2014 has come to a close, it sucked, let’s talk about it.
Sorry, but 2014 was a really dumb year. It feels like this is the year where everyone started taking crazy pills, or maybe it was me. It all feels wrong…
Chris’ output this year was a deluge of Skylanders and ghost garbage. I’m surprised I was able to find 10 moments. But here we are, the Worst Moments of 2014.
10. Orwellion editing, no longer reserved for North Ko-*censored*
I’d like to thank NES Boy for reminding me this happened. Otherwise, it would have been 9.
Back in February, Chris posted a picture on his site of an ocean wave that looks like it has a face. It was pointless, just like 98% of his site content (GotGame gave server space to him to post video game news and show updates, which he never does).
However, one person had enough of the random nonsense and let Chris know how he felt. A user by the name of Archon wrote “NO ONE FUCKING CARES Dear lord, post some fucking INTERESTING, not random shit that’s shit.” While harsh and redundant, it is quite accurate.
You can read the comment here.
Soon, something happened. Instead of deleting the comment (as he normally does), Chris CHANGED it, to make it positive. “this is interesting!” the comment now said.
You can read that here.
Chris, you barely get comments on your site as it is. Maybe you should take what you get, and not scare everyone off with the possibility of censorship. Hell, the last time someone commented on your site was on November 20th. Maybe do something to bring more people over, rather than push them away.
9. History out of fucking nowhere!
I’d say this moment was a surprise to everyone. After 32 months of nothing (well, not nothing, there was “remastered” episodes and a DVD), the newest History of Video Games came out. … It still blows.
Very little history is actually discussed, pushed aside in favor of (poorly) reviewing the Atari VCS launch titles with more annoying random sketches that should not belong in a “documentary.” Why am I seeing Mr. Magoo and the Count from Sesame Street? I also want to mention again that Chris did the Three Stooges routine by himself. His inability (or refusal) to get other people in his videos has reached 90 levels of sad.
8. What kind of E3 coverage was that?!
GotGame took Bores to E3 again. Okay, either he’s providing them drugs, or he’s screwing someone on the team, because I don’t understand how or why they keep him around. He gives no content to their site, and barely uses the blog they gave him for actual information.
Somehow, his coverage reached a new level of “what the hell am I watching?” The game selection was odd this year, looking at The Evil Within and Dragon Age Inquisition (the latter he admits he only looked at because “it looked cool”). Praising Hyrule Warriors as a “great new direction for the series” (never mind that it was a spin-off!), praising Sonic Boom period (how?! Everyone could see it was bad!), randomly switching between coverage at the show and filming at his house (consistency?), not a single mention of Super Smash Bros for Wii U, and of course, PILES of Skylanders.
There was even a video that was nothing but an empty convention hall. As one of the video’s comments said, a good analogy for his content.
The strangest part to me was Chris crying that he wouldn’t be able to play the new Gauntlet because he doesn’t have Steam. Even though I’ve heard evidence to the contrary. Just fucking download it Chris, it’s not hard. Surely with all the editing you do, you should have a PC that can run the game.
7. Jumping on the face-cam bandwagon
IG Neo was surprisingly anemic this year. Only two videos. Again, I ask why GotGame keeps him around.
The first one about Lego Marvel Superheroes was boring, and said nothing interesting about the game. However, the second one looked like Chris’ attempt at a “new direction”. When looking at South Park: The Stick of Truth, he put on a face-cam a/la PewDiePie and showed his reactions. But even he screwed this up as all he did was laugh at the jokes, no commentary or stupid over-the-top reactions that people like Marikiplier and PDP are known for, hell any thoughts were done with post-commentary. Making me wonder what the point of the face-cam was, oh right bandwagon.
Hell, he barely played the game, only getting like an hour in before saying “that’s good enough”. He opens the game on camera! Who does that for a “review”? I’d say this was a “new direction”, but he never made anymore videos to solidify this. Stick of Truth is a great game, and deserves way more respect than the quarter-assed attempt Bores gave. Speaking of deserving better.
6. What is with the cereal mascot fetish?
Of all of Chris’ main shows, I Rate the 80s saw the most content. Three whole videos! The latter two videos about “McDonalds Changeables” and “Looney Tunes Baseball Comic Cards” were completely boring, covering things nobody cares about with terrible random humor all over. The “worst moment” honor goes to his video on General Mills’ Monster Cereals. Posted months after Halloween, this near 8-minute exercise in mental torture shows Bores splooging random references all over with no rhyme or reason. With animated versions of the mascots appearing and Bores giving them terrible impressions. Ending on a terrible gag involving a Ronnie the Skeleton cereal.
