Thursday, September 21, 2017

Chris Reappears to Talk About Himself I Mean Skylanders & Toys R Us

Soooo it seems Chris is active on Facebook again, as my informant has pointed out. His latest post is about how Seth McFarlane's The Orville is better than the Star Trek reboot movies. Calling it "ShitTrek" (what is this, Pissed Off Video Gamer?). Even though the article he linked is talking about the new TV show (Star Trek Discovery). Doesn't matter anyway because The Orville is terrible and I imagine Discovery will be terrible too.

Buuut that's not what I want to talk about. A couple days ago he posted a little rant that was so utterly dumb that I had to reappear to talk about it.
For context, toy store chain Toys R Us has declared bankruptcy. This isn't really a surprise as they were not only overpriced, but handily beaten by Amazon (like the majority of retail stores these days).
Chris felt the need to give his thoughts about this.

"I know the company had been struggling for years and what really pulled their butts out of the fire was skylanders which made them billions."

What? Skylanders was not saving Toys R Us. Are you daft? Toys R Us has been dying for years. Just because you had good luck there doesn't mean THEY were having good luck.

"Now that skylanders died out, the money problems are back. And its a shame too. Activision really killed that franchise."

Actually I've heard rumors that they're simply taking a break this year and they'll be back. But even if that's just a rumor, don't be surprised Chris. This is Activision, they'll slaughter what doesn't work. Just look at Guitar Hero and Tony Hawk.
And again, Skylanders did not save Toys R Us. You realize there's a lot of other places that sold Skylanders right? Amazon of course, but also Target, Best Buy, Gamestop. I know TRU had some exclusive stuff but that's clearly not enough to get people to buy everything. Especially if they priced them like they priced amiibo (TRU amiibo was always a dollar more than every other place).

"The first skylanders game an awesome kids dungeon crawler game. And with every new installment, they pulled further away from that concept with stuff I just hated encountering."

Oh god this shit again. Chris, I've told you before. A game has to change things up every installment to avoid getting stagnant. Even games criticized for their redundancy change things up a little (Call of Duty, FIFA, Madden, Pokemon). If Skylanders was the same dungeon crawler game every year, it would have died out after the third. I get it Chris, you loved the first, but things change. I say that to Pokemon GenWunners too, things change, it's not always going to be the same, grow up you whiny little baby.

Oh and since it's obvious you don't get this, that's not the reason the game failed. Skylanders didn't fail because it changed things up. It failed because it got expensive. Every year you had to buy a new game, which ran more than $60 because you needed at least one figure for it, and then you had to buy all new toys. Every year they had a new gimmick in order to make you spend more. The Giants were bigger and more expensive, the Swap Force had a special swapping gimmick that made them more expensive, Trap Team had traps that you had to buy separately, Superchargers had the cars that made things even more expensive, and with Imaginators there's these Creation Crystals which I imagine add to the cost.
Even if you were well off with money to spare, this shit adds up. Not only in cost but in space, so much plastic lying around. Chris, how do you even walk around your house with all that crap you buy for Puppet Steve?
If you're curious how bad things got, check this site: http://skylanderscharacterlist.com/ Prices aren't listed, but the sheer quantity alone should make one second guess this franchise's viability.

"I guess my critisms fell on deaf ears."

Yes, he spelled "criticisms" wrong. He's also a deluded fool if thinks anything he said would have mattered. Nobody at Activision was listening to you Chris. Not as long as you kept on buying every new toy like a good little sheep. If you're so angry Chris, maybe make a video about it? Oh right, not enough FNAF.

In the comments, he mentioned that he hated Superchargers cause of the "mini-games". I haven't played it but are they really bad? Also, he said in his review he thought the game was okay, but now he hated it? At least when terrible sites like IGN and Kotaku say they hate a game they praised years ago, they have the excuse of "It was a different writer and they're no longer with the company". Chris doesn't have that excuse! Then again, Chris clearly doesn't care about consistency, or the truth.

So yeah, that's about it. Irate Gamer is still dead, and Puppet Steve is still boring samey garbage. He did actually post a gameplay video of Bendy and the Ink Machine. Some crappy horror game that parodies 1930's cartoons and involves Satan or something. It's not really a kids game but they still like it. Chris was of course months late to this bandwagon (I found playthroughs dating back to February 2017). He only played the first chapter (it's an episodic game with two chapters out) and instead of playing more, he's just talking about bootleg plushies. ... I don't get why he makes videos about bootleg crap, is he trying to warn parents? Newsflash Chris, they're not the ones watching, stupid kids are watching.
Otherwise, just a lot of boring samey garbage.... again I ask, where is he storing all this? 

79 comments:

  1. Personally, I think Bendy And The Ink Machine looks pretty interesting. Not necessarily scary, but it has a pretty nice atmosphere and interesting bizarre story-line. I'm actually pretty curious about where these games are going.

