IF YOU’RE LOOKING for a place where misadventure could begin, you can’t go past Mbargo. The nightclub’s streetfront is painted a purple so bright you’ll see it in your dreams. Strings of giant sequins shimmer in the breeze. Its phonically inventive name is spelt in silver letters that climb its three-storey terrace facade. Inside are strips of burning neon, a few booths, floorboards so marinated in drink that they have an ingredients list. Bristol is a student city on England’s south coast crowded with music and nightlife and street art. This is Banksy’s home town, and the tourism board suggests in rather strong terms that ‘you would be a fool not to see his amazing work firsthand’. The same organisation describes Mbargo as ‘intimate’, which is fair for a place where you can catch an STI standing up. Students cram into its modest dimensions while people with names like DJ Klaud battle for billing with £1.50 drink deals over seven sloppy nights a week. To get a sense of the story about to come, consider that it’s the kind of place open until two o’clock on a Monday morning, and that at two o’clock on a Monday morning, Ben Stokes still thought it had closed too early.
The Ashes of 2017–18 had disciplinary bookends. It was after that series that Australia’s two leaders went off the rails in South Africa. It was a few weeks before that Ashes tour that England’s biggest star windmilled his way into his own disaster.
In the early hours of 25 September 2017, Stokes and teammate Alex Hales were barred from re-entering Mbargo after a night out on the piss. A Sunday thrashing of an abject West Indies in an ignored series at the fag-end of the season apparently required ample celebration. After arguing with the bouncer and hanging about at the door for a while, they wandered off to find a casino in the hope of more drinking. They’d barely made it around the corner before getting in the middle of a conflict between four locals. As is said on the internet, it escalated quickly.
The 26 September reporting was bloodless. Withholding names, police stated that a man ‘was arrested on suspicion of causing actual bodily harm’ while another went to hospital with facial injuries. England’s director of cricket Andrew Strauss separately confirmed that Stokes was the arrestee, adding that he had been released without charge and that Hales had gamely offered to ‘help police with their enquiries’. Administrators had a good chance of hiding behind that investigation, and the next day Stokes was named in the upcoming Ashes squad as expected. But that night the video emerged.
Bristol student Max Wilson had shot it on his phone, then offered it to The Sun. What he thought was playing hardball was actually lowball: his opening price of £3000 was snapped up by a tabloid that would have paid ten times that. The Sun went on to make a mint by syndicating the rights worldwide. From a window above the fray, the vision showed six men on the street below performing the muddled choreography of a melee. One was right at the centre of it. One was waving a bottle, one dipped in and out, one tried to calm it. Two others floated around the edges. The central figure was unmistakable: red hair burning even in the streetlight as he launched into a series of blows against two of the men, falling to grapple with them on the ground, then following both across the street, swinging punches the whole way. Hales trailed behind, repeatedly and impotently shouting ‘Stokes! Stop! Stokes! Enough!’ The ECB could fudge issues that existed only in thickets of legalese, but not those captured in moving colour. Stokes was stood down from the next West Indies match, then suspended indefinitely. It emerged that he had broken his hand during the fight, something he’d done twice before while punching objects in dressing rooms.
The response in Australia was fierce: Stokes was a thug, a lowlife, a selection that would disgrace England. It was not entirely coincidental that a ban for England’s best player would be handy for the Aussie team, but there was also a cultural split. In England, plenty of people still minimise pub fights as lads letting off steam. In Australia, heavy media coverage as a succession of young men were killed had inverted that tolerance. The discourse now saw any punch as potentially deadly and accordingly reckless. This was more poignant in a cricket context given that David Hookes, the dashing Test batsman and state coach, was killed in 2004 by a pub bouncer’s fist.
The PR situation was bad for Stokes as details emerged of the injuries to the men he’d hit, and that one was a young war veteran and father. Stokes wasn’t officially removed from the Ashes squad through October but stayed behind when his teammates left, hoping for police to dismiss the matter in time for a late dash to Australia. His annual contract was renewed on the due date in case that came to pass. Then 29 October brought a twist in the tale.
‘Ben Stokes praised by gay couple after defending them from homophobic thugs,’ ran the headline. Kai Barry and Billy O’Connell had emerged. Not entirely out of nowhere: while Stokes had made no public comment, this story in his defence had initially been leaked to TV host Piers Morgan after the fight, as soon as the video appeared. Police body-camera footage played in court would later show that Stokes had given the same story to the arresting officer on the night. But no-one knew the identities of the fifth and sixth men in the video, and police appeals had turned up nothing.
It was The Sun again with the breakthrough. Kai and Billy were perfect for a readership not keen on nuance. ‘We couldn’t believe it when we found out they were famous cricketers. I just thought Ben and Alex were quite hot, fit guys,’ said Kai, who was memorably described as a ‘former House of Fraser sales assistant’. The paper had the pair do a full photo shoot: layering the fake tan, showing off chest waxes, mixing Ralph Lauren and Louis Vuitton into a range of outfits. Their best shot had them standing back to back, heads turned to the camera, in a mirror-image Zoolander moment.
