We Break Down What the “S” on Superman’s Chest Stands For

Posted on by Nick Coffman

Superman is coming off another big weekend at the box office. James Gunn’s DC revival is making waves this summer, especially with audience members returning to capture every little detail on display in the epic superhero movie. One detail that audiences are still scratching their head over is what the ‘S’ on Superman’s chest stands for. The film doesn’t outright say, but we did some digging to try and find the answer.

Upon seeing the movie again, my early analysis brought me to the conclusion that the S stands for ‘Sex Machine’. It make’s sense if you think about it. His parents sent him from Krypton to have sex with a bunch of Earth women. It’s just a shame that Clark didn’t land in a house that contained a copy of Neil Strauss’ The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists. He would for sure have a brood of Kryptonian hybrids in no time, but no he instead landed in the sexless home of Jonathan and Martha Kent and developed feelings.

Back to the drawing board for my third watch I noticed that Superman was saving every one. I dug through all the S words I knew. Save? No. Squirrel? No. Sissy…yes, that must be it, I thought at the moment. The S stands for ‘Sissy’. Who actually believes that they can save everyone? And why are you so nice to everyone? You are Superman. You can freeze everyone to death by blowing on them. You can melt through our skulls with your laser beams. Stop being so damn nice, you sissy. I was sure I had finally found what the S stood for, then Superman threw Ultraman into a dark abyss and it was back to the drawing board.

Does it stand for ‘Supergirl’? That’d be some smart early marketing for the next movie. Oh wait, that’s right, she’s in this.

What about ‘soft-reboot’? No. That’s just dumb.

My multiple Superman viewings and my deep dive into a dictionary left me broke and no closer to finding out what the S stood for. Gunn was also being annoyingly tightlipped about the symbol. I was stumped. I’ve turned out articles like this for every superhero movie since the original X-men run. I pulled easter egg after easter egg and milked theme after theme from these movies, for the sake of SEO, yet here I am, all bent out of shape about what this S stands for. I am no man of steel. Wait. Steel. Man of Steel. Oh my god.

Gunn, you magnificent genius. The S on Superman’s chest stands for ‘Snyder’, as in Zack Snyder. This is amazing. How could I have not seen this before. Gunn was paying his respect to those who came before him. If not for Snyder providing the blueprint with his heroic run of Superman movies, we may never have seen James Gunn work his magic in the DCEU. Thank you Mr. Gunn for respecting the history and thank you Mr. Snyder for making all this possible.

Guy on Jumbotron Caught Using Cheats in FromSoft Game

Posted on by Matt Fresh

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — Controversy erupted in the Souls community this week after longtime FromSoft gamer Andy O’Reilly was caught on the jumbotron at a Coldplay concert playing Sekiro on his Steam Deck with cheat mods.

“This is a betrayal of the highest order,” wrote frequent forum contributor Marcus Strong. “Andy was a stalwart of this community. Not only was he always responding to others requests for help with sage advice like ‘git good’ and ‘skill issue’, but he was also one of our fiercest gatekeepers. No scrub could get past him. Any newcomer who even thought about easing into this genre with assists and accessibility settings were quickly swatted away by Andy. He cheated not just the game, but himself.”

The viral moment saw O’Reilly quickly duck out of view when he realized the camera was on leading Coldplay frontman Chris Martin to quip “he’s either using cheat mods, or he’s very shy”. It wasn’t long before the FromSoft community online figured out O’Reilly’s identity.

“As FromSoft die-hards we spend half our time online harassing people who don’t play the way we deem acceptable so it wasn’t hard to figure out that it was Andy,” wrote r/Soulsborne mod Ronald Cole. “Once we knew it was him we made sure to just pile on the harassment. He’s become a meme in the community but he deserves it. I mean he brought it upon himself, what kind of idiot cheats in such a public place? If you’re gonna cheat at a Souls game you gotta do it in secret, not at a Coldplay concert.”

The incident has become such a hot topic within the Souls community that even popular content creators like “Maidenless” Mike Schwartz have weighed in.

