The nice folks at Feral Interactive who make sure cool games get to the Mac announced this week they will be bringing one of our favorite games to the Mac platform. That game? Batman: Arkham Asylum.

Sure, those of you who’ve played it already on PS3 or XBox 360 may scoff and say “Who cares?” But those who love the Mac and don’t have a console gaming system (yes, those people exist) will now be able to enjoy one of the cooles games around on their beloved Macs.

The game features a story by Paul Dini, Batman writer and Emmy Award winner. It also features the voice talents of Mark Hamill and Kevin Conroy, who reprise their roles as The Joker and Batman from the animated TV series.

The game will reportedly cost $39.99 and will be available in stores or via download. Recommended system requirements for the game are as follows:

2.8 GHz or faster Intel-based Mac with 4GB RAM, Mac OS X 10.6.8 or later and a graphics card with at least 512 MB. Nvidia 7xxx series, ATI 1×00 and Intel GMA graphics chips are not supported.

Batman: Arkham Asylum will be available for the Mac on October 13th.

Though he may have been considered a joke when a certain former Cailifornaian Governor portrayed him back in the 90s, Mr. Freeze is a pretty bad ass member of Batman’s rogues gallery.

With a touching backstory and awesome gimmick, you could understand why the fine folks at Rocksteady and WB Games would want “the ice man” to be a villain in the upcoming sequel to Batman: Arkham Asylum.

From what we can tell, Freeze joins in the fight against Bats with fellow Arkham convicts The Riddler, Hugo Strange, and our old pal The Joker returning for more action.

We’ve got a brand new trailer in which Bats (played by the one and only Kevin Conroy) and Mr. Freeze have some pretty intense words, and even throw a few punches.

Check out the trailer after the jump and be sure to get on the Arkham City bandwagon as the game hits theaters October 21st.

Continue Reading →

For just over 20 years, former Skywaker Mark Hamill has made more of a name for himself in the comic book world than he ever did in the first three Star Wars films by becoming the definitive voice of The Joker in Batman: The Animated Series.

From TAS to Justice League, Birds of Prey, and just about any other animated incarnation of The Joker there has ever been, Hamill has literally been the only man to be best known as the voice of The Joker, past Nicholson and Ledger.

Now, Hamill returns for one last (hopefully not) appearance as the Clown Prince of Crime in the sequel to the successful video game Batman: Arkham Asylum. This time, Batman is on the prowl in the whole city, and Hamill’s Joker is ready to take him on. Again.

We also got to talk with Hamill about the possibility of voicing his favorite Joker storyline, which is Alan Moore’s “The Killing Joke”.

Check out exactly what Hamill had to say about the role and his history with the character after the jump, and be sure to grab Batman: Arkham City in stores on October 18th.

Continue Reading →

With the Blu-Ray release of the Star Wars saga coming this September, 20th Century Fox is titillating fans with a sneak peek at some of the extras, including this trailer of some footage cut from the original trilogy.

The clip shows a handful of glimpses at some deleted scenes, including the “wampas in the Hoth base” sequence. These aren’t from the digitally remastered/Greedo-shoots-first editions released in the late ‘90s; these are from the original original films, right down to the ‘70s film grain—and that’s not to say they look fuzzy. They’re as crisp and good-looking as you could want.

Fox plans to release Blu-Ray editions of both the original trilogy as well as the prequels and, for the fans who need every damn thing, a whopping nine-disc Complete Saga edition that will include over 30 hours of special features from deleted and alternative scenes like these to, well, pretty much anything else George has lying around in the archives.

You can view the trailer after the jump.

Continue Reading →

All things video games will be blowing up in the next week as Los Angeles is taken by storm with E3 news and announcements. We’ve got a few tidbits already before the show even happens, such as this little nugget about Catwoman being an official playable character in the upcoming Batman open-world game Batman Arkham City.

The game is written as a sequel to the massively popular third-person game Batman Arkham Asylum, in which you portrayed the Dark Knight (voiced by Kevin Conroy) as he took down some of the most well known names in his rogues gallery.

In this game, The Joker (voiced possibly for the last time by Mark Hamill) breaks free from captivity, again, to wreak havoc on the townspeople of Gotham City. The big news here is that the game will get a bit more female, as Catwoman has been announced as a playable character for several levels, instead of playing as Batman for the entire game.

Not only has this feature been announced, but there’s even a pretty hot video circulating around the web showing off the Cat of 9 Lives and how elastic and flexible she can be when taking down the thugs of Gotham.

Check out the video after the jump, and catch Batman Arkham Asylum on shelves October 18th.

Continue Reading →

While fans are anxiously awaiting the next big screen incarnations of Superman or Batman, Warner Bros. animation has been hard at work turning out some great animated content for the small screen. One such bit of awesome is the Justice League series.

The show recently wrapped up its second season and now the announcement has come out that the entire season will be available on Blu-ray soon. Here’s all the scoop from the official press release:

Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and their DC Comics super hero comrades burst onto the scene in dazzling high definition as Justice League: Season 2 arrives on Blu-ray™ for the first time. Produced by Warner Bros. Animation, the series’ 26-episode second season will be distributed on Blu-ray™ by Warner Home Video on July 26, 2011 for $39.99 SRP. Order due date is June 21,2011.

Amping up the action, intrigue and epic storylines from its successful first season, Justice League: Season 2 crossed new boundaries in its portrayal of the greatest fighting force in the universe. Comprised of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter and Hawkgirl, the Justice League wages war with their own personal demons and internal issues of mistrust and insecurity, all the while battling a most heinous collection of villains led by Darkseid, Brainiac, Solomon Grundy, Amazo, Joker, Vandal Savage and more.

