title: Catherine (video game)

text: The story follows Vincent Brooks, a man who is beset by supernatural nightmares while torn between his feelings for his longtime girlfriend Katherine and the similarly named beauty Catherine. The gameplay is divided between the daytime, where Vincent interacts with the characters in a social simulation, and his dreams where he must navigate three-dimensional towers through combined platforming and puzzle-solving. The game's ending is affected by choices made by Vincent over the course of the story.


title: Catherine (video game)

text: "Catherine" was developed by the same studio behind the "Persona" series, including producer and director Katsura Hashino, character designer Shigenori Soejima, and music composer Shoji Meguro. The game began production near the end of "Persona 4" development in 2008, with the aim being to create something for a more adult audience. The English localization was handled by Atlus USA. "Full Body" was developed by Studio Zero, a then-newly formed division within Atlus led by Hashino. The team aimed to expand upon the original, bringing back the original cast while adding a new love interest named Rin, short for Qatherine.


title: Catherine (video game)

text: Reception was generally positive, with critics praising its mature subject matter and gameplay, despite some criticism directed towards its difficulty. The game was nominated for several awards, and exceeded Atlus' sales expectations by having sold over one million copies worldwide by 2017.


title: Catherine (video game)

text: "Catherine" is a cross-genre video game in which players control Vincent Brooks, a man who is tormented by deadly nightmares after becoming involved with multiple women. The gameplay is divided into two parts; daytime social simulation segments where Vincent interacts with various characters at the Stray Sheep bar, and nightmare segments where he navigates deadly block towers using a combination of platforming and puzzle solving. The game is split into three modes; the single-player story campaign dubbed "Golden Playhouse", and "Babel". Multiplayer-exclusive "Colosseum" challenge levels are unlocked after first completing the story.


title: Catherine (video game)

text: The daytime gameplay has Vincent interacting with his girlfriends and other characters in the Stray Sheep bar. During dialogue and text segments, Vincent can choose several options to respond; these include standard dialogue options and composing text messages. During his time in the Stray Sheep, Vincent can Purchase drinks which help his navigation of Nightmare stages, but also impede his movement if he has too many. He can also play a minigame titled "Rapunzel" which mimics the gameplay in nightmares, or listen to a jukebox containing tracks from other Atlus games. Leaving the Stray Sheep will trigger the next Nightmare section.


title: Catherine (video game)

text: The main gameplay takes place in the Nightmare stages. Vincent must climb towers made of blocks, which Vincent must arrange into a stairway to reach the exit. As he climbs, the tower collapses beneath him, and if he fails to arrange the blocks before the collapse reaches him, Vincent will fall and the game ends; he either restarts from the last checkpoint on the tower if Vincent has a pillow item, or the player must restart the game from their last save. Blocks can be freely pushed and pulled, balanced on the edge of a similar block, and form stairways. In addition to standard blocks, some blocks have additional functions such as springing Vincent higher, and some blocks are lethal traps. Vincent can earn pillows that allow him to retry levels. There are also several items which can be found or purchased in between stages, such as spare blocks, lightning which removes enemies, and energy drinks that allow Vincent to climb more steps at a time.


title: Catherine (video game)

text: Completing a stage awards a score based on the time completed and items collected. These are posted on online leader boards accessed from the game's start menu. In addition to the Golden Playhouse mode, Babel Mode features four large stages playable with up to two players, while Colosseum features two players simultaneously playing a stage in order to reach the top first. The game has multiple endings depending on the choices made by the player during the course of the narrative.


title: Catherine (video game)

text: Additional elements were added in "Full Body". A new mode features rearranged versions of the game's puzzles, with the original game's arrangement featuring as a separate mode. A new online multiplayer mode is also added, where players can enter both a randomised match or a contest with a player of equal rank. New character Rin can be called to halt the tower's collapse for a short time. Players can access a new difficulty level called "Safety", which removes all threats and time limit, and allows players to skip puzzles and continue with the story.


title: Catherine (video game)

text: Set in an unnamed North American city, the plot of "Catherine" is presented as a story within a story on "Golden Playhouse", a television program described as "like a Saturday morning theatre, with a bit of a "Twilight Zone" vibe". The Stray Sheep, a bar where the main cast frequently meets, acts as the stage for the game's major events. The game focuses on four main characters:


title: Catherine (video game)

text: The supporting cast includes Vincent's regular drinking partners at the Stray Sheep: Orlando Haddick (Hiroaki Hirata/Liam O'Brien), an old friend and divorcee who holds cynical views on marriage; Johnny Ariga (Takehito Koyasu/Travis Willingham) an idealist searching for a soulmate; and Toby Nebbins (Kishō Taniyama/Yuri Lowenthal), Johnny's co-worker who has a crush on Erica Anderson, (Junko Minagawa/Erin Fitzgerald) a waitress at the Stray Sheep. Thomas Mutton (Norio Wakamoto/Kirk Thornton), nicknamed "Boss", is the owner of the Stray Sheep. The game is narrated by Trisha, (Junko Minagawa/Erin Fitzgerald) who is the host of "Golden Playhouse" dubbed the "Midnight Venus".


title: Catherine (video game)

text: Vincent Brooks is unwilling to commit to marrying his longtime girlfriend Katherine. One night at the Stray Sheep Bar, a drunken Vincent meets an enigmatic young woman named Catherine; they have a one-night stand which turns into an affair. Simultaneously, Vincent begins experiencing surreal nightmares where he and other men must ascend a tower while outrunning terrifying demons; if they fail in the dream, they die in real life. The stress of his double life and the growing intensity of his nightmares eventually compel Vincent to end the affair with Catherine. In a violent confrontation between Vincent, Catherine, and Katherine, Catherine is seemingly killed; however, the incident is revealed to have occurred in the nightmare, from which Vincent and Katherine escape. The next day, Katherine — who retains no memory of the nightmare, but guessed his infidelity — breaks off their relationship.


title: Catherine (video game)

text: Vincent realizes he is the only person aware of Catherine's existence, and that all of her messages have vanished from his phone. Vincent confronts Mutton, the proprietor of the Stray Sheep who is the only other person he has witnessed Catherine speaking to. He learns that Mutton is Dumuzid the Shepherd, and that Catherine is a succubus who aided Mutton in his game to kill men who would not commit to marriage and family. Vincent enters the nightmare world one last time, on the condition that he and the other men will be freed if he reaches the top of the tower. Vincent is victorious and defeats Dumuzid, who is revealed to be an associate of Astaroth.


title: Catherine (video game)

text: In "Full Body", Rin moves in next door to Vincent after taking a job at the Stray Sheep playing piano. Vincent and Rin grow close, with Rin comforting him in his nightmares by playing the piano. During one meeting, Vincent accidentally discovers that Rin is a cross-dressing man, which causes a rift between them following Vincent's shocked reaction. If Vincent chooses to reconnect with Rin, he appears in Vincent's nightmare and is captured by Mutton, with Vincent rescuing him by defeating Astaroth. Alternate endings for Katherine and Catherine are unlocked if Vincent sends them a recording of Rin's piano music.


title: Catherine (video game)

text: From here, there are several possible endings, depending on the player's actions throughout the game:


title: Catherine (video game)

text: In all of the game's endings, Trisha states in a closing narration that the purpose of Vincent's story, and the player's actions in directing his story, was to determine whether the player desired a life of comfort or a life of excitement. She explains that the tower was a metaphor for the journey to adulthood, and that "there is no right way to climb the tower." In a secret ending unlocked when the player clears the game's challenge stages, Trisha speaks directly to the player and reveals that she is Ishtar, with Astaroth having been one of her avatars. Tired of Dumuzid's infidelity, the events of "Catherine" were a test to find someone worthy of her love. She offers to make the player into a deity so that they can become her consort.


title: Catherine (video game)

text: "Catherine" was developed by the "2nd Creative Production Department", a team within Atlus who had previously handled development for the "Persona" series, a subseries within the "Megami Tensei" franchise. Planning for "Catherine" began while the development team were performing final polishing work for "Persona 4" prior to the latter's 2008 release. The three key staff members were all veterans of the "Persona" series: director and producer Katsura Hashino had helmed both "Persona 3" and "Persona 4"; art director and character designer Shigenori Soejima had designed characters for both "Persona 3" and "Persona 4"; and composer Shoji Meguro had created music for multiple "Megami Tensei" titles, including the "Persona" series. The chief designer was Kazuhisa Wada, while the chief programmer was Yujiro Kosaka.


title: Catherine (video game)

text: "Catherine" was the very first title developed by Atlus for high-definition (HD) video game consoles, specifically the PlayStation 3 (PS3) and Xbox 360 (360). Using HD consoles they were able to fully portray the world of "Catherine". Despite the shift onto HD consoles making their vision easier to realize, debugging for multiple consoles caused problems that pushed back the planned development schedule. In a 2012 statement, an Atlus staff member said that "Catherine" was a "difficult" game for the company to make. The game would later be called a "test" for the development of "Persona 5".


title: Catherine (video game)

text: "Catherine" was first announced in August 2010, along with its prospective platforms. Upon its announcement, "Catherine" proved unexpectedly popular, garnering as much public attention and fan expectation as recent releases in the "Persona" series. Due to the game's content, Atlus found it difficult to gain their wished-for rating from Japan's CERO ratings board. Beginning from October 2010, Atlus and its then-parent Index Media began an "aggressive" advertising campaign to promote the title in Japan. "Catherine" released on February 17, 2011. A PS3 demo for the game was released in January, but in early February Atlus pulled the demo, stating that it had achieved the maximum number of planned downloads. Following player complaints about the game's difficulty, Atlus created a patch which added a lower difficulty. The patches for both the PS3 and 360 versions released in March. The PS3 version was released in mainland Asia on July 26, 2011, distributed by Softsource. The 360 version was not released in the region due to unspecified coding issues.