“Look, it’s not our business. What other players do in their private lives is between them and God but cheaters deserve to be outed and humiliated. There is no greater kind of scum than a cheater. It goes against everything these games and this community stands for. If the thought of cheating even pops into your mind the only right thing to do is be honest with yourself and just go play something else. This is a FromSoft game so it needs to be given respect, it’s not some easily disposable commodity like a woman.”

At press time, O’Reilly has tendered his resignation from the Souls community and stated his intentions to become a League of Legends gamer in hopes of joining a more accepting community.

“Here’s How We Can Still Restore the Snyderverse,” Says Man Taking James Gunn Hostage at Knifepoint

Posted on by Brian Wishart

LOS ANGELES — Self-proclaimed Snyder superfan Jason Morris has taken matters into his own hands to #RestoreTheSnyderverse and is holding James Gunn at knifepoint on a Hollywood street, LAPD sources confirm.

“Zack Snyder is a visionary filmmaker and he has legions of fans that demand for his full vision of a DC cinematic universe to come into fruition,” said Morris. “Warner Brothers sabotaged the box office because they wanted to Marvelize the universe with this stupid James Gunn Superman reboot. I am here to rectify this betrayal and ask James politely to give Henry Cavill the role of Superman back and to finish what Zack started. Here’s how we can still restore the Snyderverse: we put more pressure on the jugular.”

James Gunn said that he believes that some superhero superfans are being a little unreasonable.

“Zack and I are friends,” said Gunn, blood dripping down from the knife being pressed into his neck. “He did a good job bringing his vision to the screen. He has moved on, though, and it’s my job to help lay the groundwork and shepherd in a new universe with a lot of talented creative voices that I hope people will love. For the love of god officer, please take the shot. He’s going to kill me.”

Zack Snyder admires the passion of his fans but thinks people are taking it a little too far.

“Hostage situation? Sounds pretty badass!” said Snyder. “James is my friend and I hope that he lives long enough to keep making his movies. I’m excited to check them out. James promised me he would watch my Rebel Moon movies when he had some time. I don’t think violence is the answer, unless it involves Superman or Batman committing acts of mass violence on-screen. I don’t condone my fans taking extremist action. They should keep that energy just on social media.”

At press time, Snyder fans were quick to remind anyone who would listen that Man of Steel made more domestically than Gunn’s Superman if you adjust for inflation and that if we besmirch the Snyderverse that they know where we live.

FBI Denies Existence of War in Ba Sing Se

Posted on by Jacob Albrecht

WASHINGTON — Following a rigorous and exhaustive inquest, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has officially concluded that there is no war in Ba Sing Se, officials at the FBI confirmed Thursday.

“As part of our ongoing commitment to transparency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has conducted an exhaustive review of investigative holdings related to the alleged war in the four nations,” said FBI Director Kash Patel. “It was a long and arduous process, but we are very thankful to have had the cooperation of a local intelligence agency known as the Dai Li. After reviewing all of the facts and evidence available to us at this time, we are happy to report that the truth has been uncovered and there is, in fact, no war in Ba Sing Se.”

Earth Nation citizens, however, were quick to share their doubts regarding the FBI’s official verdict. We spoke with Kenji, a local zookeeper and activist in Ba Sing Se.

“Personally, I don’t buy any of it,” said Kenji, 51. “The FBI really expects us to believe that this hundred-year war just doesn’t exist? After everything we’ve seen and heard? There are Earth Kingdom citizens currently in prison for crimes they committed in relation to the ongoing war. How can they justify keeping these people locked up if the–”

Unfortunately, Kenji was unable to finish his statement, as he abruptly remembered he was late to an appointment in Lake Laogai, out in the country.

Earth King Kuei was eager to speak with Hard Drive to publicly thank the FBI for their thorough work, and to address the citizens of the Earth Kingdom directly.

“I want to express my immense gratitude to the FBI as well as the Dai Li for finally uncovering the truth and putting an end to all this pointless fear-mongering and misinformation. And to any citizens who still may be having doubts or fears regarding all of this, I would like to cordially invite you to a stress-free retreat at our luxury spa facility in Lake Laogai, where all your fears will be put to rest.”