There are ways to honor these characters, and Bores did it all completely wrong. Despite what he thinks, he’s not an authority on the 80s. I know he wants to be VH1 so bad, but it’s not going to happen.
5. How can anybody take “ghost hunting” seriously?
Maybe “hunting” is the wrong word. From what I’m told, ghost hunting mostly involves disproving if an area is haunted. What Chris is trying to claim is that he “speaks” to ghosts, that he knows how to “communicate” with them. Which is a load of bullcrap.
It doesn’t help that his way of presenting all this is through the filter of a shitty reality TV show, at least an attempted one. You can tell he wants this on TV so bad.
I mean, how can anyone take this seriously? He has to be a joke in the paranormal community right? What gets me are the people in the comments saying it’s “interesting”, and one parent saying it scared his kids. First of all, you shouldn’t allow your kids to be watching Chris Bores’ videos, have them watch good entertainment like Gravity Falls. Second, THIS is scary? Even going by the philosophy of “what you don‘t see is scarier than what you do see”, this was less than nothing, this was non-existent, there was nothing to indicate it was scary.
I’m still hoping for someone to buy his ghost DVDs and riff them, because what he posted was comedy gold.
4. There was a separate Skylanders channel?
Chris’ Skylander obsession still exists, what a shock. It’s going to exist next year too, as long as people keep buying this crap and Activision keeps him on their *ahem* payroll.
Like last year he even attempted comedy videos, this time “Rejected Skylander Ideas” which were unfunny ideas he came up with (he didn’t even blame it on his girlfriend’s kids).
However, the highlight came from when he actually opened a second channel exclusively for his Skylanders content. Something I approved of greatly as I and many others didn’t want to see that crap anymore. … Then he fucked it up. Not even a month into the channel’s inception, he gives it up. Goes back to posting more Skylanders shit on his main channel. He gave all these excuses like “YouTube’s too different” “It doesn’t make sense” Wah wah wah. No, the real reason is that you barely got subscribers and views, showing that very little of your already dwindling fan base actually cares for your plastic obsession. Well, that and you didn’t fucking promote it! Gee, it’s almost like if you don’t advertise something, it’s going to fail.
To this day, people still tell him to stop with the Skylanders, and Chris just shuts his eyes, covers his ears and sings as loudly as possible to drown out any and all criticism. Enjoy your bubble, it’s going to burst hard.
Oh and why won’t he talk about Amiibo? Those are better!
According to a Facebook comment, he said “kids will like it”. …. Does Bores not understand the hypocrisy of dismissing something as “for kids” when he won’t shut the fuck up about Skylanders?
He also put up a blog post about a misprint Samus Amiibo selling for $2,500. That seems to be the most we’re going to get from Chris about that… though he probably isn’t interested because Nintendo won’t give him free stuff like Activision does. How sad.
3. The “movie” comes to an end in the dumbest way possible.
The Irate Gamer storyline ended this year. Took three and a half years and it accomplished… utter nonsense. I’ve gone over how this “movie” makes no sense before, so I‘ll attempt to keep this brief. This year saw the final two parts, both involving Mighty Morphin Power Rangers games. He ended everything with recycled Power Rangers footage (which I still don’t believe is a satire on how PR is recycled Sentai footage, Bores is not that smart) and as usual, terrible reviews.
The final part also had “cameos”, but only like 6 people actually agreed to appear so the rest were all action figures, video game sprites, and Bores in different costumes. As well as a notable contrarian hypocrite screaming “fuck you AVGN”.
Bores claimed he asked every reviewer he knew, but if that was the turnout… I’ll get more into that in a bit.
I also noticed something recently. Bores thinks really highly of his own writing. You know the bit at the end with the giant HAL-bot falling into Hell and how that made no sense? Apparently, Bores “foreshadowed” that with the line “Let’s send this thing to Hell”. He mentioned this in his “making of“ video. Chris, cliché lines do not count as foreshadowing. Nobody is going to look at that final scene and think “Ooh now it makes sense”, that’s not how foreshadowing works. You sure you took a writing course in college? Man, I can’t imagine how The Dark Chapters would have turned out.
Chris claims this was the final episode (which is odd as the end of the video had him promise he would “keep on reviewing”) and that he retired. Or he’s just on break to focus on History of Video Games. I don’t know, he never keeps his story straight! Of course, Bores is too blind to notice that PEOPLE KEEP ASKING FOR THESE REVIEWS! They don’t want Skylanders, they want old games. In one ear and out the other…
Though I did take solace that Bores could never release this on DVD due to all the copyrighted footage. … Oh wait.
