There’s a new President of the United States and it’s got us thinking about the long line of fictional presidents we’ve seen over the years, whether it’s in our favorite movies, TV shows, or video games. After all, the role of president has popped up in so many stories over the years, that some actors have even played more than one version of the leader.
Whether you prefer the more comedic presidents, the stoic ones that stand up for all that is good and right, or even the ones that are–at their core–badass action heroes, there’s a POTUS for everyone. So come along as we look at our 15 favorite commanders in chief, including a couple that might surprise you.
Did your favorite fictional president not make the cut? Sound off in the comments and let us know who we missed. Then, let’s all go watch Air Force One together.
In Hitman 3, there’s murder in the air at Dartmoor mansion, as Agent 47 finds himself caught in the middle of a battle for succession. Not only has a member of the Carlisle family been murdered in his sleep, but the head of the family is also in danger of being next on the killer’s list. It’s up to Agent 47 to stop that from happening and finish the job himself.
For more guides, be sure to read our Hitman 3 mission 2 story walkthrough for Dartmoor (Murder in the Family). Otherwise, read our other assassination guides below. We’ll be posting more in the coming days.
With a fake funeral to prepare for, a photographer has been hired to capture what could be the final portrait of the surviving members of the Carlisle family. The only problem? His flash equipment won’t work as there’s no fuse to help power his devices. When the photographer decides to take a stroll around the estate grounds, tail him, and activate a nearby radio distraction that will draw his attention.
Subdue the photographer and place his body in a nearby dumpster in the garden maze. Having assumed his identity, Agent 47 needs to find a fuse to finish the photography session. The fuse can be found in two locations. One is on the east side of the manor near the delivery trucks, inside a fuse box that can be broken into with a nearby crowbar:
Alternatively, one of the fuses lies on a table near the two bodyguards outside, on the mansion’s west side. Before you place the fuse in the correct junction box, it’s time to do some sabotage after you take a test photo of the maid. When she goes off to call the Carlisle family, grab the screwdriver near the photography area and tamper with the plug socket next to the chair. Open the water valve next to it, and when Alexa Carlisle takes her seat, it’ll make for an electrifying portrait–One for the Ages, some would say.
Sweet Dreams
Carlisle will occasionally go upstairs to her office, which also contains a secret room where she vents her emotions. Infiltrating the tool before she gets there will reveal that a hidden passageway was built next to it. Activate the secret switch and wait for Carlisle to enter.
Once she’s inside, you have the perfect opportunity to assassinate her with various tools, but you do have to be quick as her personal bodyguard will check in on her. Once Carlisle is out of the way, you can exit through the secret room and avoid raising any alarm bells. Accomplish this swift kill and you’ll complete the Sweet Dreams challenge.
I Find This Amoosing
Carlisle’s office is a treasure trove of assassination opportunities. Her usual route will take her through it and under a chandelier that happens to be constructed out of many heavy moose antlers. Infiltrate the office wearing a disguise, through the secret passageway, or by climbing the walls outside, and make your way to the very top of the office staircase.
To accomplish the I Find This Amoosing challenge, all you have to do from here is wait for Alexa to enter, and with a well-timed shot, you can drop the expensive ornament directly on top of her.
Grave Mistake
In the Mission Story: Her Final Resting Place, Carlisle wants to make certain that her fake funeral is carried out properly, but you’ll have to ensure that her final resting place is up to the task. In the graveyard where the undertaker is waiting, a few nasty crows are ruining the atmosphere. Conceal yourself in the nearby bushes, and take care of those nests with a few well-aimed shots from your silenced pistol if you have it equipped.
Clear the area of any potential witnesses, take out the undertaker and inform the nearby staff that you’re ready to show Carlisle her burial site.
Once she arrives and provides some destructive criticism, Carlisle will stand over her burial plot in a very precarious position. Her bodyguard will also be standing behind her tombstone; his vision obstructed entirely by the massive slab of granite. Kick Carlisle into the grave to complete the Grave Mistake challenge, and for some extra challenge points, grab the shovel behind the tombstone to finish her burial.
Keep Calm And Aim
For a long-distance option, you’ll need to focus on preparation. Once your career mastery is high enough, you’ll be able to smuggle a sniper rifle into the mansion and carry it around in a briefcase that won’t alert any guards.
Head to the graveyard and get rid of the crow nests there, but do not complete the rest of this story mission. Grab a mansion staff uniform, and you’ll be able to freely enter Carlisle’s office on the very top floor. On the staircase leading to the observation deck, you can climb the ledge and exit through a window that leads to the rooftop.
