Hey folks,
I was browsing my computer files and came across a few folders of Dr. Manbot stuff.  Oh, what good times.  So in this thread, I'm going to post an article, a pic, a something about once a day from the ol' DMB Online HQ.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Dr. Manbot...back in 2002 when Freedom Force had just hit the shelves, a few of us (myself, BAD and Zapow) published an ezine dedicated to the character Manbot, only as a doctor!  The ezine was published every two weeks at first, then monthly, then whenever-we-could-get-it-togetherly.  We put together a whopping 29 issues in 2+ years before succumbing to your oh-so-typical "30th issue blues".

I'm going to kick things off with an ad for Podmark's book "Dr. Manbot: In the Crosshairs".


Feel free to post your own DMB reminiscings if you have them!
Tortuga

I'm still waiting for my cut on that book. My agent said I'd have it once he got back from hawaii. It's been like 4 years and he's still not back yet.

Issue #5 (Sept 30, 2002) was a biggie.  We introduced Ted Mentor, Mentor's accountant/balloon animal expert brother to the world of DMB, but we also had the opportunity to interview Freedom Force's creator, Ken Levine.  It was pretty amazing to be shmoozing with IG staffers at the height of FF's popularity.  Here's the interview and accompanying pic:



During a recent campaign stop in Boston, Dr. Man Bot dropped by Irrational Games, the gaming developers that brought his tragic story to thousands of homes in the PC game Freedom Force. The Doctor spent some time with writers, actors and janitors in hopes to gain some insight as to the future of Freedom Force. IG co-founder Ken Levine was more than happy to sit down and chat with Dr. Man Bot.

Dr. Man Bot: So Ken, are you originally from Boston?
Ken Levine: Yes. No. Yes. No. I don't think so.

DMB: Is the looming baseball strike merely a ploy by the Red Sox not to be embarrassed by the Yankees again?
Ken: Well, since it was called off, I'd say it's a ploy by you to make me look like an idiot.

DMB: Is it true you appeared as an extra on "Spencer for Hire"?
Ken: No. I appeared as a "Featured Guest Star"

DMB: Boston the band: long haired, screaming freaks or rock n' roll innovators?
Ken: Hey, when I was in fifth grade, I was way into seeing Marian walking away.

DMB: OK, Ken, down to FF business. The Irrational lawyers haven't gotten back to me on my proposed FF expansion "Dr. Manbot & the Wonder Twins". What gives?
Ken: That's because we don't have lawyers. We traded them for rabbis. There's a two for one special.

DMB: Rumours abound that Irrational Games got its name from your psychological profile. Any comment, nutso?
Ken: Talk to co-founder Jon Chey. He's the unstable one.

DMB: Does the Celestial Clock have cable, and if so, WHERE IS THE FREAKIN' REMOTE?!
Ken: While it's pretty durn tragic that you got stuck out there in the celestial clock, I've taken the liberty of installing Direct TV. Enjoy the Spice Channel, my metallic friend.

DMB: On to some personal matters, Ken, have you ever eyed a Kangaroo in an amorous manner?
Ken: I wouldn't say "eyed".

DMB: Have you ever eaten at Shoney's?
Ken: I hope not.

DMB: Is it morally wrong for a man to paint his house when he could be watching sports and drinking heavily?
Ken: No. But it's morally wrong for a heavy man to play sports. Heavy men should play Ultima IV, as is tradition.

DMB: Where do babies come from?
Ken: My girlfriend won't tell me.

DMB: OK, enough of the chit chat. Level with us. How drunk was the Irrational staff when the patch was designed?
Ken: I didn't realize Irrational had a staff.

DMB: Does the Dr. Man Bot mesh make my arse look fat?
Ken: No. Your arse handles that task quite nicely.

DMB: Would "Doctor Manbot Assemble!" constitute copyright infringement?
Ken: No, it would just be dumb.

DMB: Can you include a "Twinkie" eating contest between myself and Timemaster in FF2?
Ken: Yes. No. Okay.

DMB: There were unconfirmed rumours that several Irrational staffers were caught trying to raise quick cash by selling illegal naked meshes of Alchemiss and Eve in "friendly" positions. What do you know about this?
Ken: I'd prefer to see pictures of them enjoying a Fribble at a nearby Friendly's Ice Cream franchise. Like most American males, I really like ice cream.

DMB: How much would it cost to revive this project, for um...legal reasons?
Ken: How much do you have on you? I mean, right now?

DMB: You hang out on the FF community boards every now and then, were you as blown over as I was to discover Marmeille was not a girl?
Ken: That was the second time I've been suprised to discover someone important to me was not a girl.

