Ruins

Ruins are the remains of human-made architecture: structures that were once complete, as time went by, have fallen into a state of partial or complete disrepair, due to lack of maintenance or deliberate acts of destruction. Natural disaster, war and depopulation are the most common root causes, with many structures becoming progressively derelict over time due to long-term weathering and scavenging.

There are famous ruins all over the world, from ancient sites in China, the Indus valley and Judea to Zimbabwe in Africa, ancient Greek, Egyptian and Roman sites in the Mediterranean basin, and Incan and Mayan sites in the Americas. Ruins are of great importance to historians, archaeologists and anthropologists, whether they were once individual fortifications, places of worship, houses and utility buildings, or entire villages, towns and cities. Many ruins have become UNESCO World Heritage Sites in recent years, to identify and preserve them as areas of outstanding value to humanity.

Cities

Ruins (Australian band)

Ruins is an Australian black metal band, based in Hobart, Tasmania. The band was formed somewhere between 2000 and 2002 by Alex Pope, (formerly of the Sea Scouts,) and Dave Haley (The Amenta, Blood Duster and Psycroptic).

Recording

Ruins began as a recording project, featuring Pope supplying vocals, guitar and bass, with Haley on drums. It has been incorrectly reported that Haley is merely a session player in the band, and he has publicly dismissed such views as nonsense. The band consists of two core-members used on recordings, with extra live members added for shows, similar to Norwegian black metal band, Satyricon. Initial recordings were intended for demo purposes only, but were decided later to be of sufficient quality for public use. Their first recording, Atom and Time, was released in 2004 by Blacktalon Media.

Their debut full length album Spun Forth as Dark Nets was engineered by Joe Haley, Dave's brother and member of the live Ruins line-up. From the response to their recordings, Ruins decided to recruit session musicians to play live.

Ruins (comics)

Ruins is a two-issue comic book mini-series, written by Warren Ellis with painted artwork by Terese Nielsen, her husband Cliff Nielsen, and Chris Moeller, who took over for the last seventeen pages of the second issue.

The series, conceived by Ellis as a parody of the Marvels series by Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross is set in a dystopian version of the Marvel Universe. Like Marvels, the comic features reporter Phil Sheldon as the main character and was published in prestige format, with fully painted artwork and acetate covers, further creating the impression that it is a more twisted companion piece.

In the Marvel Multiverse, Earth of the Ruins universe is listed as Earth-9591.

Plot summary

Ruins follows former Daily Bugle reporter Phil Sheldon as he explores a dystopian alternate Marvel Universe where, in his words, "everything that can go wrong will go wrong"; a world where the myriad experiments and accidents which led to the creation of superheroes in the mainstream Marvel Universe instead resulted in horrible deformities and painful deaths. Sheldon tours the country investigating the after-effects of these events, researching a book about the strange phenomena in order to prove that the world has taken a wrong turn somewhere.

Brandish (video game)

Brandish (ブランディッシュ) is an action role-playing video game by Nihon Falcom. Originally released in 1991 for the NEC PC-9801 and FM Towns, it was later ported to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) and PC Engine CD-ROM² (TurboGrafx-CD) in 1994–1995, including an expanded re-release titled Brandish Renewal. The SNES version was published by Koei in Japan in 1994 and in North America in 1995.

A complete remake of the original Brandish for the PlayStation Portable (PSP), featuring 3D graphics and titled Brandish: The Dark Revenant (ブランディッシュ～ダークレヴナント～), was released by Nihon Falcom in Japan in 2009. XSEED Games released a localized version for North America on the PlayStation Store on January 13, 2015.

Brandish was the first title in Nihon Falcom's series of the same name. It was followed by three sequels originally released between 1993 and 1996.

Gameplay

Brandish is a top-down view dungeon crawler game. The original version of the game uses mouse controls from a real-time overhead view, where the player can move the warrior character Ares (known as Varik in the original English version) forward and backward, turn, strafe, and attack by clicking on boxes surrounding the player character. The player's objective is to escape from a labyrinth of over 40 floors filled various monsters, traps and puzzles.

Brandish (disambiguation)

Brandish may refer to:

Brandish (series)

Brandish (ブランディッシュ) is a series action role-playing video games by Nihon Falcom that began with the original Brandish originally released in 1991 for the NEC PC-9801 and FM Towns and later ported to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) and PC Engine CD-ROM² (TurboGrafx-CD) in 1994–1995, including an expanded re-release titled Brandish Renewal; the SNES version was published by Koei in Japan in 1994 and in North America in 1995. A complete remake of the original Brandish for the PlayStation Portable (PSP), featuring 3D graphics and titled Brandish: The Dark Revenant (ブランディッシュ～ダークレヴナント～), was published by Nihon Falcom in Japan in 2009 and XSEED Games released a localized version in North America on the PlayStation Store in 2015.

The original game proved popular enough in Japan to warrant two direct sequels exclusively in Japan that continued the adventures of Ares and Dela. The first one was Brandish 2: The Planet Buster (ブランディッシュ2 THE PLANET BUSTER), originally released for the PC-98 in 1993 and ported to the Super Famicom (SNES) in 1995 (like Falcom's later Ys V, the game was released in "normal" and "expert" difficulty versions). The next sequel was Brandish 3: Spirit of Balcan (ブランディッシュ3 SPIRIT OF BALCAN), originally released for the PC-98 in 1994. None of these were officially released in English, but Brandish 2 received a fan translation in 2009. Dela also makes and appearance in Falcom's 2010 Ys vs. Sora no Kiseki: Alternative Saga as a support character.