With your sniper rifle equipped, merely wait for Carlisle to begin the inspection of her burial plot and wait for the perfect moment to take your shot. Time it right, and you’ll not only eliminate her, but you’ll also hide her body with your precise sniping skill. Either way, killing Carlisle this way completes the Keep Calm and Aim challenge.
Another Death In the Family / Poison Ivy
Carlisle believes that someone is out to get her, and she’s not wrong. If you head to the greenhouse, you’ll find a broken apparatus that can be used to create a lethal dose of poison. You’ll need a wrench to repair it, but if you do and then proceed to blame the murder of Zachary on Fernsby or claim that it was a suicide (more on that below), Carlisle will eventually be poisoned.
Wait long enough in the Dartmoor mission and Carlisle will address her family, finishing to take a sip of her drink and fainting dead on the spot from a poison that was measured to precisely kill her. Once she kicks the bucket, you will complete both the Another Death In the Family and the Poison Ivy challenges.
A Matter of Justice / A Matter of Loyalty / A Matter of Guilt
Who killed Zachary Carlisle? That’s the question that a famous detective has been called to answer, but Agent 47 may be the better sleuth for this job. Once you’ve assumed the identity of the private eye (who enters through the gate you start near), a grand murder mystery will play out in Dartmoor. Framed to look like a suicide, Zachary’s death was actually a murder committed by a Carlisle family member.
It’ll be up to 47 to deduce the identity of the culprit, and with a stack of intel from the butler, there’s plenty of questioning to be done and a tight time frame before the murderer strikes again. You won’t need to question everyone to find the killer, though, as investigating two key locations will reveal who killed Zachary. Investigate all the clues in Zachary’s room, find the secret passage hidden behind a bookshelf, and question the murderer.
After you’ve investigated her room and the nearby greenhouse, you’ll have enough evidence to accurately reveal the true killer’s role in the death of Zachary. If you have a wrench with you, you can also fix Zachary’s equipment and produce the toxin for yourself. You’ll be allowed upstairs into Alexa Carlisle’s office on the third floor. Once you’ve presented your evidence and successfully identified the real murderer to Alexa, you’ll be able to earn a monetary reward or the Arthur Edwards case file. This completes the A Matter of Justice challenge.
It’s worth noting there are other conclusions you can make to solve this mystery, such as implicating Fernsby the butler or ruling the murder was a suicide, but each requires a bit more work to unlock. For more details on where to find all the clues to choose these conclusions, check out our Dartmoor murder mystery clues guide. Regardless, if you tell Alexa that Zachary committed suicide, you will complete the A Matter of Guilt challenge and earn the case file. In turn, this triggers the murderer to eventually poison Alexa, giving you both the Poison Ivy and Another Death in the Family challenges. Alternatively, tell Alexa that it was the butler, and you’ll earn the A Matter of Loyalty challenge.
Whichever decision you make, you’ll be left alone in a big office with minimal security and plenty of chances to grab a few challenges when you get to work. And after talking to Alexa, she will walk out to the balcony, leaving 47 a perfect opportunity to make her fake funeral a very real one whichever way you please.
When drone technology first started to emerge as a new viable, flyable conveyance the pitch by engineers and companies emphasized the pragmatic: Drones would be a way to make unmanned deliveries, for example, of textbooks to students who live far away from schools. Many years later, and the promise for drone tech’s future is now reportedly in delivering pizzas to government-approved landing zones, because this is what 2021 looks like.
The Wall Street Journal has filed a report indicating that Pizza Hut Israel is now exploring and fully expecting by June to “test sending drones to drop multiple orders” at designated spaces like parking lots–“delivery drivers will collect orders from these makeshift drone ports and take them on the final leg to customers.” In other words, customers will not yet be able to accept a delivery directly from a drone, so there’s still something to look forward to.
“Drone delivery is a sexy thing to talk about, but it’s not realistic to think we’re going to see drones flying all over the sky dropping pizzas into everyone’s backyards anytime soon,” Ido Levanon told the Wall Street Journal. Levanon is the managing director of Dragontail Systems Ltd., the technology firm coordinating Pizza Hut’s drone trial.
On the other hand, this is exactly the sort of thing people in the know would say to temper expectations so when they reveal something like this actually will be possible, people will lose their minds in excitement. Despite the far-flung wackiness to the topic overall, the path for pizza-drone deliveries is seriously being explored around the globe–along with Israel, the United States and the United Kingdom are also exploring practical concerns to assure a path for pizza-drone deliveries and other use cases. No solid, plausible timeline has firmed up elsewhere–so there’s a lot riding on Pizza Hut Israel’s plans for this summer.