Suddenly The Sun was the England team’s best friend. ‘Their claims could lead to the all-rounder being cleared over the punch-up and freed to play in the First Test in Australia next month,’ it gushed, then gave a tasting platter of quotes: ‘We were so grateful to Ben for stepping in to help. He was a real hero.’ ‘If Ben hadn’t intervened it could have been a lot worse for us.’ ‘We could’ve been in real trouble. Ben was a real gentleman.’ Would it be known forever as Kai and Billy’s Ashes? No. While the Bristol boys provided spin for Stokes’ reputation they didn’t influence the police. With charges still pending there was little choice – not given Strauss had previously sacked Kevin Pietersen for being annoying. Stokes remained suspended through the Ashes and a one-day series in Australia, and lost the vice-captaincy. It was January 2018 before the Crown Prosecution Service laid a charge.
That charge surprisingly came in as affray, a crime that can carry prison time but is classified as ‘a breach of the peace as a result of disorderly conduct’. The men he had punched, Ryan Ali and Ryan Hale, faced the same count, charged as equal participants in a fight rather than Stokes being charged with assaulting them. Alex Hales was not charged, despite being seen in the video to aim several kicks when Ryan Ali was lying on the ground. Given the underwhelming standing of the offence, Stokes was cleared by the ECB to tour New Zealand, and kept playing until his trial in August 2018, which he missed a Test to attend. None of the three defendants would be convicted.
The reasoning behind the charges was never released and was attributed vaguely to ‘CPS lawyers’. The service gave the case to Alison Morgan, a prosecutor of a class known as Treasury Counsel who usually handle serious criminal matters. Morgan had a scheduling clash and never ended up court for the case, but in 2018 and 2019 she would go on to win damages and admissions of libel from The Daily Mail, The Times and The Daily Telegraph variously for incorrectly reporting that she had been responsible for the inadequate and inconsistent charging decisions.
Morgan’s successor on the case was Nicholas Corsellis QC, who on the first day of trial was permitted by the CPS to request two assault charges be added against Stokes. ‘Upon further review,’ claimed a CPS statement, ‘we considered that additional assault charges would also be appropriate.’ This was patent nonsense from the service that eight months earlier had chosen the lesser charge. Any lawyer knows that no judge will allow new charges once a trial has begun, because the defence hasn’t had time to prepare. But such a request could deflect criticism of the prosecution service by technically making the judge the one who disallows the charge.
Working through the story from the trial and the tape is complicated. You had a Ryan and a Ryan, a Hale and a Hales, a Billy and a Barry and a Ben. You had several versions of events as to who knew whom, who was drinking with whom, who had insulted whom and who had merely engaged in ‘banter’, a word that in modern Britain has to do an unconscionable amount of lifting. The reporting had constantly mixed up the Ryans as to who had which injury, who was in hospital, who had played which part in the fight, and whose mum had which stern words to say about it.
Let’s agree that from now Ryan Ali is Ryan One, the firefighter who ended up with a fractured eye socket and a cracked tooth. Ryan Two can be Ryan Hale, the soldier who scored concussion and facial lacerations. Mr Barry and Mr O’Connell are best known per The Sun as Kai and Billy. In scorecard parlance we’ll leave the cricketers as Stokes and Hales.
Amid the confusion, Stokes and his lawyers built his case in a straightforward way. The UK legal definition of affray is ‘if a person threatens or uses unlawful violence or force towards another person, which causes another person of reasonable firmness present at the scene to fear for their safety’. That means it doesn’t account for violence that harms a target, but violence that might frighten a theoretical bystander. The wiggle room for Stokes was with ‘unlawful’, because the charge excuses violence in defending oneself or others.
This interpretation hinged on the beginning of the video, where Ryan One waves a beer bottle about and takes a swing at Kai. The version from Stokes was that he was minding his own business walking down the street when he heard homophobic abuse. He intervened verbally and was threatened verbally by Ryan One – something that Ryan One denied but that couldn’t be proved or disproved. In fear for his safety Stokes had to nullify that threat by bashing Ryan One before it went the other way. He registered Ryan Two in his peripheral vision as another possible threat, and again had only one recourse.
Stokes also had to convince the jury to disregard testimony from Mbargo’s bouncer that he had been looking for a fight. A solid lump of a man, Andrew Cunningham had not enjoyed his patron’s attempts to get back into the club after the bouncer declined an offer of a bribe. ‘He got a bit verbally abusive towards myself. He mentioned my gold teeth and he said I looked like a cunt and I replied, “Thank you very much.” He just looked at me and told me my tattoos were shit and to look at my job.’ Cunningham described these words as coming in ‘a spiteful tone, quite an angry tone’, and said that Stokes still seemed angry as he walked away.
These were details the doorman had nothing to gain by inventing, but each of them Stokes denied. By his own accounting he had drunk a beer at the game and three pints at his hotel, then ‘potentially had some Jägerbombs’ along with half a dozen vodkas at the club. He insisted that after all of this he was not drunk.