title: Catherine (video game)

text: Different cover artwork was created by Soejima for the 360 and PS3 versions—the PS3 cover showed Catherine showing off her cleavage, while the 360 cover had Katherine lying on her front showing her behind. Soejima was originally told by Hashino to create covers that would catch people's eyes in stores; the different cover arts for different versions was chosen as they felt it would be interesting. The two characters were originally going to be in identical, near-naked poses. This was changed due to the character's different charms, which it was felt would be lost if they were posed in such a way. Soejima went through multiple cover designs, with one being the two characters holding different cutlery utensils. Hashino had little involvement beyond his initial instruction, but did ask that more of Katherine's back be shown in the image. The covers exemplified each character's contrasting appeal: Catherine's cleavage showed off her youthful beauty, while displaying Katherine's behind was meant to evoke her more motherly charms. This artwork was used for retail posters, but Atlus also created alternate artwork for stores that wanted something less risqué.


title: Catherine (video game)

text: "Catherine" protagonist Vincent made a cameo appearance in "Persona 3 Portable", the PlayStation Portable remake of "Persona 3". The port's female protagonist runs into Vincent, who makes reference to the events of "Catherine". Vincent was included in "Persona 3 Portable" as it was created by the same development team as "Catherine", but the version of Vincent in "Persona 3 Portable" is not the same as that used in "Catherine". Despite the possibility, staff have discounted either an anime adaptation or further games in the series, the latter due to its challenging production.


title: Catherine (video game)

text: The aim with "Catherine" was to create a game that was not within the role-playing genre as with the majority of Atlus' titles, in addition to making something that was aimed at adults. The main aim was to create something new as a change prior to developing a new role-playing game. It used the third-party Gamebryo game engine. Hashino had wanted an in-house engine, but the team's lack of experience with HD consoles meant this was impracticable. While they had the option of developing the title for handheld consoles or mobile devices, Hashino felt that the game would lose its charm on less powerful hardware.


title: Catherine (video game)

text: The initial story was written by Hashino, who originally worked alone on the scenario before other writers were brought on to help. The scenario's main writer was Yuichiro Tanaka, previously lead writer for the "Persona" series. The setting incorporated both Japanese and American influences. Hashino felt that "Catherine" was an ambitious title due to its themes and subject matter, saying that no-one but Atlus would have supported the project. The main theme is love between men and women, although in its infancy the project was themed around conflict. In order to make the love triangle between Vincent, Catherine and Katherine sound realistic, he asked other members of Atlus staff for their experiences. One story, where a woman detailed killing people in her dreams, was almost directly referenced within the game. Vincent was a very unlikeable character, but based on staff feedback he was adjusted to appear more sympathetic. As the initial premise could not be changed, the team instead added Mutton's plot and worked to make Vincent a more sympathetic character within this framework.


title: Catherine (video game)

text: Soejima, who had mainly worked on the "Persona" series up to this point, was most focused on making the characters' expressions seem realistic within the context of the story. All the characters were designed around being realistic, with their proportions being more akin to real people rather than stylized figures. According to him, he was influenced by the game's themes of instinctual desire intruding into everyday life, the desire for sleep, and the concept of greed. Vincent exemplified these themes. Vincent's character was based on and named after Vincent Gallo, specifically his appearance in the 1998 film "Buffalo '66". The younger "Catherine" was designed to be beautiful and youthful when compared to "Katherine", who had an adult charm. The pink coloring of the game's user interface was intended to evoke its sensual and "kitschy" atmosphere. The cutscenes were created by anime production studio Studio 4°C. While the "Persona" games up to that point boasted around half an hour of cutscenes, the number in "Catherine" came to considerably more. Studio 4 °C spent around a year working on the anime cutscenes.


title: Catherine (video game)

text: "Catherine" was initially not planned for a Western release. After an initial leak through listings on EB Games and GameStop, Atlus USA confirmed that "Catherine" would be released in North America. The game was localized for the West by Atlus USA, who had previously handled many of the company's earlier titles. Main localization staff included editors Mike Meeker and Clayton S. Chan; and quality assurance staff Scott Williams, Jonathon Reinhold, Kourtnie McKenzie, Allie Doyon and Charles Chaikaew. Compared to previous Atlus titles, which had focused on Japanese culture, Atlus USA had comparatively little work adjusting things for a Western audience as the game was set within a North American city environment. Their main issue was with the dialogue, which was meant to be naturalistic despite some tongue-in-cheek dialogue, alongside jokes and references that needed adjusting so they would make sense to a Western audience. According to the localizers, the problem "[wasn't] translating the definition, it's translating the intent".


title: Catherine (video game)

text: A major issue the team faced was with the quotes used in loading screens. While they were apparently all famous quotes, they had been taken from a Japanese book of quotes without any authors being mentioned, in addition to their translation into Japanese sometimes being poor. In the event, Atlus USA went with new quotes to put in their place rather than trying to identify and translate the existing quotes. The quotes used were from multiple sources, including Douglas Adams, George Carlin and Rodney Dangerfield. According to Chan, the main advantage of "Catherine" compared to other projects was that the situations and characters were ones he and other team members could understand rather than typical fantasy scenarios.


title: Catherine (video game)

text: Atlus USA initially had difficulty persuading mainstream stores like Target and Walmart to take "Catherine" due to its suggestive cover art and marketing calling it an "adult" title, which was mostly associated with erotic games not sold in such stores. To convince them that the game was suitable for mainstream stores, Atlus USA put together a film reel of clips from unspecified triple-A games those stores did sell that featured more explicit content than "Catherine". When they met the retailer representatives, they showcased the film and pointed out that "Catherine" had none of that content, before showing off the most explicit scenes in the game to prove their point. The retailers were convinced and allowed "Catherine" to be sold in mainstream stores, while also looking through their stocks after seeing the content of currently-stocked titles. As with the Japanese version, Atlus used alternate covers for the 360 and PS3 versions, and alternate versions of those covers toning down the suggestive elements for stores catering to more sensitive consumers. "Catherine" released in North America on July 26, 2011. In addition to the standard edition, a special limited "Love is Dead" edition was created for both PS3 and 360.


title: Catherine (video game)

text: Though initial statements from Atlus said that "Catherine" would not be released in Europe, its release in the region was leaked through a rating for the 360 version in Germany. Its official release was confirmed in a press release from Atlus shortly after the leak. The title was published by Deep Silver across all PAL territories, and featured written language support for English, Spanish, German, French, and Italian. Deep Silver was chosen as the publisher as they shared Atlus' enthusiasm about the game. "Catherine" released in Europe on February 10, 2012. As with North America, the PS3 and 360 versions had a limited special edition. Called the "Stray Sheep Edition" after a central location in the game, it had differing content to the North American edition. In Australia, the title was distributed by QV Software. The PS3 version released on February 16, while the 360 version released on February 23. A Microsoft Windows version, titled "Catherine Classic", was published worldwide by Sega on January 10, 2019 through Steam. This port was the first modern Atlus title ported to the platform, as the company were previously averse to it. The port included expanded graphics options, controller customization, and the English and Japanese voice tracks.


title: Catherine (video game)

text: Since release, "Catherine" has occasionally been played competitively in esport tournaments. The game's professional scene began when FGC member David "Dacidbro" Broweleit desired to learn the insides of the game's engine. The first notable tournament was an event called Super NorCal Install, which took place in 2012. The tournament would become the basis for the game's competitive scene. Publisher Atlus would later officially sponsor the game as a side event at Evo 2015, while streaming it on their Twitch account. The attention surrounding the event would later carry on into Evo 2016, CEOtaku 2016, Genesis 4, as well as a dedicated event in San Jose called "The King of Catherine", which had awarded a 5,000 prize pool to winners. Speaking later, the developers said they were surprised with how popular the game became in the international esports scene.


title: Catherine (video game)

text: Valerie Arem of PCB Productions was the voice director for dubbing. Rather than recording as a team, each actor recorded their lines separately. Baker, Bailey and Willingham, the respective voices of Vincent, Catherine and Johnny, described the voice recording period as a positive experience, reinforced by the fact that they were all old friends. Baker noted that it was a relative rarity for this to be the case in general voice acting. Ruff, the voice of Katherine, was helped in her performance by both Arem and Atlus staff. In contrast to the majority of Japanese game localizations, the lip movements for some cutscenes were adjusted so they would sync with the English voices. This was done to give the acting and performances a more natural feel. This meant that the voice actors had more freedom to adlib parts of their performance: a cited example was the fight between Katherine and Catherine, where the two actresses adlibed the majority of the characters' argument. The aim for realism also meant that the performances were more restrained than those given for Japanese anime, which leaned towards stylized performances. For real-time cutscenes, lines had to be matched with gestures and line lengths to within 0.2 seconds; the Atlus staff needed to go through the Japanese script and create a dedicated column for speaking times, then they acted out the lines themselves so they had a reference for the voice actors, and finally they would allow an actor to alter things a little to suit their performance and document those changes so the subtitles matched.


title: Catherine (video game)

text: Baker, Bailey and Ruff had all previously worked with Atlus on the "Persona" series: Ruff voiced Yukari Takeba in "Persona 3" while Baker and Bailey respectively voiced Kanji Tatsumi and Rise Kujikawa from "Persona 4". In an interview, Baker described the Atlus USA staff as giving him and the other English actors a great deal of freedom when it came to delivering lines and portraying their characters. He noted that the themes in "Catherine" were far more controversial compared to earlier titles he and Atlus had worked on, and that it was a unique voice acting opportunity. Bailey was working on another Atlus project when she was offered the opportunity to voice Catherine. Having already heard of the project in the press, Bailey accepted the offer; during her time recording lines, she found the experience strange as she considered Baker to be a brotherly figure, starkly contrasting the relationship between Vincent and Catherine.


title: Catherine (video game)

text: Ruff was offered the role of Katherine based on her acting abilities and her previous work with Atlus. She saw some footage of Katherine to get a feeling for her relationship with Vincent, but did not try to sync her performance with the Japanese. This was partly because of the planned English sync adjustments, and partly because she heard Japanese voice recording and cutscene finalization was still in progress. This was confirmed by Arem in a separate interview. Arem described each main actor's strengths during recording: Baker had good timing when it came to delivering his lines, Bailey required few retakes, while Ruff was able to realistically convey a variety of emotions. She also noted the work done by Fitzgerald, the voice actress for both Trisha and Erica; Fitzgerald had difficulty with the timing for Trisha's lines, but managed to "pull it off". The amount of voice acting involved was so large that the actors felt they could not finish it. Looking back on the production, Arem said she would not recast any of the characters.


