Old Man Murray

It was a tough choice, either make www.oldmanmurray.com or slashdot my start page. Slashdot won, because it is updated with some amount of depenability, and I need to know the news. Well, not really.

Oldmanmurray is run by the brothers Chet and Erik of Cleveland Ohio, the same people who run the Portal of Evil Empire, at www.portalofevil.com. Oldmanmurray is the home of Marvin, the hateful, futuristic mascot. Portal of Evil is also the home of Seanbaby

Quite possibily the funniest website in the universe, I would pay untold millions to have the minds that those guys have, although the updating can hit dry spots at times. Lately, about once a week has been the norm. Their humor is very unique, and hits certain spots that I have never ever seen reproduced anywhere. At least to me, they are the perfection of what I think is really worth reading. I can't describe it any other way that as being perfect, and hitting the nail on the head of "what is good". If I was stranded on a desert island, and my ISP only had the bandwidth for one website a day, this would be it.

Old Man Murray also helped to launch Croatian developer Croteam's Serious Sam, which originally had been intended as a tech demo for the Serious Engine. I believe it was Erik who wrote a review ranting about the games greatness, bringing the demo much attention, and inspiring Croteam to extend and publish the demo as a budget game.

Serious Sam is a return to the frantic, hundreds-of-enemies-on-the-screen-at-once-oh-my-god, gameplay the likes of which hadn't been seen since Doom. The switch to true 3D never allowed the hordes of enemies to be quite that impressive. Serious Sam fixed that, and the game ran quite well on the mid- and low-end gaming system of its day. The game's sequel, The Second Encounter, was released in the First Quarter of 2002.

An easter egg in Serious Sam (in the first level, if you walk off the ramp and around the corner, back behind the pillars, and open the door) results in a group of big-headed Serious developers chanting "Old Man Murray" and various other "thank you"s.