If I may take a moment here to call upon the wisdom of experience – a person who cannot definitively say whether they have had any Jägerbombs has definitely had some Jägerbombs. A Jägerbomb is an experience that does not pass one by. Further to that, a person who says they have ‘potentially’ done something has definitely done that thing and doesn’t want to admit it. A person who has had between 15 and 24 standard drinks in one evening is shitfaced. A person who tries to bribe a bouncer £300 – three hundred quid! – to get into Mbargo – Mbargo! – is beyond shitfaced.
If Stokes admitted that he was drunk then the prosecution could say he was out of control. He claimed clear recall of assessing a threat, feeling fear and deciding to protect himself with force. He confidently denied details from the bouncer’s testimony, like using the word ‘cunt’ or mentioning gold teeth. Yet on other details he claimed a ‘significant memory blackout’. He didn’t remember the punch that saw Ryan One taken away by ambulance. He didn’t remember what the Ryans had said to Kai and Billy, only that those words were homophobic. With no head injury, as one of the few people who hadn’t been hit, he had supposedly suffered this memory loss despite being sober.
The version from Kai and Billy was compatible but vague: they had been walking along, they ‘heard … shouts’ of abuse from an unspecified source, then Stokes ‘stepped in’ and thus they avoided possible harm. They claimed to have been bought a drink by Stokes at Mbargo, although CCTV showed them meeting outside. The overall implication from both accounts was that the cricketers had been pals with Kai and Billy, while the Ryans as per The Sun’s headline were a roving band of thugs.
The reality though is that the Ryans were the ones hanging out with Kai and Billy at Mbargo. Police discussed CCTV from inside the club in questioning and at trial. On that footage the four Bristolians bought drinks for one another, danced together, and Kai was noted to have variously touched Ryan Two’s crotch and Ryan One’s buttock. Ryan One told police that all of this was taken lightheartedly and wasn’t a problem. Indeed, when the Ryans called it a night the other two left with them.
This much is clear from footage out the front of Mbargo, which shows Kai and Billy exit the club and start talking with a subdued Hales and a demonstrative Stokes, who are stuck outside. The vision was played in court to determine whether Stokes was antagonistic towards Kai and Billy, as he appears to impersonate them and to throw a lit cigarette their way. More interesting is that after a few minutes the Ryans emerge, and all six actors in the fight video briefly form a prequel in the one frame.
Ryan Two pats Billy on the chest in friendly fashion with his right hand before clapping him on the back with his left. He moves past and does the same to Kai before leaving the shot. Ryan One stops to speak to Kai. They lean in for a moment, talking, then Kai turns and they walk out of frame together. Billy hangs around for a few seconds at the door and then looks after them and races to catch up. Stokes and Hales remain outside the club to remonstrate further with the bouncers. Whatever discord develops around the corner is between four men who left amicably together minutes earlier.
There’s no way to know what caused that friction. If Ryan One did use homophobic slurs, he might have been drunkenly obnoxious for no reason. He might have had an insecure macho response to some extra flirtation. He might have thought unkindness was funny – ‘banter’ once again. Or he might have said something that was misunderstood, as both Ryans insisted in court that they had not used nor had the impulse to use any abusive language.
What clearly didn’t happen was an attack by bigots on random passers-by. This kind of crime is regular enough that an audience understands the horror of it, and this is what was evoked by the public accounts of Stokes, Billy and Kai. All we know is that there was some verbal dispute among the Bristol locals, and that Stokes came along behind them and put himself in the middle of it. Ryan One responded to the interference aggressively and away they went. There are plenty of reasons to look sideways at the idea that Stokes was a saviour. Foremost, neither Kai nor Billy was called upon as witnesses in court. You’d think it would be ideal to have Stokes’ story backed up by those who benefited from his selflessness. But his defence team had developed the impression that the pair had shown a changeable recall of events amid a hard-partying lifestyle, and would be dismantled by the prosecution on the stand.
That raises the question of whether The Sun coached their quotes for the 2017 interview. Despite missing court, Kai and Billy clearly enjoyed the attention. In 2018 after the trial they did a follow-up spread in the same paper about how poor Ben had been mistreated. They got a television spot on Good Morning Britain and glowed about his heroism. In 2019 The Sun wheeled them out once more to say that Stokes should get a knighthood. In 2017 they had ‘never watched cricket’ but by 2019 were supposedly volunteering sentences like, ‘He saved us, now he’s saved the Ashes.’ Whether they were paid for these appearances is not known, but the chance to be famous for a day can be lure enough.
If you find this cynical, consider that on the night in question, the Bristol boys were so deeply moved and thankful for Ben’s intervention that they left him to be arrested and never attempted to find out who he was. Seconds after the video ended, an off-duty policeman reached the scene. You might think that someone grateful to a saviour would speak on his behalf. Instead, said Kai, ‘it all got a bit scary so we walked off. It was too much for me and we went to Quigley’s takeaway for chicken burgers and cheesy chips.’ They didn’t give their hero a thought for over a month while police issued multiple appeals for witnesses.