DMB: Max told me to ask you what your plans were for my character in future episodes of FF. Just between you and me. This won't be printed...honest...*winking*
Ken: You're trapped in the Celestial Clock. How could you possibly come back from that? We created Freedom Force with one guiding principle: unswerving devotion to hard core scientific accuracy, and we're not about to betray our charter just for you!

DMB: And perhaps the most important question of all - Does Minute Man's stickie thing really talk? He swears it talks to him.
Ken: I'd rather not think about Minute Man's sticky thing.

DMB: And as a follow up, is the duration of FF really just a delusion in Frank Stiles' mind when he went to the park and forgot to take his medication?! You know what I mean? Kind of like that last episode of Newhart.
Ken: Yes. In FF 2, MinuteMan wakes up with Suzanne Pleshette and realizes the whole New England country Inn thing was just a dream.

...
...Marmeille's a dude?
...well, that's awkward. :blink:

Grmpf. Still waiting for FF2, Kevin! No, not that FF1.5 vs. The Thrid Rate, the real FF2... You know, THE ONE WITH THE TWINKIE-EATING CONTEST? Ke-viiin?

(Of course, I'm still waiting for the Revenge of the Return of the Rampaging Dr. Man-Bot Fist of Drunken Strike Back movie in glorious 3D with goggles. But then again, these days, I'd probably settle for just the musical.)

OMG!! I was/am DMB's biggest fan!

Squeee!!!!

-MJB[

One of the things I loved about working on DMB was how quick little cameos turned into recurring characters.  A. Hammy Sammich was the first of such characters, who was introduced in Issue #2 (Aug. 19, 2002).  Here's Hammy's intro story:

DR. MANBOT DEVOURS POTENTIAL RUNNING MATE
BAD, Staff Writer

A bizzare twist in the political landscape for the 2004 presidential campaign occured last week. One of the prime condenders for the Dr. Man Bot ticket met an untimely end, when during a meeting with the Doctor, A. Hammy Sammich was eaten. "It just looked so freakin' good," said the doctor with his mouth full, licking mayo off his fingers.
"I asked my advisors to do the meeting after lunch, but does anybody listen to me? Noooo. My advisors couldn't advise Ms Cleo." This prompted the candidate to attempt to hire Ms. Cleo as an advisor, but was then notified that Ms. Cleo was still under criminal indictment.

Tonight in COH, BAD told me that apparently Dr. Manbot was mentioned on G4 Tech TV ages ago.  I went looking on YouTube but couldn't find anything.  But I did run across a bunch of fun DMB-related things in Google.  Here's an excerpt from an interview with Ken prior to FFvstTR found at Rock, paper, Shotgun:

Quote
So, generally speaking, Ken's pleased with Freedom Force, with only regrets over the relatively vestigial multiplayer component tempering his joy (It's notable that the forthcoming sequel, the brilliantly named Freedom Force versus The Third Reich has considerably developed this area). But what most pleases him? "The most gratifying thing, I think, is going on the Freedom Force fansites and not knowing what the hell they're talking about," he grins, "The whole world is being create and a whole language being created. Irrational is irrelevant to it, in some ways. We enable it, and made their own permutations about it. Like Doctor Man-bot." It's unsurprising that the game produced such a relatively witty fan-base. After all, Freedom Force was cut from very similar spandex. "It had a sense of humour which made it stand out," Ken notes. Large communities mean more niche areas. More niche areas mean... well, things like Dr Manbot a fairly surrealistic riff off the perpetually depressed metal-clad hero from Freedom Force. We quote from the (currently down, alas) site: "Left stranded by his Freedom Force teammates on the Celestial Clock, Dr. Manbot eventually wiggled free and jumped ahead to the year 2003. Made his claim to fame by offering ill advice in a frank and brutally honest manner, often under the influence...". We especially like his fried Ted Mentor, who is simply Mentor from Freedom Force with a gloriously attached moustache. "I don't know what the hell they're talking about it, and that's great - because they've taken the game and made it their own," states Ken, gleefully bewildered.

I also found a discussion at rpg.net (from 2007!) in which one forum user is sharing the characters he and his buddies use in their games:

Quote"Don't Steal Dr. Manbot's Booze Dr Manbot was a character created at another forum as a joke character. But we loved him so much he became at least a recurring character in every RP. The beer was his power source(along with waffles, mentioned below) and anyone caught stealing his beer was blasted by a cosmic burst. Now used to signify powerful characters and how to keep them sated.

Leon, the waffle-making pony Any kind of NPC Creature that sounds utterly stupid the first time you hear of it, but totally awesome any time after. There were entire storylines built around Leon.

Radioactive Pimp Dr Manbot became so popular he started his own website. One of the things they did was remix lines of dialogue from "Freedom Force" into music tracks. The one starring Microwave, the group's robot, sounds like he's channeling Wilt Chamberlain. The term now describes something unexpectedly awesome.