2. DVDs full of copyrighted footage
Somehow, Bores didn’t learn a damn thing the last time he did this. All the way back in 2007 with Back to the Future footage.
Did Bores think that Power Rangers wasn’t owned by anyone? Because it’s owned by at least two different companies (Toei Entertainment and Saban Brands). The only reason Bores hasn’t lost everything to lawsuits is that he’s nothing. He’s probably making nothing on these DVDs and isn’t seen as a threat to these multi-billion dollar (and yen) corporations.
Could Bores not make original Megazords for this? It’s not like he can’t do the “giant” effect, that was the whole point of the giant HAL-bot. It looked like shit yes, but it wasn’t recycled footage.
I’d say report Chris, but it won’t do anything.
1. The “Opening Up” video
The damned attempting one last escape from internet purgatory.
In a supposed response to TheArchfiend (the above mentioned contrarian hypocrite), Bores made a 39 minute video talking about his “career” on YouTube. Most of it was Bores playing the victim card to the “big bad bully James Rolfe”, all without providing a shred of evidence to what he’s saying. All those e-mails, all that proof, we’re just meant to take his word for it.
I don’t know what’s more disgusting, Bores playing the victim in what’s obviously a plea for fans, or the YouTube public swallowing that shit whole without taking a second thought. While some people in the comments have called out his lies and asked for proof, they seem to be in the minority compared to all the fools that fell for this hook, line, and seeker.
Another thing this video shows me is how stuck in the past Chris really is. He mentions all these old reviewers that retired or disappeared, and speaks of them like they’re still new. If these were the people he asked to cameo in his “grand finale”, it’s no wonder he only got 6 people.
There’s also all the lies he gave to try and discredit James. Many about the release dates of his videos. He also got angry that nobody called out James for being a “PewDiePie rip-off”, showing how deep in his bubble he is if he learned about Let’s Plays from PDP. Never mind his use of face-cam in the Stick of Truth video… WAIT A MINUTE!
The video was a lot of “I’m good guy, seriously, just ask these guys that used to hate me and but now love me because I’m too stupid to notice their agenda”. And it worked, it was one of the highest viewed videos of the year (beaten by Skylanders and that one Minecraft toy video).
And that’s the list! I’m surprised that I was able to get more moments than last year, even though most of it was fucking Skylanders.
What will 2015 bring? Will Chris realize his mistake and “un-retire” IG? Will he realize trying to talk to ghosts is nonsense? Will-
No… It’s not over. There’s still one more thing I need to discuss.
0. Disrespecting Justin “JewWario” Carmical
In January of this year, the gaming community lost a wonderful man. Justin Carmical AKA JewWario was said to be one of the nicest guys, who wanted nothing more than to show his love of Japanese video games to the world. When the news of his passing came, the internet was deeply saddened.
When someone told Chris the news… his remarks were absolutely deplorable.
Justin took his own life, whatever your opinions on suicide are, it’s best to be mindful of the victim and their families.
SOMEBODY DIDN’T TELL BORES THIS! Instead when learning the news, he remarks that he never heard of him (which isn’t a surprise given how cut off he is from the internet) but that Justin will “suffer in the afterlife because he didn’t go on his intended path”. He’s basically saying he will burn in Hell. What the fuck is wrong with you?! It doesn’t matter if you knew the guy or not, you don’t talk like that. Especially on a public place like Facebook where people can screen-cap the image and spread it around.
At no point has Chris personally apologized for his comments, and likely won’t because he’s too thick to notice or care.
I put this at 0 because of how absolutely disgusting this was. It only shows that for all the claims of being a religious, spiritual person, Chris Bores truly is a scumbag. That is why I keep doing, what I’m doing.
And that is the real end of the list. Did you have any stand-out moments? What do you think 2015 will bring?
All we know so far is that in January, Chris will appear on a reality TV show. Still no word on which one. Plus, more fucking Skylanders because what else. Supposedly more History of Video Games, but that’s such a joke at this point. I know Chris likes to think he’s this big “educational informative entertainer”, but the fact he gets information wrong combined with the unfunny random humor, it all adds up to a career of nothingness that nobody will take seriously.
See you next year!
Wednesday, December 31, 2014
Friday, December 19, 2014
Almost End of the Year Update Things Blah...
Once again, Chris goes by several weeks without posting anything of substance. He posted another damn Skylanders video, but who cares.