As for Stokes, he told his arresting officer that ‘his friends’ had been attacked. After three minutes of chat outside a nightclub, these friends were so dear to him that he has never contacted them again: not after the newspaper piece, not after the verdict. He didn’t want to see how they were or thank them for their support. He didn’t mention them by name in his solicitor’s statement after the trial.
The Stokes defence rested on Ryan One’s bottle, which he had carried out of Mbargo to finish a beer, not to use in a Sharks versus Jets amateur production. But once he turned it over to hold it by the neck it became a weapon. Intent and interpretation can change the material nature of things. Part of Stokes’ justification in court was that the bottle implied that the two Ryans might have ‘other weapons’ hidden away. You can understand how a jury could decide that created doubt.
Not being convicted, though, doesn’t give the contents of the video a big green tick. It does not, as his lawyer claimed, vindicate Stokes. Looking in detail, Ryan One is belligerent but his movements telegraph a bluff. Hales is the person he’s gesturing at, but they’re several metres apart when Ryan One cocks his arm ostentatiously, showing off the bottle rather than bracing to swing. He skips forward but Hales skips back and Ryan One doesn’t follow. Kai stretches out an arm to impede Ryan One, who has a drunken stumble, nearly eats pavement, then staggers towards Kai and hits him in the back. That hand is still holding the bottle, but his strike is a side-arm cuff on a soft part of the body. It’s all pretty tame.
This is where Stokes gets involved. Having moved across to protect Hales, he now takes three large steps to run around Kai and booms his first punch at Ryan One. They fall to the ground and the bottle clinks away. Stokes gets to his feet to punch down at the fallen man, while Hales arrives to kick him ineffectively then runs off across the street for some unknown reason. Ice-cream van? Stokes is soon back in the grapple having his shirt pulled up to show off his Durham tan. Ryan Two steps in for the first time to pull Stokes away, prompting a couple more random punches at this new target, then Stokes trips backwards over Ryan One and sprawls in the street. Hales chooses this moment to return and aim some solid kicks at the head of the man on the ground. Nothing so far is a triumph of moral philosophy or the pugilistic arts. But if it all stopped here, perhaps you could say it was somewhere approaching fair. Ryan One has behaved like a turnip and it’s not an entirely unjust world that would give him a whack across the chops. The antagonists have disentangled, Stokes has some distance, it’s time to dust off and go home. Ryan Two steps forward for this purpose with his palm raised in conciliatory style and says, ‘Settle down, stop.’
So Stokes punches him.
It’s roughly his fifth punch overall, and he really winds up into this one. He misses so hard that he stumbles away into the shadows of the shop awnings along the road.
Hales starts shouting for him to stop. Ryan Two backs into the street, still holding his palm up. Stokes closes on him from about five metres away, six large steps, to where Ryan Two is standing on his own. Stokes pushes him a couple of times, as Ryan Two keeps trying to placate him and saying ‘Stop.’ Stokes throws his sixth punch, largely missing as his target ducks.
Ryan Two keeps pulling away and reversing, into the middle of the street now. Stokes follows him, grabbing his sleeve to drag him back. By this point Ryan One has found his feet and walked around behind his friend. Both of them are in the same line of sight for Stokes, and both are backing away. Stokes aims his seventh and his eighth punches, which Ryan Two tries to deflect, as Hales walks up behind Stokes to grab him.
Stokes yanks away from his friend and switches to Ryan One instead, taking seven paces to grab him before throwing his ninth punch of the night. He grabs again; Ryan One blocks that arm and pushes himself back away from Stokes. Ryan Two again intercedes, putting himself between the two with his palms up and his arm extended.
Stokes throws his tenth punch, a right-hander at the face of Ryan Two, then shoves him backwards. Ryan Two backs away once more, four paces. Stokes follows, steadies, lines up, then launches his strongest punch yet, his eleventh, a proper right hook from a solid base, one that cracks across the man’s head and gives him concussion. Ryan Two ends up flat on his back in the middle of the street, his hands still outstretched for a moment in useless protest until they twitch and drop to the blacktop.
Stokes isn’t done. He once more shoves away the restraining Hales and follows Ryan One, who keeps backing away saying, ‘Alright, alright, alright.’ Five more paces from Stokes before another blow at the man’s head. Kai and Billy are now standing over the poleaxed Ryan Two. The video ends, but seconds later Stokes will punch Ryan One hard enough to knock him out too, before off-duty cop Andrew Spure arrives on the scene to bring down the curtain. When the body-camera footage kicks in some minutes later, Stokes is in handcuffs but Ryan One is still laid out in the street. Ryan Two has regained consciousness, folded his shirt under his friend’s head and is asking police for an ambulance.
‘At this point, I felt vulnerable and frightened. I was concerned for myself and others.’ This was how Stokes described that sequence to the court. An elite athlete with years of gym work and training to snap a bat through the line of a ball with astounding power and precision, swinging fists as hard as he can at men with none of those advantages. Punching so hard that he breaks his hand, and repeatedly shoving away a friend so he can punch some more. Frightened and threatened by two targets shouting ‘Get back!’ and ‘Stop!’