title: Catherine (video game)

text: Catherine: Full Body was developed by Studio Zero, an internal team founded by Hashino after the release of "Persona 5" with multiple "Persona" staff. Hashino envisioned the game as the definitive version of "Catherine", the aim being to present the team's mission to create new and innovative gaming experiences by returning to one of their more unconventional titles. Hashino and Soejima returned as producer and character designer respectively. The director was Kenichi Goto, who worked as battle planner for the PlayStation 2 "Devil Summoner" games and "Persona 5". Studio 4 °C returned to produce twenty more anime cutscenes. The game was ported directly into the in-house engine used by Atlus for the "Persona Dancing" games and "Persona 5". The gameplay was tweaked based on fan feedback, and easier difficulty was added so players could enjoy the story. The game includes downloadable content (DLC) that features "Persona 5" protagonist Joker as a playable guest character.


title: Catherine (video game)

text: The keyword for the project was "diversity", expressed in both the narrative and the unconventional gameplay compared to other titles on the market. Rin was included in "Full Body" as part of Hashino's wish to update the game's sensibilities and subject matter based on current trends. When asked to create a third "Catherine", Soejima was initially unsure how to proceed. As he designed Catherine and Katherine as "hot" and "cool" respectively, he chose a "cute" design for Rin. Soejima designed Rin around a lack of aggression, from the character's expression and coloring reflecting this. Hashino also asked Soejima to redesign Trisha's hairstyle, which was changed into twin bun-style afros on either side of her head.


title: Catherine (video game)

text: The game was released in Japan on February 14, 2019. A notable addition to the Japanese version was a choice of eleven different voice actresses for Catherine, nine of which were DLC. All the actresses had previously played adulterous characters. The voices available in the base game were the original voice Sawashiro and Mamiko Noto. The Japanese DLC actresses were Ami Koshimizu, Aoi Yūki, Yui Horie, Kana Asumi, Haruka Tomatsu, Megumi Toyoguchi, Rie Kugimiya, Rina Satō, and Nana Mizuki. Each actress portrayed Catherine with a different personality, with Noto's version being described as a " lady".


title: Catherine (video game)

text: The original English voice cast reprised their roles for new dialogue, with Brianna Knickerbocker voicing the character of Rin. The localization team had to translate roughly 165,000 Japanese characters and over 6,000 new lines of spoken dialogue. As the original script altered several established lines, the team constantly referenced the Japanese script and worked hard to smoothly incorporate new and original text. While the team could have recast due to the lapse of time between the original and "Full Body", the team wanted to "preserve the integrity" of "Full Body" and so brought back the entire main cast and most of the supporting cast. There were problems with how some voices had aged over the past eight years, and due to concerns over Baker's voice the team opted not to re-record a scene where Vincent screamed for 20 seconds. A notable adjustment for the Western release of "Full Body" was the crediting and dialogue for the transgender character Erica. She was originally referred to in the English credits using her birth name with her chosen name in parentheses. The Japanese version of "Full Body" retained this, but Atlus changed it for the Western release to use Erica's chosen name. This is notable because the game appeared in the news following public debate over whether the original credits were transphobic. Some dialogue within the game related to Erica was also changed for similar reasons. The PS4 version was released by Atlus in North America and Europe on September 3, 2019. For the European version, the localizers had the extra task of translating the text into French, Spanish, Italian and German. The lack of an English localization for the Vita version was attributed to the console's discontinuation outside of Japan that year. A Nintendo Switch version was announced during a Nintendo Direct in March 2020 titled "Catherine: Full Body for Nintendo Switch" in Japan and simply "Catherine: Full Body" in the west. It was released on July 2, 2020 in Japan and July 7, 2020 internationally.


title: Catherine (video game)

text: Meguro began working on the first demo tracks for the game in August 2009. Meguro worked as the main composer, leading a team composed of himself, Kenichi Tsuchiya, Atsushi Kitajoh, and Toshiki Konishi. Kitajoh was the general coordinator and managed sound effects for the action scenes. Meguro did not have much freedom with the project, as Hashino was specific about What he wanted the music to be like, giving him the key words of "classic", "adult oriented" and "erotic". The music team used multiple genres for the music in "Catherine", switching genre depending on the flow of gameplay; action segments used remixes of classical music, quiet moments used jazz, and the animated cutscenes used symphonic-based music. As the animated cutscenes were produced by an external company, Meguro found creating music for them difficult when compared to previous projects of his, as he had to sync the music to something he had no creative input with. Meguro was highly impressed by both the sound quality compared to his previous work, and the amount of control he had to adjust the relative volume of music and sound effects. Rapper L-VOKAL contributed to the score.


title: Catherine (video game)

text: For "Full Body", in addition to Meguro's original work on the score, music company Inspion Izene was brought on to both arrange and add to the soundtrack. The company had previously helped with the original game's sound design, and were brought in to help distinguish the game's sound from that of the "Persona" series and its parent "Megami Tensei". L-VOKAL returned to help remix tracks. Inspion Izene composed seventeen new tracks for the game. The theme song for the game is "Re:set" by Sekai no Owari. The theme was performed by Chinese singer Satsuki; the team wanted a voice that would stand out, so they sought out a foreign singer who could speak Japanese. However, Re:set is removed for Nintendo Switch version.


title: Catherine (video game)

text: "Catherine" received mostly positive reviews, according to review aggregator Metacritic. In an import review, "GamesRadar" praised the story, but criticized the game's difficulty due to random enemy AI, though they later gave the English release 8/10, citing changes had removed most of the game's annoyances. Some Japanese gamers complained that the game was too difficult, thus making Atlus release a patch that included an easier difficulty mode. "IGN" gave the North American version of "Catherine" an overall score of 9.0. "Computer and Video Games" gave the game an 8.0. Tom Bissell of "Grantland", was pleasantly surprised by the game and gave it a very positive review.


title: Catherine (video game)

text: In 2013, Liz Lanier of "Game Informer" included Catherine and Katherine among the top ten female villains in video games, stating that "...Vincent can't catch a break between Catherine seducing him one minute and manipulating him the next; Katherine isn't much better with her passive-aggressive push toward marriage. Considering both appear as horrifying boss battles, they can easily be any man's worst nightmare." In 2014, David Auerbach of "Slate" claimed "Catherine" to be sexist, writing that its treatment of relationships and sex exemplified a misogynous tendency in video game culture that became a topic of media discussion over the next several years. Among other complaints, Auerbach claimed that the game is "a bellwether for what tech culture and gaming have come to mean for a lot of men: a safe playspace from the realities that they believe women force on them."


title: Catherine (video game)

text: Emily Short, a game writer and designer, wrote that she found the game's characters generally unsympathetic for a variety of reasons. She was also annoyed by its approach to gender roles due to its negative message about women in relationships and lack of non-standard relationship types, describing the narrative as "both misogynist and misandrist" despite late-game attempts to recognise the complexity of gender relations. In a 2011 feature on faith in video game narratives, "GameSpot" said that the game succeeded in "personalizing the emotional weight of everyday sin" without carrying an overtly Christian message.


title: Catherine (video game)

text: The PlayStation 3 version topped the Japanese charts in its opening week with over 140,000 copies sold while the Xbox 360 version came in 7th with over 21,000, and was able to outsell "", which was released on the same day, by a margin of two-to-one. The game has also been commercially successful in America, selling 78,000 copies across both systems to consumers in its first six days, making it Atlus' biggest launch yet for a game. The game had sold around 500,000 copies by the end of 2011, being a huge success for the company; 260,000 copies were sold in Japan and 230,000 in North America. By 2017, the original game had shipped one million copies worldwide. The PC port of the original game was among the best-selling new releases of the month on Steam.


title: Catherine (video game)

text: Upon its Japanese debut, the PS4 version of "Full Body" reached second place in the sales charts with sales of nearly 52,000 units. The Vita version was thirteenth with sales of over 9,000 units, with combined sales being just over 61,000 units. This was considerably less than the original game's regional debut. It remained in the top 20 best-selling into early March.


title: Saudi Binladin Group

text: Saudi Binladin Group (SBG) is a Saudi construction company based in Jeddah, Hejaz. It is the largest construction company of Saudi Arabia and operates throughout the Middle East. In 2011, the Saudi Binladin Group signed a US$1.23 billion contractual agreement to construct the tallest building in the world, Jeddah Tower in Jeddah. They are also party to a US$3.4 billion agreement to construct the Doha Metro located in Doha. The conglomerate comprises an estimated 537 companies. The group's founder was Muhammad bin Awad bin Laden, the father of Osama bin Laden.


title: Saudi Binladin Group

text: The SBG was founded in 1931 by Sheikh Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden Sayyid, whose relationship with the country's founder, Abdulaziz Al Saud, led to important government contracts such as refurbishing the mosques at Mecca and Medina. In 1964, Mohammed bin Laden was commissioned to reclad the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. After the death of Sheikh Mohammed in 1967, the group was headed by Mohammed Bahareth, brother of Mohammed's first wife and uncle of his oldest children. In 1972, Salem bin Laden, the eldest son of Mohammed bin Laden, took over as his father's successor with the assistance of several brothers. Upon Salem's death in a plane crash in 1988, the leadership of the group passed to one of Salem's brothers, Bakr, the current chairman, along with thirteen other brothers who make up the board of the bin Laden group. The most important of these include Hassan bin Laden, Yeslam bin Ladin and Yehia bin Laden. The most controversial brother was Osama bin Laden, the leader of terror-organisation Al-Qaeda and perpetrator of the September 11 attacks,


title: Saudi Binladin Group

text: The Group considered an initial public offering in 2011, but declined to do so due to a combination of low oil prices, a weak stock market, and bureaucratic obstacles.


title: Saudi Binladin Group

text: In April 2018, Bakr bin Laden, as well as his brothers Saleh and Saad, transferred their 36.2% stake in the Saudi Binladin Group to the Istidama Holding Company, which is owned by the Ministry of Finance. The government of Saudi Arabia subsequently established a five-person committee to run the Binladen Group, which includes of Abdul Rahman Al Harkan, Khaled Nahas, Khalid Al Khowaiter. Reuters described the ownership transfer as a functional nationalization, with al-Harkan, the committee's chairman, reporting to Finance Minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan. al-Karkan subsequently negotiated an 11 billion riyal loan from the Ministry of Finance.