Hm? He posted an update video?
*watches*
He claims he's hard at work on History of Video Games Part 7, and he wanted it out now but he was "too busy" (more ghost garbage?). He claims History is his main focus now. Even if you claim that Chris, you're never going to finish it. Especially at the stupid pace you're going. Not to mention all the time wasted on pointless jokes and sketches. I get the feeling he spent more time animating Mr. Magoo in the last video than he did doing actual research or playing the games. And that was just lip flaps!
Oh and there's the "reality TV" show. For the last couple months he's been bragging that he'll be appearing in a reality TV show. He won't say which one, that must be one weird NDA he had to sign if he can't say. He brags that what he did shocked the film crew. I don't believe that, he lies all the time so why should I believe this claim? Also, no mention of the horror movie you supposedly appeared in? The one where you claimed you got the most lines because you're "such a good actor"? He said this all on Facebook, his egotism is just stunning.
Yeaaah, I don't think we'll get anything else until 2015. It's likely my next post is the Worst Moments of 2014. Yes, I'm doing it, you can stop bringing it up now!
On another note, Chris "unfroze" his subscriber count so we can see it again. He went from 145k to 149k. Probably a lot of people that fell for that horrible "opening up" video. Just continues to show me that people really are that stupid. Of course, it doesn't reflect in the views, even his gravy train Skylanders isn't doing well. Gee, it's almost like he's doing what people DON'T want him to do. However, Chris is too stubborn and stupid to realize this. Criticism? Pfffffffffffft
Until next time.
Hm? He posted an update video?
*watches*
He claims he's hard at work on History of Video Games Part 7, and he wanted it out now but he was "too busy" (more ghost garbage?). He claims History is his main focus now. Even if you claim that Chris, you're never going to finish it. Especially at the stupid pace you're going. Not to mention all the time wasted on pointless jokes and sketches. I get the feeling he spent more time animating Mr. Magoo in the last video than he did doing actual research or playing the games. And that was just lip flaps!
Oh and there's the "reality TV" show. For the last couple months he's been bragging that he'll be appearing in a reality TV show. He won't say which one, that must be one weird NDA he had to sign if he can't say. He brags that what he did shocked the film crew. I don't believe that, he lies all the time so why should I believe this claim? Also, no mention of the horror movie you supposedly appeared in? The one where you claimed you got the most lines because you're "such a good actor"? He said this all on Facebook, his egotism is just stunning.
Yeaaah, I don't think we'll get anything else until 2015. It's likely my next post is the Worst Moments of 2014. Yes, I'm doing it, you can stop bringing it up now!
On another note, Chris "unfroze" his subscriber count so we can see it again. He went from 145k to 149k. Probably a lot of people that fell for that horrible "opening up" video. Just continues to show me that people really are that stupid. Of course, it doesn't reflect in the views, even his gravy train Skylanders isn't doing well. Gee, it's almost like he's doing what people DON'T want him to do. However, Chris is too stubborn and stupid to realize this. Criticism? Pfffffffffffft
Until next time.
Sunday, December 7, 2014
RIP Ralph Baer
It has been reported that Ralph Baer, the father of video games, creator of the Magnavox Odyssey, had passed away. He was 92.
Baer's contributions helped form a hobby that is enjoyed by millions, and even in his last days he was glad to discuss his time working on the Odyssey.
Baer's contributions helped form a hobby that is enjoyed by millions, and even in his last days he was glad to discuss his time working on the Odyssey.
Tuesday, November 25, 2014
Has Anything Been Happening? Not Really
It's been almost two weeks since Bores posted his last legit video. Since then... Skylanders mostly. But it's worth mentioning.
The first video he actually posted TWICE, the second version was shorter though. According to Harrod, it looks like he showed figures he wasn't allowed to show. That's TWICE he broke embargo now. Hey Activision, maybe you should cut him off since it's clear he can't be trusted. He's since deleted the first cut, but it was up for days.
The second video is about Activision sending him an exclusive figure. The Macy's Day Parade Eruptor. During this Bores feeds into his ego about how he got such a rare awesome figure, even though Activision probably gave them out to every Skylander coverage person on their list. If Chris had real connections, he would probably brag about getting limited CEs from Namco or 2K, even though everyone on those lists gets them too.
Also, didn't Bores say in his original Skylanders review that Eruptor sucked? Oh wait, that's addressing game mechanics, and Chris no longer plays the game cause that makes too much sense, and we can't have sense here.