    Did you see that DuckTales video Chris did, BatDan? It's mostly dull and it's pretty obvious Chris found these facts somewhere else. But I'm just wondering if you've seen it.

    Also, regardless if many kids enjoy Bendy And The Ink Machine, I still don't think it's appropriate for Chris to be putting gameplay footage on a channel aimed at kids. I know that there are young kids who would be pretty frightened at seeing something like. Some eight-year-old's may be into things like South Park or Rick and Morty, but that doesn't mean we should be putting it on Cartoon Network.

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  2. I bet he misses being the Irate Gamer. I'd want him to come back, just to see him claim Pac-Man was created from a missing pizza slice in the next HOVG.

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    1. I want him to review Metroid so our Captain N theory can come full circle.

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    2. I want to see him get to the Genesis in HOVG, so he can try to distort time to keep up his claim that it was released as a SNES competitor.

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    3. He wouldn't have made it as far as the Genesis. There's a reason why Irate Gamer seasons 5 and 6 (Duck Hunt was initially listed as the first episode of season 6) only had NES games. Remember early Irate Gamer episodes that showed systems like Jaguar and GameCube in his room? They're not around anymore. I think Chris sold off his excess systems and Games as his finances became tighter. He kept the NES and "reviewed" the highly regarded games for that system which he felt would be the most searched for. No way Chris is going to buy a Sega Genesis, let alone all three models of that console and a Sega CD and 32X. HOVG was the most pointless series Chris put out on the IG channel.

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    4. It's sad because HOVG could have been a good series if Chris got his facts straight, cut out the stupid gags and kept to a schedule

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  3. "Bendy and the Ink Machine", haven't heard of it. Do you know how long it was in development? I think they might've pulled a Bores with "Cuphead"

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    1. Probably not that long. The first episode came out in February (hence why the earliest videos came out then). The second in April. Supposedly the third is coming this month.

      It's possible they wanted to cash in on the Cuphead hype, but it's nothing like Cuphead in terms of gameplay. Bendy is just another run of the mill first-person horror game like Amnesia or Slender. Walk around, puzzles, jump scares.

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  4. Toys R Us was the #2 video game retailer in 1999. In 2017 they were 1% of the market. Skylanders did not help Toys R Us.

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    1. I wonder who #1 was in 1999... EB Games or FuncoLand, maybe? Before GameStop became a thing?

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    2. Thanks for the info. More evidence that Chris is clueless.

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  5. My ebook, if anyone cares, is almost done aside from a couple of illustrations, and possibly another brief revision to the text.

    Thinking about designing a website for it, or at least a Facebook page. The latter would be easier, as I have no experience making web pages.

    Don't worry, it won't be a self-insert ego trip like THE DARK CHAPTERS.

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    Replies
    1. Comforting to know I've been silently branded a pariah. Not.

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    2. Whenever I say something, people ignore me.

      I was trying to let people here know that I wrote a story of my own that I had developed since I got out of college. I'm a little happy it my see the light of day.

      But clearly nobody cares.

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    3. Congratulations on finishing your book- it sounds like a tremendous amount of work, and nurturing the creative impulse is one of the most positive things you can do for yourself.

      Realistically, of course, a rarely-updated, small-readership, narrow-interest blog about a different person's body of work can't be counted on to provide responses like these.

      You might try online writer's forums like those linked here:

      https://nybookeditors.com/2015/11/11-top-writing-communities-you-should-join-and-why/

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  6. Toys 'R Us is in deep financial trouble because in 2005 they were part of a leveraged buyout that involved a huge debt buyout purchase where TRS was assumed as the collateral and thus TRS was responsible for the debt. Sluggish sales against retailers who are selling the same products for less and just the fact that kids of this generation aren't as interested in things like Legos as they are with video games and the like has caused TRS to struggle in paying down the large amount of debt they assumed, so hence Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. They're not a company that's doing utterly terrible like Kmart/Sears, and I'm sure they will be back on track once they emerge from the bankruptcy proceedings.

    Skylanders has virtually nothing to do with how TRS is doing as a business.

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    1. Yeah, its because no one is really interested in toys anymore, and oh boy Kmart's story is a massive trainwreck

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  7. New Nerd episode! This time, he talks about Treasure Master for the NES.

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    1. As far as contest games go, there's definitely worse out there. *cough*Hareraiser*cough*

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    2. At least the Treasure Master prizes were handed out. Unlike say, SwordQuest. Only two out of five prizes were given out from that series.

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    3. Sometimes I wish fans would hold three more contests for SwordQuest to get the remaining treasures... which I believe still total $100,000.

      As the Nerd said, those treasure belong in the hands of gamers and fans, not the CEO of Atari.

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    4. Don't forget Name This Game!

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  8. hi guys.been a while,hasn't it?just checking around.