At press time, Long Feng would like to speak with you, the reader, immediately.

Game Night: Solving Our Own Murder(s) in ‘The Drifter’

Posted on by Thomas Wilde

The Drifter is a good game, but a rough sit.

It’s centered on its protagonist, Mick Carter, a homeless man who burned down his whole life rather than process his own grief. You’re often working to escape from death traps or monsters, but those aren’t as harrowing as one awkward conversation between Mick and his ex-wife.

The Drifter is easiest to describe as a direct descendant of old LucasArts point-and-click adventures like Monkey Island, as filtered through what its Steam page describes as “a dash of ‘70s Aussie grindhouse.”

It’s a horror game, but the source and subgenre of that horror changes several times over the course of the story. By rights, The Drifter should collapse under its own weight, but it’s smart, fast, and focused. I’m actually surprised it’s as coherent as it is, given some of the turns its story takes.

If that sounds interesting to you, you should probably pick this up without reading any further. The Drifter is a sort of New Weird murder mystery at heart, and like any mystery, it’s hard to discuss without spoilers. (It’s hard to take screenshots that don’t accidentally spoil at least one plot twist.) You’re better off going in as cold as you can.

The Drifter is set in Australia at some point in the late ‘90s to early ‘00s. Mick has been a hobo for the last 5 years, in a largely fruitless attempt to outrun a personal tragedy. On the news that his mother has died, Mick returns to his hometown to attend her funeral, but is murdered almost as soon as he arrives.

For no obvious reason, Mick doesn’t stay dead. He crawls out of what was meant to be his grave with no idea what’s just happened to him or if it happened at all. Now he’s penniless, homeless, questioning his own sanity, stuck in the last place on Earth he wants to be, and trapped at the center of a series of seemingly unconnected mysteries.

If you’ve ever played a point-and-click adventure game, you already know how to play The Drifter. In each area, your goal is to search the environment for items and information, which you use to get Mick out of his latest problem. If you’re stuck, it’s usually because you missed some small detail or didn’t talk to everyone that you could’ve.

The big difference is that The Drifter runs off a streamlined version of the point-and-click formula. None of its maps are particularly big or elaborate, dialogue can be taken at your own pace, it’s careful to indicate when something in your environment is no longer relevant, and when (not if) you get Mick killed, he immediately comes back to life at a point just before the decision that led to his death. It’s ditched much of the strange post-Myst cruft that got attached to adventure games in the ‘00s, like having to spend half the game slowly walking across empty landscapes, and is all the better for it.

Most crucially, The Drifter ranks very low on the Grand Scale of Puzzle Impenetrability. While it’s got a couple of weird challenges scattered across its running time, common sense and pattern recognition will get you through most of the game. It’s thoughtfully built and has no desire to waste your time.

The story manages to match that overall pace. It’d be easy for a game built around several interlocking mysteries to end up feeling overstuffed, but you’ve solved several of Mick’s initial problems by the halfway point. The rest of the game is devoted to finding out how and why everything intersects. I did have a few leftover questions by the end, but on the whole, The Drifter nails its landing.

The Drifter reminds me of Peppered, in that both games make a genre staple into a cornerstone of their setting. There’s a broad streak of the old Sierra sadism in The Drifter – some of the most lovingly detailed animations in the game are devoted to Mick’s death scenes, including one that may actually be a first for the medium – but that’s one of its core mechanics. Sometimes the only way to get through a situation is to get Mick killed and see what you learn in the process.

My only real point against The Drifter is that it’s thematically uneven, to the point where I was surprised to find the game only had one writer. Chapter 5 goes real Eli Roth for a minute, and Chapters 6 and 7 feature a temporary genre shift that almost derails the entire narrative. I can’t accuse The Drifter of ever being boring, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it shook people loose at certain specific points.

As a point-and-click revival, the word I want to use for The Drifter is “confident.” It manages to dodge many of the usual shortfalls of the point-and-click formula while also telling a complicated story about the stages of grief. It shouldn’t work, but does. It can be rough at certain points, especially if you’re recently bereaved, but if you’re in a place where you can handle the subject material, The Drifter is a memorable, worthwhile run.