title: Saudi Binladin Group

text: The bin Laden group is represented in most Saudi cities — Riyadh, Dammam — and in a number of capital cities in the region (Beirut, Cairo, Amman, Dubai). According to a synopsis by the PBS news program "Frontline":


title: Saudi Binladin Group

text: The Group has constructed Abraj Al Bait Towers in Mecca and has been contracted by Kingdom Holding Company to build the Jeddah Tower.


title: Saudi Binladin Group

text: On 11 September 2015, while doing construction work in the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, one of the Group's cranes collapsed due to high winds causing 118 deaths and almost 400 injuries. As a result, the Saudi king banned the firm from taking new projects while having its current projects reviewed. The Saudi government removed the ban on the Binladin Group in May 2016, allowing them to bid on new projects.


title: Saudi Binladin Group

text: SBG's Internet domain name, saudi-binladin-group.com, was registered on September 11, 2000, for one year, expiring on the same day as the September 11 attacks. The domain was later acquired by a domain speculator.


title: Sawney Bean

text: Alexander "Sawney" Bean was said to be the head of a 45-member clan in Scotland in the 16th century that murdered and cannibalized over 1,000 people in 25 years. According to legend, Bean and his clan members were eventually caught by a search party sent by King James VI and executed for their heinous crimes.


title: Sawney Bean

text: The story appeared in "The Newgate Calendar", a crime catalog of Newgate Prison in London. The legend lacks sufficient evidence to be deemed true by historians, and there is debate as to why the legend would have been fictionalized; nevertheless, the myth of "Sawney" Bean has passed into local folklore and has become a part of the Edinburgh tourism circuit.


title: Sawney Bean

text: According to "The Newgate Calendar", a tabloid publication from the 18th and 19th centuries, Alexander Bean was born in East Lothian during the 16th century. His father was a ditch-digger and hedge-trimmer and Bean tried to take up the family trade, but quickly realised that he was not fit for this work.


title: Sawney Bean

text: He left home with an allegedly vicious woman named Black Agnes Douglas, who apparently shared his inclinations and was accused of being a witch. After some robbing and the cannibalisation of one of their victims, the couple ended up at a coastal cave in Bennane Head between Girvan and Ballantrae. The cave was deep, and the entrance was blocked by water during high tide, so the couple were able to live there undiscovered for some 25 years.


title: Sawney Bean

text: Sawney and Agnes produced six daughters, eight sons, 14 granddaughters, and 18 grandsons. Various grandchildren were products of incest between their children.


title: Sawney Bean

text: Lacking the inclination for regular labour, the Bean clan thrived by laying careful ambushes at night to rob and murder individuals or small groups. The clan brought the bodies back to their cave where the corpses were dismembered and eaten. They pickled the leftovers in barrels. The clan discarded body parts, which would sometimes wash up on nearby beaches. This strategy was used to help conceal their crimes and lead villagers to believe that it was animals who were attacking travellers.


title: Sawney Bean

text: The body parts and disappearances did not go unnoticed by the local villagers but the Bean clan stayed in their cave by day and took their victims at night. The Bean clan was so clandestine that the villagers were unaware of the murderers living nearby.


title: Sawney Bean

text: As local people began to take notice of the disappearances more significantly, several organised searches were launched to find the culprits. One search took note of the cave but the men refused to believe anything human could live in it. Frustrated and in a frenetic quest for justice, the townspeople hanged several innocents but the disappearances continued. Suspicion often fell on local innkeepers since they were the last known to have seen many of the missing people alive.


title: Sawney Bean

text: One fateful night, the Bean clan ambushed a married couple riding from a fayre on one horse but the man was skilled in combat thus he deftly held off the clan with sword and pistol. The Bean clan fatally mauled the wife when she fell to the ground in the conflict. Before they could take the resilient husband, a large group of fayre-goers appeared on the trail and the Beans fled. The fayre-goers took the survivor to the local magistrate, whom they informed of this experience.


title: Sawney Bean

text: With the Beans' existence finally revealed, it was not long before the King (perhaps James VI of Scotland in tales linked to the 16th century, though it is less clear who this could be in other tales from the 15th century) heard of the atrocities and decided to lead a search with a team of 400 men and several bloodhounds. They soon found the Bean clan's previously-overlooked cave in Bennane Head thanks to the bloodhounds. Upon entering the cave by torchlight, the searchers found the Bean clan surrounded by human remains with some body parts hanging from the wall, barrels filled with limbs, and piles of stolen heirlooms and jewellery.


title: Sawney Bean

text: The town of Girvan, located near the macabre scene of murder and debauchery, has another legend about the Bean clan. There are claims that one of Bean's daughters eventually left the clan and settled in Girvan where she planted a tree that became known as "The Hairy Tree". After her family's capture and exposure, the daughter's identity was revealed by angry locals who hanged her from the bough of the Hairy Tree.


title: Sawney Bean

text: According to "The Scotsman", there is a debate over the validity of the Sawney Bean tale. Some people believe that Sawney Bean was a real person, while others think he was just a mythical figure. Dorothy L. Sayers offered a gruesome account of the Sawney Bean tale in her anthology "Great Short Stories of Detection, Mystery and Horror" (Gollancz, 1928. The book was a best-seller in Britain, reprinted seven times in the next five years.) A 2005 article by Sean Thomas notes that historical documents, such as newspapers and diaries during the era in which Sawney Bean was supposedly active, make no mention of ongoing disappearances of hundreds of people. Additionally, Thomas notes inconsistencies in the stories but speculates that kernels of truth might have inspired the legend:""... from broadsheet to broadsheet, the precise dating of Sawney Bean's reign of anthropophagic terror varies wildly: sometimes the atrocities occurred during the reign of James VI [ca. early 1600s], whilst other versions claim the Beans lived centuries before. Viewed in this light, it is arguable that the Bean story may have a basis of truth but the precise dating of events has become obscured over the years. Perhaps the dating of the murders was brought forward by the editors and writer of the broadsheets, so as to make the story appear more relevant to the readership ... To add to the intrigue, we do know that cannibalism was not unknown in mediaeval Scotland and that Galloway was in mediaeval times a very lawless place; perhaps nothing on the scale of the Bean legend took place but every story grows and is embroidered over time"."The Sawney Bean legend closely resembles the story of Christie-Cleek, which is attested much earlier in the early 15th century. Christie Cleek is a mythical Scottish cannibal who lived during a famine in the mid-fourteenth century.


title: Sawney Bean

text: The legend of Sawney Bean first appeared in the British chapbooks (rumour magazines of the day). Today, many argue that the story was a political propaganda tool to denigrate the Scots after the Jacobite rebellions. Thomas disagrees, noting: "If the Sawney Bean story is to be read as deliberately anti-Scottish, how do we explain the equal emphasis on English criminals in the same publications? Wouldn't such an approach rather blunt the point?". (See also "Sawney" for this theory).


title: Sawney Bean

text: A broadside from circa 1750 mentions "the Scottish traditional story of Sandy Bane" as it relates to a report of a murderer who had been eating live cats.


title: Sawney Bean

text: Another cannibal story from Scotland, even more redolent of the Sawney Bean tale than the Christie Cleek story, can be found in the 1696 work of Nathaniel Crouch, a compiler and popular history writer who published under the pseudonym "Richard Burton". In this tale, the following happened in 1459, the year before James II of Scotland's death:""...about which time a certain thief who lived privately in a den, with his wife and children, were all burned alive, they having made it their practice for many years to kill young people and eat them; one girl only of a year old was saved, and brought up at Dundee, who at twelve years of age being found guilty of the same horrid crime, was condemned to the same punishment, and when the people followed her in great multitudes to execution, wondering at her unnatural villainy, she turned toward them, and with a cruel countenance said, "What do you thus rail at me, as if I had done such an heinous act, contrary to the nature of man? I tell you that if you did but know how pleasant the taste of man's flesh was, none of you all would forbear to eat it;" and thus with an impenitent and stubborn mind she suffered deserved death"".Hector Boece notes that the infant daughter of a Scot brigand, who was executed with his family for cannibalism, though raised by foster parents, developed the cannibal appetite at 12, and was put to death for it. This was summarised by George M. Gould and Walter Pyle in "Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine".


title: Rotator cuff

text: The rotator cuff is a group of muscles and their tendons that act to stabilize the human shoulder and allow for its extensive range of motion. Of the seven scapulohumeral muscles, four make up the rotator cuff. The four muscles are the supraspinatus muscle, the infraspinatus muscle, teres minor muscle, and the subscapularis muscle.


title: Rotator cuff

text: The supraspinatus muscle spreads out in a horizontal band to insert on the superior facet of the greater tubercle of the humerus. The greater tubercle projects as the most lateral structure of the humeral head. Medial to this, in turn, is the lesser tubercle of the humeral head. The subscapularis muscle origin is divided from the remainder of the rotator cuff origins as it is deep to the scapula.


title: Rotator cuff

text: The four tendons of these muscles converge to form the rotator cuff tendon. These tendinous insertions along with the articular capsule, the coracohumeral ligament, and the glenohumeral ligament complex, blend into a confluent sheet before insertion into the humeral tuberosities (i.e. greater and lesser tubercle). The infraspinatus and teres minor fuse near their musculotendinous junctions, while the supraspinatus and subscapularis tendons join as a sheath that surrounds the biceps tendon at the entrance of the bicipital groove. The supraspinatus is most commonly involved in a rotator cuff tear.


title: Rotator cuff

text: The rotator cuff muscles are important in shoulder movements and in maintaining glenohumeral joint (shoulder joint) stability. These muscles arise from the scapula and connect to the head of the humerus, forming a cuff at the shoulder joint. They hold the head of the humerus in the small and shallow glenoid fossa of the scapula. The glenohumeral joint has been analogously described as a golf ball (head of the humerus) sitting on a golf tee (glenoid fossa).