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  9. Hirsch, you literally must have a mental illness to be keeping this up for so long (despite quitting again and again like an attention whore).

    Would you leave this unknown fucking guy alone? He made some shitty youtube videos a decade ago. You're insane.

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    Replies
    1. He said if Bores has anything worth talking about he’ll talk about it. Puppet Steve is mostly redundant so there’s no point in talking about it over and over again. He only brought up the rant because it was worth talking about.

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  10. Chris just posted a play through of Bendy chapter 2. This video is part 1.

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  11. Okay, so I hadn't looked at Puppet Steve in a while and I noticed he recently posted a video about some Transformers Titans Return figures. Transformers is one of my favorites so this was especially painful.

    He claims the Titans Return line is an update of the classic characters. Ummm, most of the Transformers lines over the decades have been updates of the classic characters. He bought the Voyager class Optimus Prime without realizing that figure was based on the G2 Laser Optimus Prime. The fact he transforms into a tanker truck is a clue. Chris positions Diac (Optimus Primes head) with his back to the camera.

    For some reason he leaves Megatron's cannon off of his tank mode leaving the vehicle with a stubby cannon.

    He neglects Soundwave's base mode and he doesn't even mention all of the ways the little Titan figures can interact with the bigger robots. For example, he has a Hot Rod figure which comes with two guns that attach to form a cannon the little Titan can sit in. You can then attack the cannon to a bigger toy. Chris talks about none of that. He just says they're cool.

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    1. I guess we can say
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Al7Bzeo-LP0&feature=youtu.be

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  12. Chris posted an interesting tidbit on Facebook. He seems a bit salty that he was not included at the Collingwood Art Center's Ghost Con this year. Chris then hyped another convention he will be attending and alludes to this second book of his. Apparently he made some remark about the people at Ghost Con trashing the event he will be at but then edited the post. See the comments section.

    Oh, and Chris now refers to himself as the world's first Ghost Behaviorist. Here is a screencap:


    https://imgur.com/a/JsKmE

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    1. "I'm not surprised since they cut me from the event!" So you're saying the event sucked because you weren't there? Egotistical, aren't we?

      Also, your next book is going to suck, Chris. EVERYONE knows it's going to suck. You've flat out proven you don't care about making a quality novel and only care about stroking your inflated ego. You're just going to publish the first draft without getting anything proofread because you don't give a crap about quality. Your book is going to suck. Your first ghost book didn't benefit you in any way, it only made you look like an absent-minded, egotistical fool. I have no idea what you're expecting from the second one. If you don't want to make your reputation any worse, I would scrap whatever you have written and give up right now.

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    2. Oh, and "Ghost Behaviorist"? Chris, have you ever considered speaking with a therapist? I think you need serious help. I'm not kidding.

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    3. Yeah, Chris is trying to stand out from ghost hunters. All a bit silly because he is not being invited to these conventions as a guest. He's a vendor.

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    4. Bores might have left the gaming community behind with the Irate Gamer, but that attitude follows him to his next endeavour. Give it time and he have a bad rep in the ghost hunting circles as he does elsewhere - he just needs to latch on to a "James Rolf" figure to become the focus of his seething sense of entitlement.

      The job title made me genuinely laugh, was ghost dietitian or ghost chiropodist too much of a stretch?

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  13. Finally got around to watching the new Nerd episode, and it quite frankly blew. So much of the anger felt forced, that bit about the shoes felt lifted from Armake21, and even though I guessed the eventual punchline about 30 seconds in it was still a massive wallbanger. (Seriously James, you’re going to tell me the Nerd character is actually stupid enough to try to win a contest from a game made in the 90s, and actually be surprised to discover the contest is over?!)

    Also, possible giveaway to emulator use: You can’t use a Game Genie on a toploading NES. Nintendo designed the system so it physically wouldn’t fit. You would need a special adapter which is VERY rare and expensive, and James probably doesn’t own one at any rate,

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    1. That's not quite right. When I was a kid my mom bought a top loader NES to keep my stepdad off my console. He was able to get a Game Genie in there without the adapter. I don't remember if he had to do anything to the plastic but the situation is kind of like putting Super Famicom games into an SNES. Theybtechnically don't fit but it can be made to work.

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    2. I'd say the best evidence of emulator usage is the excellent quality of the gameplay footage in HD. Nothing upscales as well as an emulator.

      Overall, I agree with your opinions on the forced anger and unnecessary contest skit. He could've commented on the contest without pretending he thought it was still ongoing.

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    3. They made special Game Genies for the toploader. Anyways he probably used Mikes hardware since it's modded.

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  14. ...Big Mouth

    Thoughts anyone? I'm honestly too afraid to even watch the first episode.

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    1. Netflix needs to get its act together. First that suicide show, trivializing something very grave and serious into a cheap TV drama. And then they follow it up with something so heinous it defies description. Anything for money...