[The Drifter, developed and published by Powerhoof, is now available for PC via Steam, and the first chapter is available for free via Itch.io. This column was written using a Steam code sent to Hard Drive by a PR representative for Powerhoof.]

Here Is Donkey Kong’s Really Disgusting Banana Bread Recipe

Posted on by Brian Wishart

Hey, everyone! Donkey Kong here. This week I am going to share my favorite recipe of all. It is one that I really cherish.

Back when I was a young ape I would spend my summers in Cranky’s kitchen. The warm air of Donkey Kong Island would come through the windows bringing in a sweet salty sea smell. I was so carefree back then. I was not going on as many adventures. Baking provides me with so many nostalgic memories. Scent provides me with a connection to the past and I get transported to my childhood whenever I get a whiff of all these flavors of walnuts, peanuts, and pineapple smells. I even made a rap song about it.

However banana bread was the one recipe I disagreed with my family on how it should be made. Candy Kong once told me that banana bread is a no-fuss recipe and that you should be able to make it with the ingredients you have around you. So that’s the philosophy I used when developing my banana bread. I have all this bone meal just lying around the kitchen and I have all these green bananas that Chunky Kong gathered on his quest. It should be easy enough for you to make at home in your kitchen as well. Be sure to wear an apron or else you’ll get your tie messy!

Every other Kong likes their banana bread solid and just a little moist. I prefer a soupy mixture. Cranky Kong has called this recipe “disgusting” and “shameful” in the past, but he is called Cranky for a reason! Diddy Kong liked this banana bread so much that I even saw him feeding it to Rambi the Rhinoceros under the table when he thought I wasn’t looking. He loves to share.

I have spent years perfecting my banana bread recipe. I’m not allowed to call it a family recipe because no one wants anything to do with it. I love it though, and I hope you will too! The smell is unforgettable.

Here are all the ingredients you need to make DK’s Banana Bread Surprise:

  • All-Purpose Flour. It satisfies all purposes including this recipe
  • Baking powder. You can substitute baking soda if you want. They are the same thing.
  • Bone meal. The fresher the better.
  • Rock salt. The bigger the chunks the more satisfying the crunch.
  • Brown sugar. It along with the water helps make the bread extra moist
  • Butter. Melt it or toss it in hard and cold. Baking is not a science.
  • Parrot eggs. I steal these from Squawks.
  • Green bananas. I’m not using my yellow bananas. Chunky collects these ones and what they lack in flavor they make up for in ruggedness.
  • Vanilla extract. It brings some flavor to the recipe.
  • Tap water. Gooey and drippy banana bread is the best kind
  • Raisins. Everyone loves raisins.

You will also need a mixing bowl, a whisk, a 9×5 inch loaf pan, an electric mixer, and a spoon. Borrow a friend’s oven if you don’t have one at home.

Step 1.

Preheat the oven to 374 degrees F. Do not bother greasing your 9×5 inch loaf pan.

Step 2.

Combine the flour, bone meal, baking powder, rock salt chunks and brown sugar into a bowl. Whisk thoroughly. Put the half cup of butter and parrot eggs in. You don’t need to worry about cracking the parrot eggs as your electric mixer will already do the job of breaking them open. Add in the vanilla extract and tap water.

Take your mashed green bananas and put them in with all the other ingredients. If you have trouble mashing bananas this fresh, try punching them with your fists even harder. Turn on the electric mixer to maximum speed.

Step 3.

Pour the batter into the ungreased pan and turn on some cool music. You’ll be waiting for a while for this to bake.

Step 4.

Bake for an hour in the oven, or until it starts to smell burned. Whichever comes first.

Step 5.

Put on oven mitts. This step is very important!

Step 6.

Take the banana bread out of the oven. Sprinkle a good amount of bone meal on top of it as garnish.

Step 7.

Wait for it to cool down, grab a spoon, and dig in!