title: Rotator cuff

text: During abduction of the arm, moving it outward and away from the trunk (torso), the rotator cuff compresses the glenohumeral joint, an action known as concavity compression, in order to allow the large deltoid muscle to further elevate the arm. In other words, without the rotator cuff, the humeral head would ride up partially out of the glenoid fossa, lessening the efficiency of the deltoid muscle. The anterior and posterior directions of the glenoid fossa are more susceptible to shear force perturbations as the glenoid fossa is not as deep relative to the superior and inferior directions. The rotator cuff's contributions to concavity compression and stability vary according to their stiffness and the direction of the force they apply upon the joint.


title: Rotator cuff

text: In addition to stabilizing the glenohumeral joint and controlling humeral head translation, the rotator cuff muscles also perform multiple functions, including abduction, internal rotation, and external rotation of the shoulder. The infraspinatus and subscapularis have significant roles in scapular plane shoulder abduction (scaption), generating forces that are two to three times greater than the force produced by the supraspinatus muscle. However, the supraspinatus is more effective for general shoulder abduction because of its moment arm. The anterior portion of the supraspinatus tendon is submitted to a significantly greater load and stress, and performs its main functional role.


title: Rotator cuff

text: The tendons at the ends of the rotator cuff muscles can become torn, leading to pain and restricted movement of the arm. A torn rotator cuff can occur following trauma to the shoulder or it can occur through the "wear and tear" on tendons, most commonly the supraspinatus tendon found under the acromion.


title: Rotator cuff

text: Rotator cuff injuries are commonly associated with motions that require repeated overhead motions or forceful pulling motions. Such injuries are frequently sustained by athletes whose actions include making repetitive throws, athletes such as baseball pitchers, softball pitchers, American football players (especially quarterbacks), firefighters, cheerleaders, weightlifters (especially powerlifters due to extreme weights used in the bench press), rugby players, volleyball players (due to their swinging motions), water polo players, rodeo team ropers, shot put throwers, swimmers, boxers, kayakers, martial artists, fast bowlers in cricket, tennis players (due to their service motion) and tenpin bowlers due to the repetitive swinging motion of the arm with the weight of a bowling ball. This type of injury also commonly affects orchestra conductors, choral conductors, and drummers (due, again, to swinging motions).


title: Rotator cuff

text: As progression increases after 4–6 weeks, active exercises are now implemented into the rehabilitation process. Active exercises allow an increase in strength and further range of motion by permitting the movement of the shoulder joint without the support of a physical therapist. Active exercises include the Pendulum exercise, which is used to strengthen the Supraspinatus, Infraspinatus, and Subscapularis. External rotation of the shoulder with the arm at a 90-degree angle is an additional exercise done to increase control and range of motion of the Infraspinatus and Teres minor muscles. Various active exercises are done for an additional 3–6 weeks as progress is based on an individual case-by-case basis. At 8–12 weeks, strength training intensity will increase as free-weights and resistance bands will be implemented within the exercise prescription.


title: Rotator cuff

text: The accuracy of the physical examination is low. The Hawkins-Kennedy test has a sensitivity of approximately 80% to 90% for detecting impingement. The infraspinatus and supraspinatus tests have a specificity of 80% to 90%.


title: Rotator cuff

text: A common cause of shoulder pain in rotator cuff impingement syndrome is tendinosis, which is an age-related and most often self-limiting condition.


title: Rotator cuff

text: Studies show that there is moderate evidence that hypothermia (cold therapy) and exercise therapy used together are more effective than simply waiting for surgery and they suggest the best outcome for non-surgical treatment of subacromial impingement syndrome. The group of patients who participated in the exercise group were found to use significantly lower amounts of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS) and analgesics than the control group with no intervention.


title: Rotator cuff

text: The rotator interval is a triangular space in the shoulder that is functionally reinforced externally by the coracohumeral ligament and internally by the superior glenohumeral ligament, and traversed by the intra-articular biceps tendon. On imaging, it is defined by the coracoid process at its base, the supraspinatus tendon superiorly and the subscapularis tendon inferiorly. Changes of adhesive capsulitis can be seen at this interval as edema and fibrosis. Pathology at the interval is also associated with glenohumeral and biceps instability. Adhesive capsulitis or "frozen shoulder" is often secondary to rotator cuff injury due to post-surgical immobilization. Available treatment options include intra-articular corticosteroid injections to relieve pain in the short-term and electrotherapy, mobilizations, and home exercise programs for long-term pain relief.


title: Rotator cuff

text: Treatment for a rotator cuff tear can include rest, ice, physical therapy, and/or surgery. A review of manual therapy and exercise treatments found inconclusive evidence as to whether these treatments were any better than placebo, however "High quality evidence from one trial suggested that manual therapy and exercise improved function only slightly more than placebo at 22 weeks, was little or no different to placebo in terms of other patient-important outcomes (e.g. overall pain), and was associated with relatively more frequent but mild adverse events."


title: Rotator cuff

text: The rotator cuff includes muscles such as the supraspinatus muscle, the infraspinatus muscle, the teres minor muscle and the subscapularis muscle. The upper arm consists of the deltoids, biceps, as well as the triceps. Steps must be taken and precautions need to be made in order for the rotator cuffs to heal properly following surgery while still maintaining function to prevent any deteriorating effects on the muscles. In the immediate postoperative period (within one week following surgery), pain can be treated with a standard ice wrap. There are also commercial devices available which not only cool the shoulder but also exert pressure on the shoulder ("compressive cryotherapy"). However, one study has shown no significant difference in postoperative pain when comparing these devices to a standard ice wrap.


title: Rotator cuff

text: Physiotherapy can help manage the pain, but utilizing a program that involves continuous passive motion will reduce the pain even further. Assisted passive motion at a low intensity allows the tissues to be stretched slightly without damaging them Continuous passive motion improves the shoulder range and enables the subject to expand their range of motion without experiencing additional pain. Easing into the motions will allow the person to continue working those muscles to keep them from undergoing atrophy, while also still maintaining that minimum level of function where daily function is allowed. Doing these exercises will also prevent tears in the muscles that will impair daily function further. Since injuries of the rotator cuff often tend to inhibit motion without first experience discomfort and pain, other methods can be done to help accommodate that.


title: Rotator cuff

text: A systematic review and Meta-analysis study shows manual therapy may help to reduce pain for patient with Rotator cuff tendiopathy, based on low- to moderate-quality evidence. However, there is not strong evidence for improving function also.


title: Rotator cuff

text: Surgical approaches include acromioplasty (a part of the bone is removed to decrease pressure placed on the rotator cuff tendons), removal of a bursa that is inflamed or swollen, and subacromial decompression (the removal of tissue or bone that is damaged in order to allow more space for the tendons).


title: Rotator cuff

text: Surgery may be recommended for patients with an acute, traumatic rotator cuff tear resulting in substantial weakness. Surgery can be performed open or arthroscopically, although the arthroscopic approach has become much more popular. If a surgical option is selected, the rehabilitation of the rotator cuff is necessary in order to regain maximum strength and range of motion within the shoulder joint. Physical therapy progresses through four stages, increasing movement throughout each phase. The tempo and intensity of the stages are solely reliant on the extent of the injury and the patient's activity necessities. The first stage requires immobilization of the shoulder joint. The shoulder that is injured is placed in a sling and shoulder flexion or abduction of the arm is avoided for 4 to 6 weeks after surgery (Brewster, 1993). Avoiding movement of the shoulder joint allows the torn tendon to fully heal. Once the tendon is entirely recovered, passive exercises can be implemented. Passive exercises of the shoulder are movements in which a physical therapist maintains the arm in a particular position, manipulating the rotator cuff without any effort by the patient. These exercises are used to increase stability, strength and range of motion of the Subscapularis, Supraspinatus, Infraspinatus, and Teres minor muscles within the rotator cuff. Passive exercises include internal and external rotation of the shoulder joint, as well as flexion and extension of the shoulder.


title: Rotator cuff

text: A 2019 Cochrane Systematic Review found with a high degree of certainty that subacromial decompression surgery does not improve pain, function, or quality of life compared with a placebo surgery.


title: Rotator cuff

text: Patients that suffer from pain in the rotator cuff may consider utilizing orthotherapy into their daily lives. Orthotherapy is an exercise program that aims to restore the motion and strength of the shoulder muscles. Patients can go through the three phases of orthotherapy to help manage pain and also recover their full range of motion in the rotator cuff. The first phase involves gentle stretches and passive all around movements, and people are advised not to go above 70 degrees of elevation to prevent any kind of further pain. The second phase of this regimen requires patients to implement exercises to strengthen the muscles that are surrounding the rotator cuff muscles, combined with the passive exercises done in the first phase to keep on stretching the tissues without overexerting them. Exercises include pushups and shoulder shrugs, and after a couple of weeks of this, daily activities are gradually added to the patient's routine. This program does not require any sort of medication or surgery and can serve as a good alternative.


title: Rotator cuff

text: The rotator cuff and the upper muscles are responsible for many daily tasks that people do in their lives. A proper recovery needs to be maintained and achieved to prevent limiting movement, and can be done through simple movements.


title: Boomerang

text: A boomerang () is a thrown tool, typically constructed with aerofoil sections and designed to spin about an axis perpendicular to the direction of its flight. A returning boomerang is designed to return to the thrower, while a non-returning boomerang is designed as a weapon to be thrown straight and is traditionally used by some Aboriginal Australians for hunting.


title: Boomerang

text: Historically, boomerangs have been used for hunting, sport, and entertainment and are made in various shapes and sizes to suit different purposes. Although considered an Australian icon, ancient boomerangs have also been discovered in Africa, the Americas, and Eurasia.


title: Boomerang

text: A boomerang is a throwing stick with aerodynamic properties, traditionally made of wood, but also of bone, horn, tusks and even iron. Modern boomerangs used for sport may be made from plywood or plastics such as ABS, polypropylene, phenolic paper, or carbon fibre-reinforced plastics.


title: Boomerang

text: Boomerangs come in many shapes and sizes depending on their geographic or tribal origins and intended function. Many people think only of the traditional Australian type, although today there are many types of more easily usable boomerangs, such as the cross-stick, the pinwheel, the tumble-stick, the Boomabird, and many other less common types.