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  15. Aw, man. Stupid question, but does it only apply for US stores, or the entire Toys r Us is going down, even the international stores?

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  16. Happy October everyone.How's it going?

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  17. Prayers to all the victims of the Las Vegas shooting and their families.

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    1. And to France, too.
      http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-41461107

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  18. From Bores' Facebook yesterday:

    I had an amazing time Saturday night hanging out with Fringe Paranormal ghost hunting team. A special thanks to them for inviting me along. Very cool people. Spent half the night chasing after stray REM pod’s going off around the building and finally coaxed the spirit to trip it on command. 3 times in a row I received confirmation that the spirit was female and had something to do with that building (not sure exactly what). The interaction went wonky after that so I have no idea exactly when our conversation dropped off but it was pretty cool. And I was told this was the first time they had ever gotten a response on command there. Ghost Behaviorist Bores strikes again!

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    1. My god, is Bores' ego really out of control here...

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    2. When someone googles Bores' name they get the Irate Gamer and even though Bores wants to be known as a ghost hunter sadly irate gamer is his legacy.

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    3. Hard to say what's worse or more of a fraud tbh

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  19. Another new AVGN episode, this time on wrestling games.

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    1. Going to watch it now.

      Too bad Spoony lost it, this subject matter probably would've made for a good crossover episode.

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    2. But the Nerd called the 16-bit WWF games (Super WrestleMania, Royal Rumble, and Raw) bad, when they actually weren't once you got the hang of the controls.

      Plus, those games were also released on the Mega Drive/Genesis as published by Flying Edge.

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  20. Btw the Toys "R" Us decline isn't because of Amazon, you can see more here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JYUo9WKkao

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  21. OT: So, the MLP movie came out today. Thoughts?

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    1. Very nice, I liked it. It's a typical MLP story, with different art style, some dark-sad moments and some different characters. I recommend it. And no, unlike what IGN thinks, it's no way worse than the Emoji Movie.

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  22. ^ I think we've got a spambot infestation.

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  23. ^^ Ah, more spambot infestations...

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  24. I think we have a spammer here!
    >.<

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  25. So this might be a little offtopic but if you remember Game Dude,here's a vid detailing how batshit insane he went: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZBJl4QARlc

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    1. Holy shit, I thought my stalkers were bad.
      Well at least no one was hurt, I’ve known people in much worse circumstance

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    2. Just saw the video. Oh, my god, does Alex have issues...

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    3. Holy shiitake mushrooms!

      I remember Game Dude and thinking something was off about him. It was pretty funny when Irate Gamer got tired of Game Dude spamming his videos. I thought Game Dude was a decent editor but the way he got so argumentative was disturbing, I'm glad that girl didn't get hurt during her time with him.

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    4. Yeah, wherever Alex is right now, I severally hope that he gets professional help as soon as possible. He seems like the type of guy who would legitametly harm someone just to get what he wants.

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  26. Looks like Chris is blaming YouTube now for how crappy his Irate Gamer channel became

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    1. Hmmm?What do you mean?Evidence?

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    2. Christ, that's the equivalent of when MTN Productions tried (and failed) at making an apology video for exploiting Emer Prevost/Hellsing920's death and blaming everyone but himself for his foolish mistakes.

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    3. It is on his Facebook page. Chris linked to an article which claims YouTube will intervene if their preferred content is not trending, allegedly rigging what content gets pushed into the trending tab.

      Chris then mentions that Machinima was created as a subdivision to control the gaming community and when Chris didn't want to join them, Machinima "did things to bury" the Irate Gamer channel.

      So now it is James Rolfe and Machinima who sabotaged his career.

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    4. Oh, good lord...

      I call bullshit on that. The only person who sabotaged Chris' career was Chris himself.

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    5. Oh, great! He's pulling a DSP, isn't he?
      -_-

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    6. My informant linked me the article (I locked my Facebook so I no longer have access). It cited Project Veritas, which is not much better than Infowars. Glad to see Chris delves into sensationalist trash like a lot of morons.

      I'll work on a post about his last couple Facebook posts this week.

      Delete
  27. This is also on his Facebook:

    "I love seeing all the crap going down in Hollywood over the last couple days. We finally see who's really out of touch with reality. hahahaha. So many scumbags"

    If that isn't the proverbial pot calling the kettle black.

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    1. There should be a new post dedicated to this

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  28. It is astonishing to see Chris do these mental gymnastics and how far he will go to avoid accepting responsibility for the fate of the Irate Gamer.

    And yes, I agree that BatDan should document this.

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  29. Can you guys imagine if Puppet Steve gets a spiritual successor of the Chris & Scottie road trip series?

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  30. Toys R Us only went into bankruptcy protection, so they're not gone yet.

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