If I may digress a bit, I do find it bothersome that Activision chose Eruptor over Spyro to represent the series in the parade. I mean yeah Spyro's redesign looks like he was beaten with the ugly tree (not a stick, the whole tree) but he's the character everyone knows. Then again, all the sequels ignored Spyro... it's like they just used his name to promote this new franchise, and tossed him aside when it became a success. Man, imagine if they did the same thing with Crash Bandicoot...
There are some other things I want to mention.
Last week, Microsoft released their documentary "Atari: Game Over" to Xbox Video. A couple weeks ago, Bores bragged that he was appearing in it. I was suspicious about this...
Thanks to Jospeh Nguyen, we can confirm that Bores does appear in it... for like a second.
There's a scene where they discuss the mythology of the Atari Burial Ground and how the internet has popularized the myth. Showing various video clips in a montage, including Bores and... oh ho ho ho ho ho.
Well well, look who that is. Kind of shows that Bores didn't watch the movie before telling everyone on his site to "go see it". Otherwise, he would know James appears. Bores would probably use that as more "evidence" that James is out to get him. I'd love to see him try and convince people of that. "James told the editors to put his brief clip after mine!"
Before I go, another note. I was looking through my old "Attempts the News" articles and found the one where Bores met Ernie Hudson at a convention, and claimed that Ghostbusters 3 was happening. Oh Bores, this is why you can only take the word of the creative staff, not the actors. This was before Harold Ramis had died, and before the announcement that the new Ghostbusters movie will have a female cast. Unless the new movie is in continuity with the first two (I hear it's reboot so probably not), then Ernie Hudson didn't know anything and Bores reported "false information". Along with a recent post where he asked Sean Astin about a Goonies sequel (at a convention) and was told "It won't happen in my lifetime", it shows that Bores is still stuck in the 80s and won't leave.
The first video he actually posted TWICE, the second version was shorter though. According to Harrod, it looks like he showed figures he wasn't allowed to show. That's TWICE he broke embargo now. Hey Activision, maybe you should cut him off since it's clear he can't be trusted. He's since deleted the first cut, but it was up for days.
The second video is about Activision sending him an exclusive figure. The Macy's Day Parade Eruptor. During this Bores feeds into his ego about how he got such a rare awesome figure, even though Activision probably gave them out to every Skylander coverage person on their list. If Chris had real connections, he would probably brag about getting limited CEs from Namco or 2K, even though everyone on those lists gets them too.
Also, didn't Bores say in his original Skylanders review that Eruptor sucked? Oh wait, that's addressing game mechanics, and Chris no longer plays the game cause that makes too much sense, and we can't have sense here.
If I may digress a bit, I do find it bothersome that Activision chose Eruptor over Spyro to represent the series in the parade. I mean yeah Spyro's redesign looks like he was beaten with the ugly tree (not a stick, the whole tree) but he's the character everyone knows. Then again, all the sequels ignored Spyro... it's like they just used his name to promote this new franchise, and tossed him aside when it became a success. Man, imagine if they did the same thing with Crash Bandicoot...
There are some other things I want to mention.
Last week, Microsoft released their documentary "Atari: Game Over" to Xbox Video. A couple weeks ago, Bores bragged that he was appearing in it. I was suspicious about this...
Thanks to Jospeh Nguyen, we can confirm that Bores does appear in it... for like a second.
There's a scene where they discuss the mythology of the Atari Burial Ground and how the internet has popularized the myth. Showing various video clips in a montage, including Bores and... oh ho ho ho ho ho.
Well well, look who that is. Kind of shows that Bores didn't watch the movie before telling everyone on his site to "go see it". Otherwise, he would know James appears. Bores would probably use that as more "evidence" that James is out to get him. I'd love to see him try and convince people of that. "James told the editors to put his brief clip after mine!"
Before I go, another note. I was looking through my old "Attempts the News" articles and found the one where Bores met Ernie Hudson at a convention, and claimed that Ghostbusters 3 was happening. Oh Bores, this is why you can only take the word of the creative staff, not the actors. This was before Harold Ramis had died, and before the announcement that the new Ghostbusters movie will have a female cast. Unless the new movie is in continuity with the first two (I hear it's reboot so probably not), then Ernie Hudson didn't know anything and Bores reported "false information". Along with a recent post where he asked Sean Astin about a Goonies sequel (at a convention) and was told "It won't happen in my lifetime", it shows that Bores is still stuck in the 80s and won't leave.
Friday, November 14, 2014
Thirty-Two Months Later: What Is Even the Point?