Ingredient List

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour

½ cup bone meal

1 teaspoon baking powder

6 chunks of rock salt

¾ cup brown sugar

½ cup butter

2 parrot eggs

3 cups mashed green bananas

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

1 teaspoon of tap water

A handful of raisins

–

EDITOR’S NOTE: Hard Drive’s lawyers have told us to advise humans against consuming any amount of bone meal. They also told us not to dare bring this recipe to the company potluck.

Fallout Season 2 Will Feature 40-Minute Quicksave Killing Spree

Posted on by Jacob Albrecht

LOS ANGELES — The upcoming second season of Prime Video’s hit video game adaptation Fallout will feature a very special 40-minute long brutal killing spree preceded by a quicksave, sources working on the show confirmed.

“Our main goal this season was to really get experimental with the format of our episodes, while also remaining true to that unique Fallout experience,” said Fallout showrunner Geneva Robertson-Dworet. “In our research we found that an overwhelming number of Fallout fans have experienced the seemingly ‘canon event’ of quicksaving, absolutely unleashing hell on whatever poor settlement or group of people happens to populate their immediate surroundings, and then loading back to that quicksave as if nothing ever happened at all. And we knew we just had to put that on the screen.”

Ella Purnell, who plays Vault 33 Dweller Lucy MacLean in the show, was happy to share her experience in devising and performing the ground-breaking scene.

“It was all adrenaline, really,” said Purnell. “[Wayne] Yip directed that episode, and he really gave me a lot of creative freedom on this very visceral, almost primal scene.They put me in the middle of this beautiful set of Camp McCarran with fifty or sixty stunt performers and I just went apeshit. I started unloading into these very talented people who I’d come to love working with. I was huckin’ firebombs and frag grenades like nobody’s business. I think I remember beating a script supervisor to a bloody pulp? Honestly, I kinda blacked out. But once the scene was over, we all just reset back to one and it was like nothing ever happened. It was extremely cathartic.”

We also spoke with Matthew Ryerson, who works as a PA on the show and was fortunate enough to witness the scene first-hand.

“Honestly, it was the most bizarre day of work I’ve ever experienced,” said Ryerson, 23. “As soon as Yip called ‘action’ the carnage began, and we were all helpless to do anything but stand back and watch. It was a truly harrowing display of violence, but also, you could tell there was a beautiful sort of release of tension. It’s something we’ve all thought about, just being able to go absolutely postal and then erase it all from having ever happened. All in all, I think it’ll make for some damn good TV.”

At press time, the Fallout writers are crafting a scene where a Deathclaw tears Walton Goggins limb from limb.

Rupee Value Plummets After Hyrule Field is Mowed

Posted on by Kate Danvers

HYRULE — The economy was in shambles Tuesday after groundskeepers mistakenly mowed Hyrule Field, uncovering hundreds of thousands of rupees. The workers were meant to be tending the Hyrule Castle garden as part of the ongoing renovations after the last three near-apocalypses.

“We coudnae tell where th’ bloody property line was wi’ hauf th’ ground floatin’ in th’ air like that,” said groundskeeper William MacDougal, recounting the incident, “we were just cuttin’ the weeds back a wee bit when it started rainin’ the blighted things.”

Word soon spread to nearby villages, causing locals to rush to the field to fill their wallets. Giant’s Wallets were soon the hot commodity around the kingdom, selling out within hours. However, the impact on the local economy was nearly immediate, with shops quickly running out of goods and the rupee value tanking.

Paul Moneybags, a spokesman for the Bank of Hyrule warned that inflation and economic collapse was inevitable.

“It’s simple math,” said Moneybags, “if everyone is rich, then no one is rich. Shopkeepers will need to raise their prices to keep up with demand. Ten arrows may be thirty rupees today and three hundred tomorrow. We’re already seeing the rupee being devalued in other kingdoms.”

Moneybags refused to entertain the idea of a new currency standard, but is rumored to have begun hoarding Korok Seeds. Local medicine shop owner Matthew Mercer scoffed at the idea.

“You know that’s their shit, right?”

At press time, the royal family had yet to release a statement regarding the incident or the fallout, though the dark red cloud over Hyrule Castle may indicate the economy is the least of their worries.

Hard Drive Investigates: Does Duke Nukem 3D Pass the Bechdel Test?