The off-duty officer testified that Stokes ‘seemed to be the main aggressor or was progressing forward trying to get to’ Ryan One, who was ‘trying to back away or get away from the situation’. The student who filmed the video can be heard on the tape at one stage exclaiming ‘Fuck!’ and testified that it was because ‘I felt a little bit sorry about the lad that had been punched and it looked like he had his hands up’. That tallied with the prosecutor’s depiction of ‘a sustained episode of significant violence that left onlookers shocked at what was taking place’.
The defendant stuck to his strategy. ‘No, my sole focus was to protect myself.’ All up, in the 33 seconds of footage after he falls over, Stokes takes 35 steps forward to keep hitting two men who keep trying to get away. Not once is he hit back.
After the verdict, Stokes’ solicitor positioned him as the victim. It had been ‘an eleven-month ordeal for Ben … The jury’s decision fairly reflects the truth of what happened that night … He was minding his own business … It was only when others came under threat that Ben became physically engaged. The steps that he took were solely aimed at ensuring the safety of himself and the others present …’ The statement was impossibly self-righteous and self-absorbed.
If there was anyone to feel sorry for it was Ryan Hale, the second of our two Ryans. He’s the one who emerged from the club with a friendly arm around the shoulder for Kai and Billy. He’s the one who interposed himself to end the fight, then kept putting himself back in the firing line, trying to calm an intimidating stranger while dodging blows. For his show of restraint he got laid out regardless, concussed in the street, then was issued a criminal charge equal to that of the man who hit him, and described in national media as a violent bigot in an untested story to support that man’s defence.
Lawyers for Ryan Two made a more convincing post-trial statement, noting that Kai and Billy, ‘neither of whom were relied upon by the prosecution or the defence team for Mr Stokes, have taken the opportunity to speak with various media outlets about the alleged homophobic abuse that they received in the early hours of September 25. Mr Hale has passionately denied this allegation throughout the course of this case,’ it continued.
‘It is upsetting to Mr Hale that although he was acquitted, the accusation that he was the author of such abuse remains. Both Mr Hale and Mr Ali were knocked unconscious by Mr Stokes, and although Mr Stokes has been acquitted of an affray, Mr Hale struggles with the reasons why the Crown Prosecution Service did not treat him as a victim of an unlawful assault.’Good question. Avon and Somerset police were the investigating force, and they were frustrated by the decision. Ryan Two was filmed clearly not hurting anyone, but police were instructed by the CPS to proceed with a charge. Hales (the cricketer) was filmed fighting but ‘a decision was made at a senior level of the CPS’ not to proceed. Police expected Stokes to be charged with assault but the CPS declined. It doesn’t take a wild cynic to think that placing the same lukewarm charge on three men for vastly divergent behaviour might ensure that none would be convicted, even as the trial would maintain the pretence that a defendant of influential standing had not been given a free pass.
A couple of years down the line, the original interview with Kai and Billy has disappeared. All traces have been scrubbed from The Sun website, its social media history, and even from the Wayback Machine internet archive. Given its headline of ‘homophobic thugs’ and text that names Ryan Two but not Ryan One, the libel liability isn’t hard to spot. Later interviews with Kai and Billy take the passive voice – they ‘suffered homophobic slurs outside a Bristol nightclub’.
The article that was once claimed to exonerate brave Ben Stokes now links only to a missing content page, with a picture of a dropped ice-cream cone and the phrase ‘legal removal’ inserted into the web URL. In terms of consequences, Stokes missed one tour. When he resumed his career in January 2018, the Australians hadn’t yet ruined theirs. Their year-long bans looked much more stringent. But the Stokes case dragged on in other ways. With no criminal liability, the Australians confessed promptly enough for the sporting world to give them the full length of the lash. Their situation was ugly but there was closure. Stokes got stuck in legal stasis, unable to be fully backed or condemned. Instead his issue was always present, a browser full of open tabs that the ECB swore they would read any day now.
Through 2018 Stokes was back but he wasn’t back, in the sunglasses and finger-guns sense. In his return one-day series he nearly cost England a match with 39 from 73 balls in Wellington. His first Test hit was a duck as England got rolled in Auckland for 58. At Trent Bridge while Stokes was injured, England posted a world record 481 against Australia. With Stokes three weeks later at the same ground they made 268. He crawled to 50 from 103, the second-slowest any Englishman had reached that milestone in 20 years. That span covered Alastair Cook’s whole career. It was apologetic batting, acting out responsibility via the scorecard. Stokes was creeping back into the team like he’d been kicked out in a blazing row and was hoping to tip-toe to the sofa.
It was December 2018 before the ECB disciplinary committee ruled on him and Hales. In a ‘remarkable coincidence’, wrote Simon Heffer in The Telegraph, ‘the punishment both players faced in terms of bans from playing at international level was covered by the amount of games they had already missed when dropped by England’s selectors, in the furore that followed the incident’. The verdict compounded the omissions around the case by not addressing the violence at its heart. Nor did Stokes, apologising only ‘to my team-mates, coaches and support staff’, and then ‘to England supporters and to the public for bringing the game into disrepute’.