On the movie front, Disney+ is debuting Flora and Ulysses on February 19. Per Disney, the film is “based on the Newbery Award-winning book about 10-year old Flora, an avid comic book fan and a self-avowed cynic, whose parents have recently separated. After rescuing a squirrel she names Ulysses, Flora is amazed to discover he possesses unique superhero powers which take them on an adventure of humorous complications that ultimately change Flora’s life–and her outlook–forever.”
Check out the slideshow gallery below for a spotlight of some of the most notable February Disney+ releases, followed by the full list:
Update: 1/20/21: Shortly following the inauguration of Joseph Biden as the United States’ new president, Twitch announced it has indefinitely maintained its suspension of former President Donald Trump’s Twitch channel “due to the ongoing risk of further incitement of violence.”
The decision to indefinitely suspend the account comes as the company endeavors “to remove the potential for harm to our community and the general public,” following the company’s previous move to disable the channel earlier this month on January 7. Twitch’s full statement reads:
“We have indefinitely suspended President Trump’s Twitch channel due to the ongoing risk of further incitement of violence. The President’s statements continue to be interpreted as calls to action, and we are taking this action to remove the potential for harm to our community and the general public.
Twitch has clear rules that prohibit hateful conduct, harassment, or incitement of violence on our service, and we consider off-service events when making enforcement decisions. However, the events of the past weeks have highlighted a gap with respect to rhetoric that encourages violence, regardless of whether or not it was directly streamed on Twitch. We will be updating our policies as a result of our consideration of this situation.”
Original story follows:
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Livestreaming platform Twitch has announced it has disabled the channel for President Donald Trump on Thursday.
In a statement to IGN from a Twitch spokesperson, “In light of yesterday’s shocking attack on the Capitol, we have disabled President Trump’s Twitch channel.”
The company added, “Given the current extraordinary circumstances and the President’s incendiary rhetoric, we believe this is a necessary step to protect our community and prevent Twitch from being used to incite further violence.”
Yesterday, both chambers of U.S. Congress met to certify the results of the 2020 U.S. Presidential elections which determined Joe Biden as the winner. Donald Trump, who for weeks espoused conspiracy theories that the election has been stolen, addressed a nearby crowd who then marched to the Capitol and briefly clashed with police and occupied the Capitol buildings.
US legislators from both parties were forced to either flee or barricade themselves for safety.
Following these events, digital companies have taken measures to limit Trump’s presence to prevent further violence. Facebook has announced it will indefinitely ban Trump from Facebook and Instagram, and Twitter has initiated a temporary ban.
Trump’s official Twitch channel was once suspended previously in 2020 after it rebroadcasted several rallies which Twitch says violated its Hateful Conduct guidelines.
Twitch has also recently removed the popular ‘PogChamp’ emote based on fighting game player Ryan ‘Gootecks’ Gutierrez following comments he made in the aftermath of the Capitol Hill insurgency which Twitch says called for further violence.
It’s unclear how long Trump’s Twitch account will remain disabled, but Twitch says it is focused on minimizing harm during the transition period, which is the next two weeks until Joe Biden is inaugurated as President.
A demo build for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time has turned up alongside an old N64 demo cartridge which housed Nintendo racer F-Zero X. Though the demo was partially saved over, some of it was intact enough to reveal new details about the Nintendo classic.
Details about the demo and its existence were shared by Forest of Illusion, a site dedicated to preserving Nintendo’s history. There were several surprises found in the demo data, including several magical spell medallions that were supposed to grant Link different abilities to help with his journey.
Here’s the F-Zero X development cartridge which contains the Spaceworld 97 Zelda 64 data in the overdump. There doesn’t appear to be much code or music, just graphics and maps. Zelda 64 data begins at 0x1000000 in hex.https://t.co/DsFpv5uVaupic.twitter.com/JUyOjGRP5w
One of these medallions, the Soul Medallion, allowed Link to turn into Navi and fly around as the fairy. Others would have allowed our hero to shoot fire arrow-like projectiles, cloak himself in darkness to escape enemies, and to both create and extinguish fire.
Other changes found in the demo were a more simplified version of Kakariko Village, a different Hyrulian world map, Link’s Pegasus Boots making their return, and the ability to ride Epona in an early version of the archery test.
Fans have also been translating text found in the game and have implied that Ocarina of Time may have had a pretty different plot than what we got. For instance, the Deku Tree was originally going to be a prison for Navi and other fairies that Link was going to break them out of.
For more details on what can be found within the demo data, check out this thread. But be warned, fans who have checked out these files have stated that the ROM is only partially complete, since it was saved over with the F-Zero files. The demo was likely never supposed to be viewed by the public, so historians are lucky to have what details they were able to salvage.