Justice League Season 2 was produced by Bruce Timm and James Tucker. The core voice cast features George Newbern (Superman), Kevin Conroy (Batman), Susan Eisenberg (Wonder Woman), Michael Rosenbaum (Flash), Phil LaMarr (Green Lantern) Carl Lumbly (Martian Manhunter) and Maria Canals Barrera (Hawkgirl).

The guest cast includes many topline actors from film and television, most notably Mark Hamill (Star Wars) as Joker, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. (The F.B.I.) as Alfred, Robert Englund (A Nightmare on Elm Street) as Felix Faust, Powers Boothe (Deadwood, 24) as Gorilla Grodd, Ron Perlman (Hellboy, Sons of Anarchy) as both Clayface and Orion, Brad Garrett (Everybody Loves Raymond) as Lobo, Dennis Haysbert (24, The Unit) as Kilowog, Tom Sizemore (Saving Private Ryan) as Metamorpho, Eric Roberts (Runaway Train) as Mongul and Robert Picardo (Stargate) as Amazo.

Continue Reading →

Today seems to be a day for crazy short teasers for some great franchises. First we got the misleading teaser for Bay’s new Transformers: Dark of the Moon and now we’re getting a brand new teaser for the upcoming sequel to Batman: Arkham Asylum titled Arkham City.

This game promises to have more of an “open world” element, as it opens up to all of Gotham City, rather than the confines of Arkham Asylum like the last game. Here’s the rundown:

Set inside the heavily fortified walls of a sprawling district in the heart of Gotham City, this highly anticipated sequel introduces a brand-new story that draws together a new all-star cast of classic characters and murderous villains from the Batman universe, as well as a vast range of new and enhanced gameplay features to deliver the ultimate experience as the Dark Knight.

Of course we know that Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill are returning to voice Bats and The Joker. But there are tons of new villains and heroes that this game will feature, so we may get some great new voice actors to join in, adding to an already impressive cast list from Asylum.

The game has already been pushed from January to next fall, which could be either a good thing or bad, depending on how you look at it. In the meantime, click through to check out the all-new teaser for the game and set your inner geek to Stun.

Continue Reading →

This week on The Flickcast Chris and Matt are together again and ready to tackle a whole bunch of new and exciting topics. This week those topics include Zack Snyder as the director of Superman, more about True Grit and what Aaron Sorkin should write next.

In addition, they discussed casting news from Spider-Man, more TV show cancellations, The Social Network, Boardwalk Empire and the classic Mark Hamill film Corvette Summer. Finally, the boys made some picks again this week including Matt’s pick of the movie Monsters and Chris’ pick of Season 1.5 of Caprica.

As always, if you have comments, questions, critiques, offers of sponsorship or whatever, feel free to hit us up in the comments, on Twitter, at Facebook and MySpace or via email.

Fans of the MMORPG DC Universe will be happy to know that today Sony Online Entertainment announced that two of their best-known vocal talents will be voicing two of their most popular characters.

Mark Hamill (Star Wars), who voiced The Joker for both the early ’90s Batman: The Animated Series as well as the hit game Batman: Arkham Asylum, will be returning as The Clown Prince of Crime; and Kevin Conroy, voice of Batman himself, also in The Animated Series and Arkham Asylum, will again lend his talents as the Caped Crusader.

In addition to Hamill and Conroy, a number of other well-known voice talents fill out the cast, among them Adam Baldwin (Firefly, The X-Files, Angel) will be providing the voice of Superman while Gina Torres, star of the ABC series Huge and previously the voice of DC favorites Vixen and Superwoman, will be playing the Amazon Wonder Woman.

Continue Reading →

The Big Red One: The Reconstruction is director Samuel Fuller’s (Fixed Bayonets, The Steel Helmet, Merrill’s Marauders) autobiographical account of his experiences with the legendary 1st U.S. infantry division throughout World War II. Lee Marvin leads the cast of raw recruits which include Griff (Mark Hamill, fresh from success in Star Wars), Zab (Robert Carradine, who doubles as Fuller and the film’s narrator), Vinci (Bobby Di Cicco), Kaiser (Perry Lang), and Johnson (Kelly Ward).

This version of the 1980 film was released several years following Fuller’s death, which was in 1997, as a tribute to his lasting work and the version he intended his audiences to see. When this version was released in early 2005, I was overjoyed to see the original forty seven minutes which Fuller was forced to cut by the Warner Bros. executives.

The film opens as the guns fell silent on the Western Front in France during World War I in November of 1918. Lee Marvin begins his military career as a private who outlasts the war only twenty five years later, to fight once again on the battlefields of North Africa, Sicily, and Europe. The film serves as a combat diary of Marvin and his rifle squad of young, inexperienced boys who fast become hardened soldiers.

Continue Reading →

Batman: Arkham Asylum has been a video game property shrouded in mystery as of late. Up until now, the only exposure the public had with the game was the opening cinematic but we were recently given some time to play through the early part of this Batman adventure in what looks like it could be the first game to finally do the character justice.

Pulling from seventy years of Batman history, the developers of Batman: Arkham Asylum had a breadth of material to pick and inevitably chose the elements they thought would work best for the game. Arkham takes a much darker tone than previous Batman games, taking some influence from the relaunched movie series.

Though not tied in to the movie, it’s hard not to see a resemblance between the character models and gritty overtones of the game and those of the movies. The game starts with Batman bringing the Joker in to custody to Arkham Island. Things go awry and the Joker escapes and in the process unleashes the other denizens of Arkham Asylum.

Continue Reading →