The implicit next step was to rebuild that reputation. It might have been easier had his court defence not meant that he wasn’t game to admit any fault at all. It might have been easier if he or his advisers had been willing to change tack once the trial was done. Imagine a world where Stokes had stood outside court and apologised for overreacting, for the injuries he’d caused, and for the time and energy he had sucked out of other people’s lives. That would have been a show of responsibility beyond a scorecard. When the time came around to assess forgiveness, it might have meant forgiveness was deserved.

This remaster has a lot of good improvements but there are also some changes that didn't make everyone happy, so I will be listing all the good and bad changes I noticed.
(𝑾𝒂𝒓𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈: 𝒑𝒐𝒔𝒔𝒊𝒃𝒍𝒆 𝒔𝒑𝒐𝒊𝒍𝒆𝒓𝒔)
𝙋𝙧𝙤𝙨:
•Graphics improvements (obviously): the new graphics and shades are beautiful, there's absolutely nothing to complain about it.
•New short cutscenes
•You can now run (unlike the original PC version).
•New Scenes for the opening
•New music.
•Changing the Soda Popper's pants from red to stripped, which made them look way more ridiculous than before.
•You can now see what objects are clickable.
•Sibyl's glasses now have temples
𝘾𝙤𝙣𝙨:
•New voice actor for Bosco: the new voice actor performance is in fact inferior to the previous one, Bosco sounds too young and not paranoid at all.
•In some episodes, Sybil's office is way too dark.
•They changed the license plate of that car parked next to the DeSoto
Original: DRG DLR (drug dealer)
New: RMS DLR (arms dealer, I guess?)
Which made the joke less funny
(𝑨𝒑𝒑𝒂𝒓𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒍𝒚 𝒊𝒕 𝒘𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝒃𝒆 𝒇𝒊𝒙𝒆𝒅)
•From episode 2 onwards, when you click on some objects, Max still has the old voice from episode 1 (unlike the original, where his voice completely changed from episode 1 onwards).
(𝑨𝒑𝒑𝒂𝒓𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒍𝒚 𝒊𝒕 𝒘𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝒃𝒆 𝒇𝒊𝒙𝒆𝒅)
Extra:
•New opening theme.
•The items in the car chase segments (such as the megaphone and the car horn) have been moved from left to right.
𝐄𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐝𝐞 1
𝙋𝙧𝙤𝙨:
•The lights turn off while interrogating Jimmy, which made the scene way better.
•The location for the spray can got changed to a place that is now easier to find.
•The time changes from day to night throughout the playthrough.
𝘾𝙤𝙣𝙨:
•They changed some of the lines (or censored, like some people say), for instance:
𝐎𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞:
Bosco: It's the latest in BoscoTech inovation, it'll clear out a room of militant college students in no time, guaranteed.
𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞:
It's the latest in BoscoTech inovation, it'll clear out a room in no time, guaranteed.
𝐄𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐝𝐞 2
𝙋𝙧𝙤𝙨:
•You can now see the outside of the WARP studios.
•Fatherly has some new clothes
•Fixed the bug from the original, where Max's voice didn't amplify when he used the megaphone.
𝘾𝙤𝙣𝙨:
•The hypnobear head does not move while hypnotizing Myra.
•They changed some of the lines (or censored, like some people say), for instance:
𝐎𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞:
Bosco: Oh no, the Skinbodies are like Skinheads, but ten times worse!
𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞:
Oh no, the Skinbodies are like those horrible hairless cats, but ten times worse!
Which ruined the joke, considering the "Skinbodies" themselves are a reference to the "Skinheads"
•When you take a picture with Hugh Bliss, the picture still has the old models from the original.
𝐎𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞:
Bosco: Tally-Ho, foo'!
𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞:
Tally-Ho!
𝐄𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐝𝐞 3
𝙋𝙧𝙤𝙨:
•You can now see the outside of the casino.
•The Ted E. bear theme song will you play when you enter the casino.
•Max will watch you play the rats games, just like he did in "Hit the Road".
•Sam & Max can now wear the bear heads after they join the mafia.
•When you click the bear head in the table Sam will stare at it, which is kinda funny.
•You can now see Sam & Max running through the casino when it's about to explode and you can actually see the results of the explosion.
𝘾𝙤𝙣𝙨:
•They changed some of the lines (or censored, like some people say), for instance:
𝐎𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞:
Bosco: You may call me, Jean-Francois Sissypants, the cowardly French anarchist.
𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞:
You may call me, Jean-Francois Bonde-A-Part, the new wave French anarchist.
Which doesn't make sense, considering Sam & Max still call him "Sissypants"
(𝑨𝒑𝒑𝒂𝒓𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒍𝒚 𝒊𝒕 𝒘𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝒃𝒆 𝒇𝒊𝒙𝒆𝒅)
𝐄𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐝𝐞 4
𝙋𝙧𝙤𝙨:
•The windows of the Oval Office will close every time one of the Poppers say "war", which made the scene better.
•The "War Song" now has subtitles.
•You can now go back to the office from inside the war room
•When you shoot the missile at the Lincoln statue, not only the statue will get destroyed, but the pavement as well (unlike the original where just the statue got destroyed).