title: Boomerang

text: The origin of the term is uncertain. One source asserts that the term entered the language in 1827, adapted from an extinct Aboriginal language of New South Wales, Australia, but mentions a variant, "wo-mur-rang", which it dates to 1798. The first recorded encounter with a boomerang by Europeans was at Farm Cove (Port Jackson), in December 1804, when a weapon was witnessed during a tribal skirmish:


title: Boomerang

text: David Collins listed "Wo-mur-rāng" as one of eight Aboriginal "Names of clubs" in 1798. but was probably referring to the woomera, which is actually a spear-thrower. An anonymous 1790 manuscript on Aboriginal languages of New South Wales reported "Boo-mer-rit" as "the Scimiter".


title: Boomerang

text: In 1822, it was described in detail and recorded as a "bou-mar-rang" in the language of the Turuwal people (a sub-group of the Darug) of the Georges River near Port Jackson. The Turawal used other words for their hunting sticks but used "boomerang" to refer to a returning throw-stick.


title: Boomerang

text: Boomerangs were, historically, used as hunting weapons, percussive musical instruments, battle clubs, fire-starters, decoys for hunting waterfowl, and as recreational play toys. The smallest boomerang may be less than from tip to tip, and the largest over in length. Tribal boomerangs may be inscribed or painted with designs meaningful to their makers. Most boomerangs seen today are of the tourist or competition sort, and are almost invariably of the returning type.


title: Boomerang

text: Depictions of boomerangs being thrown at animals, such as kangaroos, appear in some of the oldest rock art in the world, the Indigenous Australian rock art of the Kimberly region, which is potentially up to 50,000 years old. Stencils and paintings of boomerangs also appear in the rock art of West Papua, including on Bird's Head Peninsula and Kaimana, likely dating to the Last Glacial Maximum, when lower sea levels led to cultural continuity between Papua and Arnhem Land in Northern Australia. The oldest surviving Australian Aboriginal boomerangs come from a cache found in a peat bog in the Wyrie Swamp of South Australia and date to 10,000 BC.


title: Boomerang

text: Although traditionally thought of as Australian, boomerangs have been found also in ancient Europe, Egypt, and North America. There is evidence of the use of non-returning boomerangs by the Native Americans of California and Arizona, and inhabitants of South India for killing birds and rabbits. Some boomerangs were not thrown at all, but were used in hand to hand combat by Indigenous Australians. Ancient Egyptian examples, however, have been recovered, and experiments have shown that they functioned as returning boomerangs. Hunting sticks discovered in Europe seem to have formed part of the Stone Age arsenal of weapons. One boomerang that was discovered in Obłazowa Cave in the Carpathian Mountains in Poland was made of mammoth's tusk and is believed, based on AMS dating of objects found with it, to be about 30,000 years old. In the Netherlands, boomerangs have been found in Vlaardingen and Velsen from the first century BC.


title: Boomerang

text: King Tutankhamun, the famous Pharaoh of ancient Egypt, who died over 3,300 years ago, owned a collection of boomerangs of both the straight flying (hunting) and returning variety.


title: Boomerang

text: No one knows for sure how the returning boomerang was invented, but some modern boomerang makers speculate that it developed from the flattened throwing stick, still used by the Australian Aborigines and other indigenous peoples around the world, including the Navajo in North America. A hunting boomerang is delicately balanced and much harder to make than a returning one. The curving flight characteristic of returning boomerangs was probably first noticed by early hunters trying to "tune" their throwing sticks to fly straight. The boomerangs were also widely used in the South of India in Tamilnadu. It is referred to as Valari.


title: Boomerang

text: It is thought by some that the shape and elliptical flight path of the returning boomerang makes it useful for hunting birds and small animals, or that noise generated by the movement of the boomerang through the air, or, by a skilled thrower, lightly clipping leaves of a tree whose branches house birds, would help scare the birds towards the thrower. It is further supposed by some that this was used to frighten flocks or groups of birds into nets that were usually strung up between trees or thrown by hidden hunters. In southeastern Australia, it is claimed that boomerangs were made to hover over a flock of ducks; mistaking it for a hawk, the ducks would dive away, toward hunters armed with nets or clubs.


title: Boomerang

text: Traditionally, most boomerangs used by Aboriginal groups in Australia were non-returning. These weapons, sometimes called "throwsticks" or "kylies", were used for hunting a variety of prey, from kangaroos to parrots; at a range of about , a 2-kg (4.4 lb) non-returning boomerang could inflict mortal injury to a large animal. A throwstick thrown nearly horizontally may fly in a nearly straight path and could fell a kangaroo on impact to the legs or knees, while the long-necked emu could be killed by a blow to the neck. Hooked non-returning boomerangs, known as "beaked kylies", used in northern Central Australia, have been claimed to kill multiple birds when thrown into a dense flock. Throwsticks are used as multi-purpose tools by today's Aboriginal peoples, and besides throwing could be wielded as clubs, used for digging, used to start friction fires, and are sonorous when two are struck together.


title: Boomerang

text: Today, boomerangs are mostly used for recreation. There are different types of throwing contests: accuracy of return; Aussie round; trick catch; maximum time aloft; fast catch; and endurance (see below). The modern sport boomerang (often referred to as a 'boom' or 'rang') is made of Finnish birch plywood, hardwood, plastic or composite materials and comes in many different shapes and colours. Most sport boomerangs typically weigh less than , with MTA boomerangs (boomerangs used for the maximum-time-aloft event) often under .


title: Boomerang

text: Boomerangs have also been suggested as an alternative to clay pigeons in shotgun sports, where the flight of the boomerang better mimics the flight of a bird offering a more challenging target.


title: Boomerang

text: The modern boomerang is often computer-aided designed with precision airfoils. The number of "wings" is often more than 2 as more lift is provided by 3 or 4 wings than by 2. Among the latest inventions is a round-shaped boomerang, which has a different look but using the same returning principle as traditional boomerangs. This allows for safer catch for players.


title: Boomerang

text: In 1992, German astronaut Ulf Merbold performed an experiment aboard Spacelab that established that boomerangs function in zero gravity as they do on Earth. French Astronaut Jean-François Clervoy aboard Mir repeated this in 1997. In 2008, Japanese astronaut Takao Doi again repeated the experiment on board the International Space Station.


title: Boomerang

text: Beginning in the later part of the twentieth century, there has been a bloom in the independent creation of unusually designed art boomerangs. These often have little or no resemblance to the traditional historical ones and on first sight some of these objects may not look like boomerangs at all. The use of modern thin plywoods and synthetic plastics have greatly contributed to their success. Designs are very diverse and can range from animal inspired forms, humorous themes, complex calligraphic and symbolic shapes, to the purely abstract. Painted surfaces are similarly richly diverse. Some boomerangs made primarily as art objects do not have the required aerodynamic properties to return.


title: Boomerang

text: A returning boomerang is a rotating wing. It consists of two or more arms, or wings, connected at an angle; each wing is shaped as an airfoil section. Although it is not a requirement that a boomerang be in its traditional shape, it is usually flat.


title: Boomerang

text: Boomerangs can be made for right- or left-handed throwers. The difference between right and left is subtle, the planform is the same but the leading edges of the aerofoil sections are reversed. A right-handed boomerang makes a counter-clockwise, circular flight to the left while a left-handed boomerang flies clockwise to the right.


title: Boomerang

text: A falling boomerang starts spinning, and most then fall in a spiral. When the boomerang is thrown with high spin, a boomerang flies in a curved rather than a straight line. When thrown correctly, a boomerang returns to its starting point.


title: Boomerang

text: As the wing rotates and the boomerang moves through the air, the airflow over the wings creates lift on both "wings". However, during one-half of each blade's rotation, it sees a higher airspeed, because the rotation tip speed and the forward speed add, and when it is in the other half of the rotation, the tip speed subtracts from the forward speed. Thus if thrown nearly upright, each blade generates more lift at the top than the bottom. While it might be expected that this would cause the boomerang to tilt around the axis of travel, because the boomerang has significant angular momentum, the gyroscopic precession causes the plane of rotation to tilt about an axis that is 90 degrees to the direction of flight, causing it to turn. When thrown in the horizontal plane, as with a Frisbee, instead of in the vertical, the same gyroscopic precession will cause the boomerang to fly violently, straight up into the air and then crash.


title: Boomerang

text: Fast Catch boomerangs usually have three or more symmetrical wings (seen from above), whereas a Long Distance boomerang is most often shaped similar to a question mark. Maximum Time Aloft boomerangs mostly have one wing considerably longer than the other. This feature, along with carefully executed bends and twists in the wings help to set up an "auto-rotation" effect to maximise the boomerang's hover time in descending from the highest point in its flight.


title: Boomerang

text: Some boomerangs have turbulators — bumps or pits on the top surface that act to increase the lift as boundary layer transition activators (to keep attached turbulent flow instead of laminar separation).


title: Boomerang

text: Boomerangs are generally thrown in unobstructed, open spaces at least twice as large as the range of the boomerang. The flight direction to the left or right depends upon the design of the boomerang itself, not the thrower. A right-handed or left-handed boomerang can be thrown with either hand, but throwing a boomerang with the non-matching hand requires a throwing motion that many throwers find awkward. The following technique applies to a right-handed boomerang; the directions are mirrored for a left-handed boomerang. Different boomerang designs have different flight characteristics and are suitable for different conditions. The accuracy of the throw depends on understanding the weight and aerodynamics of that particular boomerang, and the strength, consistency and direction of the wind; from this, the thrower chooses the angle of tilt, the angle against the wind, the elevation of the trajectory, the degree of spin and the strength of the throw. A great deal of trial and error is required to perfect the throw over time.


title: Boomerang

text: A properly thrown boomerang will travel out parallel to the ground, sometimes climbing gently, perform a graceful, anti-clockwise, circular or tear-drop shaped arc, flatten out and return in a hovering motion, coming in from the left or spiralling in from behind. Ideally, the hover will allow a practiced catcher to clamp their hands shut horizontally on the boomerang from above and below, sandwiching the centre between their hands.