Why does Chris even bother with the “Irate Gamer” name these days? He never talks about video games, and he’s never “angry” about anything. Really, the only reason he’s still going is that it’s his only channel to have some sort of base on it. Even though the views on the Skylanders and ghost videos are appalling. Of course, Chris will blame YouTube instead of himself because he’s a narcissistic moron. I still don’t understand how people believe that “opening up” video despite the complete lack of proof.
Hm? Bores posted something new? If it’s ghosts I don- HISTORY OF VIDEO GAMES?! WHAT?!
Yeah, this came out of nowhere. After TWO YEARS AND EIGHT MONTHS without a new installment, he actually released one. He was actually serious about continuing. Not that it will ever be finished (spoiler alert: He’s never going to reach the NES at his pace).
As a reminder, Chris started History of Video Games five years ago, and he’s only just now gotten to the Atari 2600. Are you serious with this crap? Give. Up. There is no more point, you are not talented or smart enough to keep this going.
*breathes* I think I’m ready to take this on.
Let’s take a look at the description.
“The Golden Age of Video Games is fast approaching!” Approaching? The 2600 is part of the Golden Age! Oh wait, that’s right. Bores is a moron and thinks that everything before this was the Silver Age, even though that makes no sense. Then again, he did call Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels the “perfect predecessor” to the first SMB so he probably doesn’t know the difference.
Onto the video!
0:00 - 0:42: Oh jeez, he’s using that “For over 35 years…” intro again. He changed it up a bit as there’s footage of him playing an arcade game, and he added footage of the Legend of Zelda tech demo (from 2011), even though that’s not how the Wii U Zelda actually looks. You know Chris, if you want to make a series talking about history, it helps to stay up to date with current events.
0:43 - 2:05: We start with the history stuff. Modern stock footage, bits of Bores being “wacky”, such as walking in a green screen arcade full of “bad games”, and “drowning” in Pong consoles.
He brings up Warner buying Atari and the release of the Atari VCS (the console’s official name before the 5200’s release, we’ll see if Bores brings that up).
He points out how the VCS allowed swappable cartridges to extend the life of the system, with a bit where he gets “mad” at a game.
Then he shows the joystick with the single button, leading to a “wacky” green screen bit where he presses the button and a battlefield appears behind him, with a solider firing a rocket at him. Yep… same random crap.
Then he points out the switches on the console. When he gets to the one that lets you reset the game, we get a joke where he locks himself into a loop resetting himself until another version of him appears to punch him out. Wouldn’t this “joke” work better if that was someone else? I just don’t get why you clone yourself. Are you that unwilling to have other people in your videos?
2:06 - 2:37: “On October 1st 1977” Wrong! The Atari 2600 was released September 11th 1977. Where did you even get October 1st?
At least he got the price right.
“Here’s a fast fact” Are you still saying that for “consistency” or “popular demand”? Likely the former as I doubt anyone is demanding that.
He brings up how they didn’t make money on the console, but by the games since they were cheap to make. Going to mention how this means they had to sell the console on the games, a philosophy that continues to this day? Of course not, he doesn’t understand.
Something about labeling the games by genre, I can’t really find anything on that.
Atari launched with 9 games. Onto the review then, I’m guessing we’ll get a lot of “this sucks compared to modern standards” idiocy.
2:38 - 3:40: He starts with Combat.
“One of these was the Arcade version of Tank, but scaled down…” Actually, Combat is a combination of Tank and Jet Fighter, a game you’ve neglected to mention before.
“By pressing the Game Select button” It’s not a button, it’s a switch. There’s a difference.
There are a multitude of “boards” to select, and then we get a “joke” about the “Combat Hall of Fame”, showing Bores on top of a pillar, but then (I guess) narrator Bores says it doesn’t exist and the pillar disappears. You know, there’s a post on Facebook my informant mentioned to me. I’ll address it at the end so keep all these “jokes” in mind.
You can also play as planes and jets, and even as three jets at once. Prompting more Bores clones, as they all “control” the triple jet. Set to the 1812 Overture because … it’s something Family Guy would probably do.
However, he loses because he’s too big of a target (with fake “You Lose” text that clearly doesn’t belong, does he think we’re idiots?) and then… the three Bores’ launch into a weak Three Stooges routine. Here’s some advice Chris, the Three Stooges routine doesn’t work when there’s only one of you! Get some god damn friends to help you!
3:41 - 5:33: He moves onto Indy 500.
“The point is to drive faster than the other car” IS THAT WHAT A RACING GAME IS?! WOW!
