi-24 ‘Hind’ gunship with a bolt-action sniper rifle?

Weapons in SOF were unlicensed and bore names like Silver Talon when the pistol in question was clearly a .44 Desert Eagle. Hopefully the new Soldier of Fortune : Payback will have licensed weapons which will definitely add to the authenticity of the overall experience

Judging from the trailer at Gametrailers.com, Soldier of Fortune : Payback looks pretty promising in the graphics and stylistic departments and looks like it will possibly be as stereotypical as its predecessors in the choice of adversaries and battlefields. Check out the battlefields below:

© Activision

And below are some screen captures of the firearms of Soldier of Fortune : Payback that you’re be handling.

© Activision

The ubiquitous AK.

© Activision

H&K G36C with AG36 grenade launcher.

© Activision

M249 SAW. Check out the cool reloading animation for the M249 SAW in trailer.

© Activision

Upping the OTT factor is the ability to go hunting with the .50 Barrett XM500.

Download the trailer @ GameTrailers.com.

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Call of Duty 4 Trailer
Accuracy International AS50 Rifle
Assault Rifle Vidcasts
Heckler & Koch Catalogue 2007

I always had the assumption that robots currently used in military service were only used in place of humans in highly hazardous roles such as Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD).

So when I saw the armed robot in the Games Convention 2007 trailer for the game Frontline : Fuel of War set in the near future, I immediately dismissed it as purely a vision of future warfare.

© Kaos Studios

Apparently, armed robots are a thing of reality (although not equipped with a multi-barreled cannon as in the trailer) when I saw Foster-Miller Inc’s listing in Army Technology, a directory of military-related suppliers.

Foster-Miller Inc manufactures TALON robots configured for EOD purposes as well as SWORDS variants for armed reconnaissance, outfitted with either a M16, 40mm grenade launcher, M240/M249 machinegun, Barrett .50 rifle or the M202 rocket launcher. (the product literature states that the M202 is an anti-tank weapon but the M202 apparently only fires M74 incendiary rockets from what I read at Gary’s U.S. Infantry Weapons Reference Guide - maybe new anti-tank rockets have been developed for the M202).

© Foster-Miller Inc

With the different weapon options available, it seems particularly suitable for urban warfare where it’s maximum speed of 6.6 km/h is not a limitation.

A more heavily armed version of TALON known as Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System (MAARS) is already in the works - read the press release.

Right now, these robots are controlled remotely by humans so those stories about robots taking over the world and driving the human race to extinction aren’t going to happen (yet)

Read more or download product brochures from Foster-Miller Inc’s TALON page. Alternatively view some of products created during Foster-Miller Inc’s 50(!) years in the robotics field in this 2.8 MB PDF (other PDFs are available from the Literature section.)

UPDATE 18 Oct 2007: More info on SWORDS at Defense Review and a super high resolution photo over at army.mil.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Vision of future war in Tom Clancy’s EndWar trailer
Possible Influences for Weapons in Frontlines : Fuel of War

© Axis Records

Recently found a three min excerpt of the video footage recorded from the Exhibitionist Mix (Feb 2004) by American DJ Jeff Mills aka The Wizard on three turntables.

Tracks played in this video:
Jeff Mills - AX-009F (Segment 3)
Jeff Mills - Condor To Mallorca
Oliver Ho - Organic Synthetic

© Axis Records

The full video for the Exhibitionist Mix, along with 3 other mixes on the Exhibitionist DVD can be bought from Jeff Mills’s Axis Records online shop for 22 USD + 10 USD shipping (for Asia). After watching this short clip, I really feel like getting this DVD The footage for three of the four mixes can be viewed from three angles - front, top and side as well as slowed down or zoomed

There’s also a audio CD edition of the Exhibitionist Mix with 45 tracks as opposed to 32 tracks on the DVD available for 16 USD from the Axis Records store.

I downloaded a copy of this video for offline viewing with the excellent donationware SDP Downloader which handles downloading of streaming WMV very well.

© SDP Multimedia

All you have to do is View Source on a page containing an embedded Windows Media Player and search for .asx or .wmv, determine the full URL for the asx/wmv file and paste that URL into SDP Downloader to start downloading. Finding the asx/wmv link may be very tedious since some websites hide the link to the actual files in Javascript files or dynamically generate the links on the fly.

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MediaCoder audio/video transcoder
Ken Ishii Extra MV
Technics SL-DZ1200 Video Demo
Ots CD Scratch 1200 virtual turntables (freeware)