title: Boomerang

text: The grip used depends on size and shape; smaller boomerangs are held between finger and thumb at one end, while larger, heavier or wider boomerangs need one or two fingers wrapped over the top edge in order to induce a spin. The aerofoil-shaped section must face the inside of the thrower, and the flatter side outwards. It is usually inclined outwards, from a nearly vertical position to 20° or 30°; the stronger the wind, the closer to vertical. The elbow of the boomerang can point forwards or backwards, or it can be gripped for throwing; it just needs to start spinning on the required inclination, in the desired direction, with the right force.


title: Boomerang

text: The boomerang is aimed to the right of the oncoming wind; the exact angle depends on the strength of the wind and the boomerang itself. Left-handed boomerangs are thrown to the left of the wind and will fly a clockwise flight path. The trajectory is either parallel to the ground or slightly upwards. The boomerang can return without the aid of any wind, but even very slight winds must be taken into account however calm they might seem. Little or no wind is preferable for an accurate throw, light winds up to are manageable with skill. If the wind is strong enough to fly a kite, then it may be too strong unless a skilled thrower is using a boomerang designed for stability in stronger winds. Gusty days are a great challenge, and the thrower must be keenly aware of the ebb and flow of the wind strength, finding appropriate lulls in the gusts to launch their boomerang.


title: Boomerang

text: A World Record achievement was made on 3 June 2007 by Tim Lendrum in Aussie Round. Lendrum scored 96 out of 100, giving him a National Record as well as an equal World Record throwing an "AYR" made by expert boomerang maker Adam Carroll.


title: Boomerang

text: In international competition, a "world cup" is held every second year. , teams from Germany and the United States dominated international competition. The individual World Champion title was won in 2000, 2002, 2004, 2012, and 2016 by Swiss thrower Manuel Schütz. In 1992, 1998, 2006, and 2008 Fridolin Frost from Germany won the title.


title: Boomerang

text: The team competitions of 2012 and 2014 were won by Boomergang (an international team). World champions were Germany in 2012 and Japan in 2014 for the first time. Boomergang was formed by individuals from several countries, including the Colombian Alejandro Palacio. In 2016 USA became team world champion.


title: Boomerang

text: Modern boomerang tournaments usually involve some or all of the events listed below In all disciplines the boomerang must travel at least from the thrower. Throwing takes place individually. The thrower stands at the centre of concentric rings marked on an open field.


title: Boomerang

text: "Non-discipline record": Smallest Returning Boomerang: Sadir Kattan of Australia in 1997 with long and wide. This tiny boomerang flew the required , before returning to the accuracy circles on 22 March 1997 at the Australian National Championships.


title: Boomerang

text: A boomerang was used to set a Guinness World Record with a throw of by David Schummy on at Murarrie Recreation Ground, Australia. This broke the record set by Erin Hemmings who threw an Aerobie on 14 July 2003 at Fort Funston, San Francisco.


title: Boomerang

text: Long-distance boomerang throwers aim to have the boomerang go the furthest possible distance while returning close to the throwing point. In competition the boomerang must intersect an imaginary surface defined as an infinite vertical projection of a line centred on the thrower. Outside of competitions, the definition is not so strict, and throwers may be happy simply not to walk too far to recover the boomerang.


title: Boomerang

text: Long-distance boomerangs are optimised to have minimal drag while still having enough lift to fly and return. For this reason, they have a very narrow throwing window, which discourages many beginners from continuing with this discipline. For the same reason, the quality of manufactured long-distance boomerangs is often difficult to determine.


title: Boomerang

text: Today's long-distance boomerangs have almost all an "S" or "? – question mark" shape and have a beveled edge on both sides (the bevel on the bottom side is sometimes called an undercut). This is to minimise drag and lower the lift. Lift must be low because the boomerang is thrown with an almost total layover (flat). Long-distance boomerangs are most frequently made of composite material, mainly fibre glass epoxy composites.


title: Boomerang

text: The projection of the flight path of long-distance boomerang on the ground resembles a water drop. For older types of long-distance boomerangs (all types of so-called big hooks), the first and last third of the flight path are very low, while the middle third is a fast climb followed by a fast descent. Nowadays, boomerangs are made in a way that their whole flight path is almost planar with a constant climb during the first half of the trajectory and then a rather constant descent during the second half.


title: Boomerang

text: From theoretical point of view, distance boomerangs are interesting also for the following reason: for achieving a different behaviour during different flight phases, the ratio of the rotation frequency to the forward velocity has a U-shaped function, i.e., its derivative crosses 0. Practically, it means that the boomerang being at the furthest point has a very low forward velocity. The kinetic energy of the forward component is then stored in the potential energy. This is not true for other types of boomerangs, where the loss of kinetic energy is non-reversible (the MTAs also store kinetic energy in potential energy during the first half of the flight, but then the potential energy is lost directly by the drag).


title: Boomerang

text: In Noongar language, "kylie" is a flat curved piece of wood similar in appearance to a boomerang that is thrown when hunting for birds and animals.


title: Boomerang

text: "Kylie" is one of the Aboriginal words for the hunting stick used in warfare and for hunting animals. Instead of following curved flight paths, kylies fly in straight lines from the throwers. They are typically much larger than boomerangs, and can travel very long distances; due to their size and hook shapes, they can cripple or kill an animal or human opponent. The word is perhaps an English corruption of a word meaning "boomerang" taken from one of the Western Desert languages, for example, the Warlpiri word "karli".


title: Boomerang

text: Trademarks of Australian companies using the boomerang as a symbol, emblem or logo proliferate, usually removed from Aboriginal context and symbolising 'returning' or to distinguish an Australian brand. Early examples included Bain's White Ant Exterminator (1896); Webendorfer Bros. explosives (1898); E. A. Adams Foods (1920); and by the (still current) Boomerang Cigarette Papers Pty. Ltd.


title: Boomerang

text: "Aboriginalia", including the boomerang, as symbols of Australia dates from the late 1940s and early 1950s and was in widespread use by a largely European arts, crafts and design community. By the 1960s, the Australian tourism industry extended it to the very branding of Australia, particularly to overseas and domestic tourists as souvenirs and gifts and thus Aboriginal culture. At the very time when Aboriginal people and culture were subject to policies that removed them from their traditional lands and sought to assimilate them (physiologically and culturally) into mainstream white Australian culture, causing the Stolen Generations, Aboriginalia found an ironically "nostalgic", entry point into Australian popular culture at important social locations: holiday resorts and in Australian domestic interiors. In the 21st century, souvenir objects depicting Aboriginal peoples, symbolism and motifs including the boomerang, from the 1940s–1970s, regarded as kitsch and sold largely to tourists in the first instance, became highly sought after by both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal collectors and has captured the imagination of Aboriginal artists and cultural commentators.


title: David Sharp (mountaineer)

text: David Sharp (15 February 1972 – 15 May 2006) was an English mountaineer who died near the summit of Mount Everest. His death caused controversy and debate because he was passed by a number of other climbers heading to and returning from the summit as he was dying, although a number of others tried to help him.


title: David Sharp (mountaineer)

text: Sharp had previously summitted Cho Oyu and was noted as being a talented rock climber who seemed to acclimatise well, and was known for being in good humour around mountaineering camps. He appeared briefly in season one of the television show "", which was filmed the same season as his ill-fated expedition to Everest.


title: David Sharp (mountaineer)

text: Sharp had a degree from the University of Nottingham and pursued climbing as a hobby. He had worked for an engineering firm and took time off to go on adventures and climbing expeditions, but had been planning to start work as a school teacher in the autumn of 2006.


title: David Sharp (mountaineer)

text: David Sharp was born in Harpenden, near London, and later attended Prior Pursglove College and the University of Nottingham. He graduated with a Mechanical Engineering degree in 1993. He worked for global security company QinetiQ. In 2005 he quit this job and took a teacher training course, and was planning to start work as a teacher in the autumn of 2006. David Sharp was also an experienced and accomplished mountaineer, and had climbed some of the world's tallest mountains including Cho Oyu in the Himalayas. Sharp did not believe in using a guide for mountains he was familiar with, local climbing assistance or artificial enhancements, such as high altitude drugs or supplementary oxygen, to reach the top of a mountain.


title: David Sharp (mountaineer)

text: While growing up in England, Sharp climbed Roseberry Topping. At university, he was a member of the Mountaineering Club.


title: David Sharp (mountaineer)

text: Sharp also took a six-month sabbatical from his job to go on a backpacking trip through South America and Asia.


title: David Sharp (mountaineer)

text: In May 2002, Sharp summited the Cho Oyu with Jamie McGuinness and Tsering Pande Bhote. Cho Oyu is the sixth highest peak in the world and is near Mount Everest. The leader of the Cho Oyu expedition, impressed with Sharp's strength, acclimatisation abilities, and rock climbing talent, invited him to join an expedition to Everest the next year.


title: David Sharp (mountaineer)

text: In 2001, Sharp went on an expedition to Gasherbrum II, an mountain located in the Karakoram, on the border between Gilgit–Baltistan province, Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and Xinjiang, China. The expedition, led by Henry Todd, did not summit due to bad weather.


title: David Sharp (mountaineer)

text: In 2002, Sharp went on an expedition to Cho Oyu, an peak in the Himalayas, with a group led by Richard Dougan and McGuinness of the Himalayan Project. They did make it to the summit, but one member died from falling into a crevasse; this opened up a slot on the group's trip to Everest the next year. Dougan regarded Sharp as a strong climber, but noted that he was tall and skinny, possessing a light frame with little body fat; in cold-weather mountaineering, body fat can be critical to survival.


title: David Sharp (mountaineer)

text: Sharp's first Mount Everest expedition was in 2003 with a group led by British climber Richard Dougan. The party also included Terence Bannon, Martin Duggan, Stephen Synnott, and McGuinness. Only Bannon and McGuinness reached the summit, but the group incurred no fatalities. Dougan noted that Sharp had acclimatised well and was their strongest team member. In addition, Sharp was noted for being a pleasant person at camp and had a talent for rock climbing. However, when Sharp started to get frostbite on the group's ascent, most of the group agreed to turn back with him from the summit.


title: David Sharp (mountaineer)

text: Dougan and Sharp helped a struggling Spanish climber who was heading up at that time, and gave him some extra oxygen. Sharp lost some of his toes to frostbite on this climb.