Twitch has indefinitely banned Donald Trump. Previously, the streaming platform temporarily suspended Trump’s Twitch account after the Capitol attacks. Now, with the ban, Trump cannot make another account nor appeal Twitch’s decision.
In a statement to The Verge, a Twitch spokesperson stated, “We have indefinitely suspended President Trump’s Twitch channel due to the ongoing risk of further incitement of violence.”
“The President’s statements continue to be interpreted as calls to action, and we are taking this action to remove the potential for harm to our community and the general public. Twitch has clear rules that prohibit hateful conduct, harassment, or incitement of violence on our service, and we consider off-service events when making enforcement decisions. However, the events of the past weeks have highlighted a gap with respect to rhetoric that encourages violence, regardless of whether or not it was directly streamed on Twitch. We will be updating our policies as a result of our consideration of this situation,” the spokesperson continued.
Twitch previously banned Trump in June 2019 for two weeks, citing “hateful conduct.” Multiple social media platforms have effectively banned Trump after the riot he incited on January 6. Twitter permanently banned Trump and said it was doing so in order to prevent the “risk of further incitement of violence.”
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It’s been tough trying to snag a PS5 or Xbox Series X in 2021, but GameStop has announced customers will have another chance this Thursday, January 21. The video game retailer plans to restock PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch bundles, though a limited number of units is expected, so you’ll want to be quick if you want a new console.
Unfortunately, it’s unclear exactly when the PS5 or Xbox Series X|S will be restocked. GameStop’s Twitter account will post when they’re live, but you can always keep an eye on our PS5 restock and Xbox Series X availability guides for updates. No bundles are currently available for the PS5 and Xbox Series X, but they will likely appear at the links below tomorrow. People can expect a variety of extra accessories and games thrown into the bundles, which will make them more expensive than the standard consoles.
The difficulty in buying one of the new consoles has been tough, especially with PS5 scalpers snatching the units before anyone else. The latest shipment was at Target, which had the PS5 in stock this morning. Of course, those units didn’t last long either. Both versions of Sony’s new console were available for a few moments on the retailer’s website, though only in-store pickup was available. It’s worth checking your local Target–and other stores–for PS5 and Xbox Series X units just in case.
As for the Nintendo Switch, it hasn’t nearly been as hard to find in stores. However, with the current pandemic, game console sales have gone up, causing shortages and delivery delays even for Nintendo’s three-year-old platform. If you’re looking for a Switch of your own, see our full guide on where to buy a Switch in 2021, including its special editions.
Hulu has announced that starting on January 25, fans of Paul Feig’s coming-of-age high school drama Freaks and Geeks will be able to stream the show on the platform. The streaming service also confirmed that its original soundtrack will remain intact.
The show was previously available on other networks and platforms, like FXX and Netflix. However, due licensing disputes, these brief revivals of Freaks and Geeks contained altered scenes where music cues were changed and an almost entirely different score. This wasn’t the case for those who own Freaks and Geeks on DVD, which retains its iconic soundtrack. This is a big deal, as the show’s music is performed by artists like Billy Joel, Grateful Dead, The Who, and Van Halen, all musicians who really help set the tone for Freaks and Geeks’ setting.
According to The A.V. Club, Hulu confirmed that with bringing this iconic drama back to television, the streaming platform was able to secure the show’s original soundtrack.
Show creator Paul Feig, in a statement to The A.V. Club, said he’s “so thrilled” that not only is Hulu bringing the show back, but that it was able to revive it with the original music to boot.
“I’m so thrilled that Hulu is bringing Freaks And Geeks back to the [airwaves] with the original music.” Feig told the publication, “For me, the thought of our show without all the original music intact is like running the series with several of the characters cut out. The music is as big a part of this show as the writing and the performances. This is the only way to see our show and I can’t thank Hulu enough for putting us back on the air.”
Created by Feig and executive produced by Judd Apatow, Freaks and Geeks is a coming-of-age drama about a group of students navigating high school in the early ’80s. Though it only ran for one season from 1999-2000, the show featured a star-studded cast and kickstarted the careers of many household Hollywood names, including Becky Ann Baker, James Franco, Jason Segel, Linda Cardellini, and Seth Rogan. Additionally, other now-prominent stars made guest appearances on Freaks and Geeks, like Ben Stiller, Rashida Jones, and Shia LaBeouf.
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Crunchyroll has been a prominent name in the anime industry for years now. The company has been the go-to for anime streaming for a while, but it has expanded into other ventures in recent years, with one of the most interesting being video game publishing.