𝘾𝙤𝙣𝙨:
•When you shoot a missile at Antarctica and Krypton the screen won't update and the time estimate for the missile to hit Krypton does not show up.
(𝑨𝒑𝒑𝒂𝒓𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒍𝒚 𝒊𝒕 𝒘𝒊𝒍𝒍 𝒃𝒆 𝒇𝒊𝒙𝒆𝒅)
•The news for the results of the election still has the old blurry textures from the original.
•When the "War Song" musical is playing, the pool and water where the secret agents jump in is the exact same low poly model from the original.
•They changed the timing for one of the jokes:
In the original when Max says he feels like someone is watching and judging his every move, he would slowly turn his head towards the camera while saying that and then Sam would look at the camera and say "That's me Max.". Now Max will say the whole phrase while looking at Bosco and then he will look angry at the camera after saying that, and Sam will not look at the the camera at all, which made the the joke way less funny.
•Unlike the original, the camera does not closeup when reading the newspapers and Max doesn't show any animation (apart from the lipsync), especially when saying "I can dig it", which made the joke a little less funny.
𝐄𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐝𝐞 5
𝙋𝙧𝙤𝙨:
•Reality 2.0 visuals looks pretty.
•A new visual effect got added when you remove the virtual reality goggles.
•Fixed the bug from the original, where Max's voice didn't amplify when he used the megaphone.
𝘾𝙤𝙣𝙨:
•They changed some of the lines (or censored, like some people say), for instance:
𝐎𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞:
Bob: Take our complimentary goggles designed for special-needs children so that the little ones can play along.
𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞:
Take our complimentary wide-fit goggles designed for playing while bicycling or enjoying full-contact sports!
𝐎𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞:
Bosco: It's 'cause everyone on the internet has to pick an avatar, like a dwarf or an orc or an hot young fifteen-year- old girl curious about the adult world and willing to experiment.
𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞::
It's cause everyone on the internet has to pick an avatar, like a dwarf or an orc or a troll... But we've got enough trolls.
𝐎𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞:
Bosco: Half-elf, foo'!
𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞:
Half- elf, troll!
•The C.O.P.S. song wasn't synced up right, so the visuals were wrong and the end got cut off.
•In a different part of the episode, Max just wanders off during part of the dialogue.
𝐄𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐝𝐞 6
𝙋𝙧𝙤𝙨:
•You can now see the DeSoto landing and leaving the moon.
•The lighting on the "Blister of Tranquility" is beautiful.
•Hugh Bliss bacteria form is way shiner an has little particles floating around him, which kinda looks like a real bacteria.
𝘾𝙤𝙣𝙨:
•They changed some of the lines (or censored, like some people say), for instance:
𝐎𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞:
Max: A hundred trillion?! You crazy, foo'!
Bosco: Look man, all I know is, I keep making up the most ridiculous price I can think of, and you keep paying it! So I ask you, who's the foo'?
𝐍𝐞𝐰 𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞:
Look man, all I know is, I keep making up the most ridiculous price I can think of, and you keep paying it! So I ask you, who's the crazy one?
Him saying "crazy" doesn't make sense, since Max called him a "foo'".
•They also removed some of the dialogue option, (some of them were pretty funny) such as:
𝟏-"𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐱 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞"
Sam: Mind telling us how you came to be a woman?
Max: Did you use lasers, or just do it the old-fashioned way?
Bosco: Are you sassin' me? Boy I'll whup your behind so hard you won't be able to see straight!
Max: But I don't see out of my behind.
Bosco: You will after I get through with you!
𝟐- "𝐇𝐨𝐰'𝐬 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞 𝐚𝐬 𝐚 𝐰𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧?"
Sam: So how are those BoscoTech breasts holdin' up?
Bosco: Oh, these are all natural, honey.
Max: I'm not gonna lie, I like 'em bosomy.
Bosco: Oh, Max, you take after your father.
Max: Okay, you just crossed the line, pal!
Sam: Easy Max, theoretically, we have even more disturbed people to worry about right now.
•In the original when you click on the bug, Sam will say "Hey Max, is this our bug?" and then the bug will repeat the same thing but with Sam's voice. Now when you click the bug, the bug will say the same thing, but in his own voice, which kinda removes the point of him being a "bug".
•Unlike the original, Mr. Spatula's water cooler is still in the office, despite the same cooler being on the moon, removing the idea that the fish ran away with his water cooler and everything, making the joke less funny.
Extra:
•Max will now ask "Where are we going Sam?" even after Hugh removes his vices (Unlike the original, where he didn't say anything).
These are all the changes I noticed, but If someone finds more changes (or even a typo), just let me know and I'll edit it right away!

I'm posting this to warn possible users to be aware of their faulty system and abysmal customer support. Rivers Casino has a variety of mobile sportsbook apps for certain locations. They are also very buggy and crash quite often, so I rarely use them. The only time I do use them is for the NFL promotional sunday 50% profit boost on 50$ max bets up to $250 bonus on profits. So today, I went ahead and made a 50$ bet, with the promotional, exactly how I have been doing it every week. The mobile app showed the promotional applied to my bet, but when I placed the bet, the app froze and I had to restart it (happens all the time). When I went to check the placed bet slip, I saw that the promotional was NOT applied. Now something like this had never happened to me before, I quickly contacted customer support. No Response.