Posted on by Steve Packosky

The famed Bechdel Test, wherein a piece of media is judged on whether it has two named women characters engaged in a conversation about something other than a man, is perhaps the most well-known indicator of active female presence in media. It was developed by cartoonist Alison Bechdel in 1985, and has rightfully called attention to the ongoing problem of gender inequality in film and television over the past several decades.

As a means of encouraging representation in interactive media, the Hard Drive investigative team has decided to begin regularly applying the Bechdel Test to certain video games. Unfortunately, the first game chosen, socially-backward 1996 FPS “Duke Nukem 3D”, might not have been the best example to test the medium’s execution on the subject.

VERDICT

Fail. While Duke Nukem 3D does include scores of women throughout the entirety of the game, they are far from empowering depictions as the protagonist battles invading aliens who have taken over Los Angeles in between bouts of cringe-inducing remarks and needlessly explicit urination animations. The vast majority of women only speak as a means of begging for death as they are left suspended in strange cocoons by the aliens, only to be abandoned by the heartless Nukem as he progresses to the next level in his mission to conquer the aliens. Furthermore, it is later revealed that these poor women were only used as a ruse by the aliens to distract him while they begin their attack on Earth.

The Hard Drive investigative team was given a false sense of hope in the final cutscene, as Duke Nukem, having retired to his quarters after killing the Cycloid Emperor (the leader of the aliens) is called back to bed by an anonymous young lady. However, no further conversation is provided, and at any rate, there appeared to be only one woman present in the scene. The ensuing copulative noises are an embarrassingly unsubtle indication of the lack of insightful conversation that closes out the game.

Further hope was provided by the extra stages in the game’s Atomic Edition, with one of which being set in a place called “Babe Land”. However, while this lamentably appears to be the game’s biggest effort to pass the Bechdel Test, it still falls far short of a passing grade. Virtually none of the women in this level have a speaking part, and their inclusion only appears to be for the sake of dancing suggestively in sexy pirate costumes. 

While the Hard Drive investigative team fully intends on continuing its probes into various games’ performances on this important metric, it would like to apologize to the readers for the rocky start to this new column, and assures them that more thought will be put into the selection process going forward.

Game of Thrones: Kingsroad Perfectly Captures Careless, Half-Baked Feel of TV Show

Posted on by Jacob Albrecht

SEOUL, South Korea — The latest Westeros-based video game, Game of Thrones: Kingsroad has proven to be a faithful testament to more of the same-old disappointment fans of the franchise have come to loathe, disillusioned sources confirm.

“We are absolutely delighted to finally share our newest addition to the Game of Thrones universe with gamers and anyone else with a credit card and low standards for quality,” said HBO’s President and CEO Casey Bloys. “We are so grateful to the thousands of Thrones fans out there who have continuously been willing to throw their money at us for almost nothing in return, and with this newest game’s price tag of sort-of-but-not-really free, we can finally prey on more of those fans than ever.”

Eager players were quick to weigh in with their thoughts on developer Netmarble Neo’s latest Game of Thrones title.

“They really knocked it out of the park with this one,” claimed Alex Schumacher, 26. “With boring, drawn-out cutscenes; broken movement and repetitive combat, I really felt like I was right back in 2017 watching my favorite show fall apart at the seams. The greed and perversion of it all just gave me such a rush of nostalgia. Plus, this game at least gives me something to do while waiting for George to write The Winds of Winter. Yup, any day now.”

Netmarble Neo Executive Producer Hyun-il Jang gladly recounted the long and rigorous development process for this absolute dumpster fire.

“Funny enough, we sort of worked backwards when we set out to make Kingsroad,” said Hyun-il. “We started out by making a much better, far more robust version of the game, before working with the good people at HBO to ‘rough it up’ a bit. They felt that the game was far too enjoyable for Game of Thrones fans, who have become accustomed to cheap, flashy cash-grabs over the course of the last decade. With their input in mind, we were finally able to make the lackluster capitalist nightmare that is Game of Thrones: Kingsroad.”

At press time, Jon Snow assured us that just one more in-app purchase will vanquish the Army of the Dead for good.