title: David Sharp (mountaineer)

text: In 2004, Sharp joined a Franco-Austrian expedition to the north side of Mount Everest, climbed to , but did not reach the summit. Sharp could not keep up with the others and stopped before the First Step. The expedition's leader was Hugues d’Aubarede, a French climber who was later killed in the 2008 K2 disaster (his third attempt to climb that mountain), but who became, on this 2004 expedition, the 56th French person to summit Everest. D'Aubarede's group reached the summit on the morning of 17 May and included Austrians Marcus Noichl, Paul Koller, and Fredrichs "Fritz" Klausner as well as Nepalis Chhang Dawa Sherpa, Lhakpa Gyalzen Sherpa, and Zimba Zangbu Sherpa (also known as Ang Babu). When Sharp died in 2006, d'Aubarede was on an expedition to K2.


title: David Sharp (mountaineer)

text: D'Aubarede said Sharp disagreed with him that it was wrong to climb alone and to attempt summiting without using supplementary oxygen. This is confirmed by Sharp's emails to other climbers in which he stated he did not believe in using extra oxygen. He joined four climbers on this expedition, so Sharp relented on that point of disagreement, but only for a time, as he would return in 2006 for his solo attempt. As a result of his 2004 attempt, Sharp incurred frostbite on his fingers during the expedition.


title: David Sharp (mountaineer)

text: Two years later, Sharp returned to Everest to reach the summit on a solo climb arranged through Asian Trekking. This attempt would ultimately cost him his life. Sharp was climbing alone and had intended to reach the summit without using supplementary oxygen, which is considered to be extremely risky even for very strong acclimatised mountain climbers or Sherpas. However, Sharp apparently did not consider it a challenge to climb Everest with supplementary oxygen.


title: David Sharp (mountaineer)

text: Sharp was climbing with a bare-bones "basic services" package from Asian Trekking that does not offer support after a certain altitude is reached on the mountain or a Sherpa to climb with as a partner, although this option was available to Sharp for an additional fee. He was grouped with 13 other independent climbers – including Vitor Negrete, Thomas Weber, and Igor Plyushkin who also died attempting to summit that year – on the "International Everest Expedition". This package only provided a permit, a trip into Tibet, oxygen equipment, transportation, food, and tents up to the Mount Everest "Advance Base Camp" (ABC) at an elevation of about . The group Sharp was with was not really an "expedition" and had no leader, although it is considered good climbing ethics that members of the group make some effort to keep track of one another.


title: David Sharp (mountaineer)

text: Before Sharp booked his trip with Asian Trekking, his friend McGuinness, an experienced climber and guide, invited him to join his organised expedition at a discount. Sharp acknowledged this as a good deal but declined so he could act independently and climb at his own pace. Critically, Sharp opted to climb alone without a Sherpa, deciding not to bring sufficient supplementary oxygen (reportedly only two bottles, which is enough for about 8 to 10 hours of climbing at high altitude) and without a radio to call for help if he encountered problems.


title: David Sharp (mountaineer)

text: Sharp was transported by vehicle to the Base Camp, and his equipment was transported by yak train to the Advance Base Camp, as part of the Asian Trekking "basic services" package. Sharp remained there for five days to acclimatise to the altitude. He made several trips up and down the mountain to set up and stock his upper camps and further acclimatise himself. Sharp likely set out from a camp high on the mountain below the Northeast Ridge to make a summit attempt during the late evening of May 13. He needed to climb what is referred to as the "Exit Cracks", traverse the Northeast Ridge, including the Three Steps, reach the summit, then climb down to return to his high camp while reportedly bringing his limited supply of supplementary oxygen which he intended to use only in an emergency.


title: David Sharp (mountaineer)

text: Sharp either managed to reach the summit or turned back near the summit to descend very late in the day on May 14. In the end, he was forced to bivouac on the mountain during his descent in the dark at about under a rocky overhang known as Green Boots' Cave situated near the so-called First Step. There he was overcome by the elements without any remaining supplementary oxygen, possibly combined with equipment problems, likely also suffering some degree of altitude sickness due to a lack of oxygen on one of the coldest nights of the season.


title: David Sharp (mountaineer)

text: Sharp's predicament was not immediately known for several reasons: he was not climbing with an expedition that would monitor climbers' locations; he had not told anyone beforehand of his summit attempt (although other climbers spotted him on his ascent); he did not have a radio or satellite phone with him to let anyone know where he was or that he was in trouble and two other more inexperienced climbers from his group went missing at around the same time. One of the two missing climbers was Malaysian Ravi Chandran, who was eventually found but required medical attention after getting frostbite.


title: David Sharp (mountaineer)

text: Some members of the group of climbers Sharp was with, including George Dijmarescu, realised Sharp was missing when he did not return later in the evening on May 15 and nobody reported seeing him. Sharp was an experienced climber who had previously turned around when he had experienced problems and it was surmised that Sharp had sought shelter at one of the higher camps or bivouacked somewhere higher up on Everest, so his failure to return to camp did not initially cause serious concern. High-altitude bivouacs are very risky but are sometimes recommended in certain extreme situations.


title: David Sharp (mountaineer)

text: Sharp ultimately died under the rocky overhang, sitting with arms clasped around his legs, next to Green Boots. The "cave" is situated approximately above the high camps, commonly called Camp 4 but the extreme cold, fatigue, lack of oxygen and darkness made a descent to Camp 4 very dangerous or next to impossible.


title: David Sharp (mountaineer)

text: Himex organised several teams to climb Everest during the 2006 climbing season expedition. The first team was guided by mountain climber and guide Bill Crouse. At around 01:00 on May 14, Crouse's expedition team passed by Sharp during their ascent near the location on the North route known as the "Exit Cracks". When Crouse's team descended around 11:00, they saw Sharp once again but this time he was higher up on the mountain at the base of the Third Step. By the time Crouse's expedition had descended to the Second Step, more than one hour later, they looked back to see that Sharp was above the Third Step but was climbing very slowly and had only moved about .


title: David Sharp (mountaineer)

text: Another source of information about Sharp were reports from a team of Turkish climbers. They left their high camp in the evening on May 14 and were essentially traveling in three separate groups.


title: David Sharp (mountaineer)

text: Late in the evening to early morning, the Turkish team members encountered Sharp in the darkness while they were ascending. The first group encountered Sharp around midnight, noticed he was alive and thought that he appeared to be a climber taking a short break. Sharp supposedly waved them on. Some time later, others who noticed Sharp thought he was already dead; recovery of a dead climber's body is almost impossible due to the conditions so far up the mountain. It is thought that Sharp might've fallen asleep between these two encounters. The fact that Sharp wanted to sleep was noted by other climbers who encountered him later on, a quote telling people that he wanted to sleep was later reported in some news media stories.


title: David Sharp (mountaineer)

text: Some of the Turkish team summited early in the morning on May 15 while some turned back near the summit due to difficulties one of their team members was having. The Turkish team members who turned back encountered Sharp again at about 07:00 and one of them was the Turkish team leader, Serhan Pocan, who had previously passed Sharp in the night and thought Sharp was a climber who had recently died. In the daylight, Pocan realised that Sharp was alive and in serious trouble.


title: David Sharp (mountaineer)

text: Sharp had no oxygen left, had serious frostbite and some limbs were frozen. Two of the Turkish climbers stayed, gave him something to drink and tried to help him move. When they themselves began to run low on oxygen, they were forced to leave but with the intent to return with more oxygen. Their initial effort to help was complicated by their own problems trying to get Burçak Özoğlu Poçan down safely; she was the climber in their group having medical problems. Serhan Pocan placed radio calls to the rest of the team coming down from the summit about Sharp and continued descending with Burçak. At about 08:30, two other members of the Turkish team cleaned out Sharp's iced up mask to give him oxygen but they had started to run out themselves and had to descend. The remaining Turks later attempted to further help Sharp along with some Himex expedition members.


title: David Sharp (mountaineer)

text: The vanguard of the second team of Himex climbers included Max Chaya, New Zealand double-amputee Mark Inglis, Wayne Alexander (who designed Inglis' prosthetic climbing legs), Discovery cameraman Mark Whetu, experienced climbing guide Mark Woodward, and their Sherpas, including Phurba Tashi. The team left their high camp around late in the evening near midnight on May 14. Chaya and the Sherpa he was climbing with were out in front by about half an hour.


title: David Sharp (mountaineer)

text: At about 01:00, Woodward and his group (including Inglis, Alexander, Whetu and some Sherpas) encountered Sharp, who Woodward knew should not be there. He was neither conscious nor moving, was suffering from severe frostbite but they could see that he was breathing. Woodward noticed Sharp had thin gloves and no oxygen and said that they yelled at Sharp to get up, get moving and follow the headlamps back to the high camps. Woodward shined his headlamp in Sharp's eyes, but Sharp was unresponsive.


title: David Sharp (mountaineer)

text: Woodward thought he was almost dead and in a hypothermic coma, commenting, "Oh, this poor guy, he's stuffed", and believed Sharp could not be rescued. Woodward attempted to radio their Advanced Base Camp about Sharp but got no reply. Alexander commented, "God bless... Rest in peace", before the group moved on. Woodward said it was not an easy decision to make but his chief responsibility was the safety of his own team members. Stopping in the extreme cold at that time would have risked the lives of his entire team. At that elevation, one has to be conscious and able to walk to attempt a rescue.


title: David Sharp (mountaineer)

text: Maxime Chaya reached the summit at around 06:00. During his descent, Chaya and the Sherpa he was with, Dorjee, encountered Sharp a little after 09:00, noticed he was shivering and tried to help him. Chaya also notified the Himex expedition manager Russell Brice over the group's radio. He had not seen Sharp in the darkness of the ascent. Chaya observed that Sharp was unconscious, shivering severely and was wearing a thin pair of wool gloves with no hat, glasses or goggles. Sharp was severely frostbitten, had frozen hands and legs and was found with only one empty oxygen bottle.


title: David Sharp (mountaineer)

text: At one point Sharp stopped shivering, leading Chaya to believe he had died; some time later he started shivering again. They attempted to give him oxygen, but there was no response. After about an hour, Brice advised Chaya that he was running out of oxygen and there was nothing he could do, so he needed to come down. Chaya told "The Washington Post": "it almost looks like he [David Sharp] had a death wish".