The controls don’t seem to work, which sounds like a problem with him as the info I find say the game works well, leading to a pointless appearance from Mr. Magoo. HE EXISTED!
EDIT: Turns out the reason the game didn't work is that he was using the wrong controller! In the video he was using the Paddle Controller, NOT the Driving Controller. Only the Driving Controller will work with the game. Nice research Bores! Thank you to Guru Larry for pointing this out.
Then he moves to Video Olympics, and a bit where he overreacts to the fact it’s more Pong. And then a montage of the different games set to Khachaturian’s Sabre Dance (look it up), of course with “jokes” thrown in like “Genghis Pong, King Kong Pong (NO! The joke was right there! It’s King Pong you fool!) and Hong Pong Phooey (oh that’s why he didn’t use King Pong, because “me childhood”)”. Jeez this video is padded.
And of course a pong ball hits the cartridge out of his hand because… yep…
He moves to Street Racer
He briefly explains the mechanics and then a montage of him constantly losing (with more fake text). After a while he stabs his eye out with the joystick and more Mr. Magoo (his impression is as usual terrible). What is the point to any of this?!
And yeah, that’s what people want to see in a documentary about video games, someone stabbing their own eye with a joystick. And he wonders why people don’t take him seriously!
He then shows the other modes, and finds one that he doesn’t understand. That’s skiing, those are skis, you’re going down a mountain. Do research.
5:34 - 6:21: Onto Air-Sea Battle. More gameplay, more of the modes, ending on one where you can move the turrets, leading to one of them to leave the game, go into IG’s room and shoot him in the face. Again, he coughs up Styrofoam. Is that supposed to be his teeth? I’m sure you could find fake teeth out there.
Onto Star Ship. He mentions the stuff you need to shoot, and finds ships that resemble Klingon Warbirds of Prey from Star Trek. *looks up Klingon ships* They look nothing like that! I get the feeling this is just an excuse for more jokes.
Yeeep, Spock appears and has a “shocked” expression, which is just his eyes getting really wide and cartoon-y.
Also, according to Memory Alpha (the Star Trek wiki), there’s a difference between a Klingon Warbird and a Klingon Bird of Prey. I’m sure someone far more versed in Star Trek lore can explain this better.
EDIT: I sort of missed this the first time around, but Bores tells Spock to fire all the weapons. Spock doesn't handle the weapons on Star Trek, usually it's Chekov. Thanks to Jonathan Wilson and Brandon Brown for informing me.
6:22 - 7:14: Onto the last three games!
He shows Blackjack, but needs to put a joke in there so he confuses it with “Jack Black”. Again, keep these “jokes” in the back of your mind.
Then shows Basic Math, looks incredulous, then the Count from Sesame Street appears to tell him the answer to 3+3. Oh my god, that is the worst Count impression I have ever heard. Whoever said you can do voices LIED!
Then Surround, a sort of two-player Snake. It looks like the inspiration for the Tron light cycles. Any mention of that Bores? Of course not, he’s never going to mention how these old games inspired future ones. He knows nothing!
Of course, why explain that when we can have sketches! Enjoy a long sketch of two guys “playing“. It’s pointless and adds nothing. Is this why it took two years? Because you didn’t have enough stupid jokes?
Video concludes with more history. He mentions something about Bushnell not wanting the console to be sold after the holidays (it’d help if you source this stuff), the hiring of Ray Kassar, and then he shows an entire 2600 commercial. Padding?
Afterwards, he says the tide of the industry was turning, and a pointless splash effect. WE GET IT, you have effects! Stop it!
Next time, the Arcade games of 1978. Let me guess, another two years. See what I meant from earlier when I said he’ll never reach the NES? If the next episode is ONLY 1978, this shit is going to take forever and will never end. Cut your losses Bores and stop!
Uggggh.
This was barely informative, and those were barely “reviews”. This was all one giant excuse for Bores to have random Family Guy-esque sketches. Isn’t that the point of the I Rate the 80s series? To stroke his nostalgia and randomness boners over there? You can’t expect people to take either series seriously anyway.
Not to mention getting things wrong… as per usual. And now to wait years on end for Part 7.
Oh and you know how I said to keep all these jokes in the back of your mind? Well, my Facebook informant saw someone post this Top 10 YouTube comedians video. Bores responded saying "A lot of my humor is a bit on the dry side so I doubt I'd be on that list"
… Dry? DRY? You don’t know what dry humor is! It’s deadpan comedy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadpan You are not deadpan, your style is off-the-wall randomness and references. There is nothing dry about reacting to stupid characters. Maybe you should spend more time researching comedy than trying to find ghosts.