I wait till later during the day to reach out again and when I do get in touch with them, they said "no error showed up on their logs." Even though I had evidence that I have been exclusively utilizing their promotional bets EVERY week since I joined, they said there's no proof that I ever intended to place the promotional on this bet slip. I told them that their APP clearly bugged out on me while placing the bet and that I wouldn't intentionally place a $50 bet without the promotion on Sunday morning, which I have been doing every week. Still wasn't enough for the supervisor or management to understand the situation. My bet of $50 would have had a $250 profit boost with the parlay I had set.
TLDR: Basically Rivers Casino App has a poor app that bugs out, occasionally during betting. I lost the opportunity of getting an extra $250 on my $50 bet because of their faulty system. When I contacted support, they were unhelpful and did not bother to provide a fair solution. Stay the F away

*** Notes from Friday, March 27 - 1:00pm ***

• Gina Raimondo, Governor of the State of Rhode Island
• R.I. Health Department Director Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott

Governor Raimondo

• 38 New Cases of COVID-19 in Rhode Island
  • Total of 203 cases.
  • 28 total in the hospital
• We are not ready for a surge of cases like you are seeing elsewhere
  • This means it's on all of use to obey the directives to prevent a surge
  • Give us a bit more type to get out medical systems set up before the surge comes.
• New extensions for executive orders:
  • Any gathering of more than 10 people is prohibited - April 13th
  • Anyone who can work from home is required to do so - April 13th
  • No restaurant dine-in service - April 13th
    • Beer and wine on takeout orders - April 13th
  • Closure of public recreation and entertainment businesses and close contact businesses - April 13th
  • Domestic and international air travel quarantine period of 14 days - April 26th
  • Changes to the open meetings act - May 8th
  • Tele-health insurance mandate - May 8th
  • Gun permits background extension - May 8th
  • Casinos closure - Indefinitely
  • Statehouse closure - Indefinitely
  • Nursing home lock-down - Indefinitely
  • State customer services online only (DMV appointment only) - Indefinitely
• K - 12 schools announcement on Monday addressing the rest of the school year.
• Looking to move response to be more pinpointed and less broad restrictions. We aren't ready yet, but we are trying to get.
• New York City:
  • Anyone traveling to RI from New York must quarantine for 14 days by law.
  • Starting today RI State Police will be pulling you over if you have NY plates and asking for contact information. Ordering into quarantine.
  • National Guard will be going door to door in coastal communities asking if people are coming from New York and asking for contact information.
  • Good sense of where these people are located and will be focusing on those areas.
  • This is one of the pinpointed risks. Taking a more aggressive pin-point approach.
  • We aren't shutting our doors, but if you want to seek refuge in Rhode Island you must quarantine.
  • In touch with rental property owners and will be in touch with rental car companies.
  • ACLU is auguring this is unconstitutional. Gov. understands why they are taking that position. This is a state of emergency and public health crisis. It's consistent with guidance from experts.
  • Not promoting decriminalization from citizens. Be thoughtful and helpful.
• SNAP Benefit - Approval from the Federal Government for additional SNAP benefits starting on April 1st. Should benefit half of people who qualify. Max of $140 extra but actual amount will vary.
  • Delaying re-certification deadline for next couple of months.
• Calling on trained medical and behavioral health personal to sign up as a volunteer. We need you.
  • RIResponds.org
• Penalties for failure to comply with quarantine order start with a fine. Continued violations are punishable by prison sentence.
• RIPTA buses with 25 people don't violate executive order according to Gov. (somehow??) RIPTA buses have the capacity for 75 people so you can spread out.
• Director of Administration Brett Smiley on why state layoffs of non-essential workers have not been happening: Furloughs are the last thing we want to do. Cafeteria workers, etc. are abiding by social distancing mandates and are still open with grab and go.
• Volume for applying for benefits is unprecedented. System is not built to handle this and going to take time to get better. Taking steps out and simplifying the process to relieve this.

Dr. Alexander-Scott

• New cases:
  • 28 people in the hospital. 11 in ICU. 7 intubated.
  • All numbers are based on priority testing.
• Classification of cases may change. So you may see the exact number change.
• Reporting quarantine numbers. Significant drop or rises in the number when large groups move on or off the quarantine list.
  • Tomorrow, it will drop significantly because of large number of Cranston West cases are coming off quarantine.
• Some cases associated with nursing homes. More-so with staff. Aggressive response.
• Looking to re-shape statistics and updates.
• Expect numbers to continue to rise.

press conference is complete and notes updated 2:14pm

COVID-19 Hotline: 401-222-8022

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Disclaimer: I am not a journalist nor am I a health professional. I am simply a citizen attempting to break down the Governor's and RIDOH daily press briefing the best I can and make it easily digestible.
I am not affiliated with the state or any of the corporations or non-profit organizations that may be linked in this posting.