In 2016, Crunchyroll Games began publishing games based on anime or original titles featuring anime-like art styles–the most recent of which, Princess Connect! Re:Dive, released in the US on January 19 after a successful launch in Asia back in 2018. The publisher has worked on games about other established properties, like Mob Psycho 100, as well as original IP, like Grand Alliance, all in the hopes of promoting types of games that traditionally haven’t done as well in the west. Though there are exceptions, like last year’s Genshin Impact, plenty of anime or anime-looking games just don’t make a splash in American or European markets.
“I think [game publishing] goes in hand with our philosophy, which is our long-term vision to be a more significant kind of piece of that anime ecosystem, of that puzzle,” Crunchyroll general manager of games & head of 360 Terry Li told me. “We already are on the video side, but I think on the game side, there’s certainly an aspiration that we want to get more involved in game development, game publishing. Not for the sake of just doing that, but because we do believe that today there’s an abundance of games that get made in Asia around this anime ecosystem that don’t fully consider a global audience.”
Li mentions that developers tend to design for their immediate audience. Which, of course, makes sense. An American developer is likely designing its game with an American audience in mind, so it stands to reason, as Li argues, that the same is true for Asian developers. A Chinese developer likely most cares about appealing to the immediate Chinese audience, for instance, and a Japanese developer likely feels the same way for Japanese audiences. And because of this design philosophy, certain games don’t translate as well when they’re ported overseas.
“And that’s why you statistically see so many games that get ported over, they only do anywhere between 15 to 20% of what they did back home, even within the case where it’s a global audience,” Li said. “And part of that is because they don’t put as much effort into marketing it and part of that is that they designed the core loop and the narrative to fit within the initial audience. And they haven’t really thought, ‘Well, do Western audiences play games like this?'”
That’s where Crunchyroll Games wants to come in. Crunchyroll has been in the anime space–an industry that, like gaming, straddles both the western and eastern hemispheres–and thus it has a great deal of experience in how to market the same piece of media to two very different audiences. As it stands, anime and gaming audiences have a lot of overlap, so Crunchyroll being able to reach the former means it can market to the latter as well. For now, that means helping games from Chinese and Japanese developers better translate their systems for Western audiences, though Crunchyroll Games wants to do more in the years to come.
“Starting this year with Princess Connect and going forward, we do have a lot more involvement, if only at least around ensuring that the overall narrative within the game and the anime makes sense,” Li said. “We are hoping to leverage our kind of expertise in anime to provide more data points and share more feedback to our partners in Japan, helping them navigate where the storylines [between the anime and the game] should diverge or should evolve or should pivot entirely.”
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Beyond that, Crunchyroll Games wants to take a more active role in the development process for anime games and indie games with anime-inspired art styles, assisting studios with ensuring their titles appeal to a global audience, regardless of whether those players watch anime. According to Li, the point is to get “games that were relatively unknown, or at least underserved in the Western market” into the hands of players that may like these types of games, they just don’t yet know they exist. “Practically speaking, the reason we focused on free-to-play so far in mobile is, we’re really trying to create a more this feeling of accessibility,” Li said. “We want to be able to get our games into as many people’s hands as possible. And so we made the conscious decision that putting up a paywall or a game that you have to purchase will severely limit the audience.”
Li adds that as Crunchyroll Games grows, it hopes to impact genres beyond free-to-play mobile titles. Working with the studios that develop console and PC anime games or titles that feature anime-inspired art is the next step. “As the situation evolves, we will certainly start looking at games that can do cross-platform or support cross-play,” Li said. Because that’s becoming more and more common nowadays.”
For now, though, Crunchyroll Games is sticking to mobile games and already has a few more titles in the pipe. Li wasn’t able to share what those were with me, but I did ask if any might have come about based on the announcement of the recent acquisition of Crunchyroll by Funimation, a company that’s in turn owned by Sony, which of course owns the PlayStation platform. “Good question,” Li said. “To be honest, we just haven’t had this discussion. The deal is still in the works and so as of right now, we’re operating under ‘business as usual.’ But if that situation does come, if the deal actually closes, then I’m sure we will talk about it. But nothing yet.”
For now, if you’re looking to download a Crunchyroll Games title, you do have a few options. As previously mentioned, Princess Connect! Re:Dive is the most recent release–it also got an anime in 2020, one of our favorites for the year, which is getting a second season in 2021. However, there’s also Mass of the Dead, Grand Alliance, Naruto X Boruto Ninja Tribes, Mob Psycho 100: Psychic Battle, RWBY: Crystal Match, and Grand Summoners. All seven games are available for both Android and iOS devices.
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