Tiny Wingspan One character was a dragonking, but because of his avatar cropping off the edges of his character picture, it looked like the fearsome dragonking had a relative wingspan of one inch to his seven foot frame. Used to describe a physical lacking in a character."

They even yoinked Nightdragon, lol!  Further on in the discussion they share the Dr. Manbot mp3s, heh.

Ah, the good old days.

I will say that a certain lawyer will be showing up in the pages of Everyday Heroes...

Sniff.. the legacy shall live on in the annals of ...well...someplace.

I demands the origin of Leon.

I DEMANDS IT.



LEON 4EVA!

I dont think we ever got around to that. Other than intimating he was a product of Nazi super science, of course.

Issue #6 (Oct. 14, 2002) was a definite favourite from the early DMB issues.  It was an all-music special, which included this gem:


TED MENTOR: HIP-HOP OR FLIP-FLOP?
BAD, Staff Writer

Ted Mentor's first rap single "I'm Accountin' on my Homies" debuted at a disappointing #538, according to sources at Billboard magazine. The song debuted between other entries titled "Listen to me Sneeze" and "Mechanic's Audio Repair Manual: Ford Explorer 1990-1994".

"I knew he sucked, but 538? Who bought the damn thing besides him? A blind guy making a wrong purchase?" mused an obviously disgusted Dr. Man Bot, as he signed autographs outside his performance at "Lord of the Dance". Mr. Mentor's attempt to break into the Hip Hop market was also met with universal pans from the critical media. "ET Cracker can't rap", "My ears bleed", "Music to torture animals by" were among the kinder bi-lines for the reviews.

Mr. Mentor has cancelled his appearance on MTV's TRL, and blamed his album's lack of success on "Mixing" and "Bad Marketing Strategy." It was pointed out to this reporter that 5 out of 10 of those that pre-screened Mr. Mentor's album are still hospitalized.

---

Along with the Music Special, Dr. Manbot released preview clips from his album "Dr. Manbot and Friends: Power Time".  Take a listen!
Dr. Manbot: "Full Force"
Dr. Manbot: "Power Time"
Dr. Manbot: "I'm Bad News"

I'll post the "Friends" part of "Dr. Manbot and Friends" over the course of the next few days.

I was under the impression that Leon had no origin, that he simply was and is and forever shall be--and that, by contrast, his waffles have a lifespan of about 4 minutes and 30 seconds (4 minutes to cook and 30 seconds to be consumed).

ow_tiobe_sb
Phantom Bunburyist and Fop o' th' Morning

I seem to remember writing an article regarding super pony experiments by exiles in Argentina. I dunno.

Our best audio thingy had to be the DMB voice pack.

Never did get around to the Ted Mentor one...

The voice pack still gives me the giggles.

I actually just gave a couple a listen.

"Cant think - mentally constipated" made me do a spit take.

Quote from: captainspud on February 25, 2008, 06:42:23 AM
I demands the origin of Leon.

I DEMANDS IT.

Relax, Spud.

You're not the father.

Ahhh! Good stuff. Good times.

Quote from: B A D on February 25, 2008, 07:25:17 AM
I dont think we ever got around to that. Other than intimating he was a product of Nazi super science, of course.

I wrote an origin story for Leon in one of those issues.

That post the basement turtle quoted from rpg.net was mine. I believed everyone should understand the inherent awesome of DMB. I would have voted for him, but his name was never on the ballot.

Dammit... I knew we forgot something...

DMB was too busy attempting to answer a McDonald's skill testing question that week.

It's so funny: I was playing FF at the same time you all were, but didn't have the good fortune of discovering FR back then  :(.  I'm so glad that you chose Manbot, though!  He was my favorite personality of all the characters because he was just so....human. I still remember how he spoke - every time I selected him for a turn and he said "What?", I'd giggle like a kindergartner.

EC

You need to hear the Voice Pack, con. Itll leave you breathless.

Great stuff! I started playing FF literally 2 weeks after you guys stopped doing this. My bad luck hard at work!

Voice Pack? *Ears perk up*

Tort will post the linky when he gets darned good and ready. Im not mucking with the 2008 Cadoodle winner.

Here's the link to the Dr. Manbot voice pack zipped -- 50+ three-five second mp3s, heh.  These lines were written by BAD, Zap and myself, and voiced by Ian Vogel the voice of Manbot.
Voice Pack

And here are a few more preview mp3s from Dr. Manbot and Friends:
MC Minuteman sings: For Freedom!
Mentor and the Sons of Shakar sing: I Must Not Lose!
Microwave sings: Unit Ready

Ok. i just downloaded and randomized the voicepack and the songs  into my son's IPOD.

SWEET REVENGE!!!