Say Bores, how about trying to defend Sonic Boom now? Oh that’s right, you stopped making Neo videos for whatever reason. Somehow, GotGame has yet to dump him. It can’t be site traffic, he hasn’t posted anything there in months. Someone has to know.
Hm? Bores posted something new? If it’s ghosts I don- HISTORY OF VIDEO GAMES?! WHAT?!
Yeah, this came out of nowhere. After TWO YEARS AND EIGHT MONTHS without a new installment, he actually released one. He was actually serious about continuing. Not that it will ever be finished (spoiler alert: He’s never going to reach the NES at his pace).
As a reminder, Chris started History of Video Games five years ago, and he’s only just now gotten to the Atari 2600. Are you serious with this crap? Give. Up. There is no more point, you are not talented or smart enough to keep this going.
*breathes* I think I’m ready to take this on.
Let’s take a look at the description.
“The Golden Age of Video Games is fast approaching!” Approaching? The 2600 is part of the Golden Age! Oh wait, that’s right. Bores is a moron and thinks that everything before this was the Silver Age, even though that makes no sense. Then again, he did call Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels the “perfect predecessor” to the first SMB so he probably doesn’t know the difference.
Onto the video!
0:00 - 0:42: Oh jeez, he’s using that “For over 35 years…” intro again. He changed it up a bit as there’s footage of him playing an arcade game, and he added footage of the Legend of Zelda tech demo (from 2011), even though that’s not how the Wii U Zelda actually looks. You know Chris, if you want to make a series talking about history, it helps to stay up to date with current events.
0:43 - 2:05: We start with the history stuff. Modern stock footage, bits of Bores being “wacky”, such as walking in a green screen arcade full of “bad games”, and “drowning” in Pong consoles.
He brings up Warner buying Atari and the release of the Atari VCS (the console’s official name before the 5200’s release, we’ll see if Bores brings that up).
He points out how the VCS allowed swappable cartridges to extend the life of the system, with a bit where he gets “mad” at a game.
Then he shows the joystick with the single button, leading to a “wacky” green screen bit where he presses the button and a battlefield appears behind him, with a solider firing a rocket at him. Yep… same random crap.
Then he points out the switches on the console. When he gets to the one that lets you reset the game, we get a joke where he locks himself into a loop resetting himself until another version of him appears to punch him out. Wouldn’t this “joke” work better if that was someone else? I just don’t get why you clone yourself. Are you that unwilling to have other people in your videos?
2:06 - 2:37: “On October 1st 1977” Wrong! The Atari 2600 was released September 11th 1977. Where did you even get October 1st?
At least he got the price right.
“Here’s a fast fact” Are you still saying that for “consistency” or “popular demand”? Likely the former as I doubt anyone is demanding that.
He brings up how they didn’t make money on the console, but by the games since they were cheap to make. Going to mention how this means they had to sell the console on the games, a philosophy that continues to this day? Of course not, he doesn’t understand.
Something about labeling the games by genre, I can’t really find anything on that.
Atari launched with 9 games. Onto the review then, I’m guessing we’ll get a lot of “this sucks compared to modern standards” idiocy.
2:38 - 3:40: He starts with Combat.
“One of these was the Arcade version of Tank, but scaled down…” Actually, Combat is a combination of Tank and Jet Fighter, a game you’ve neglected to mention before.
“By pressing the Game Select button” It’s not a button, it’s a switch. There’s a difference.
There are a multitude of “boards” to select, and then we get a “joke” about the “Combat Hall of Fame”, showing Bores on top of a pillar, but then (I guess) narrator Bores says it doesn’t exist and the pillar disappears. You know, there’s a post on Facebook my informant mentioned to me. I’ll address it at the end so keep all these “jokes” in mind.
You can also play as planes and jets, and even as three jets at once. Prompting more Bores clones, as they all “control” the triple jet. Set to the 1812 Overture because … it’s something Family Guy would probably do.
However, he loses because he’s too big of a target (with fake “You Lose” text that clearly doesn’t belong, does he think we’re idiots?) and then… the three Bores’ launch into a weak Three Stooges routine. Here’s some advice Chris, the Three Stooges routine doesn’t work when there’s only one of you! Get some god damn friends to help you!
3:41 - 5:33: He moves onto Indy 500.
“The point is to drive faster than the other car” IS THAT WHAT A RACING GAME IS?! WOW!
The controls don’t seem to work, which sounds like a problem with him as the info I find say the game works well, leading to a pointless appearance from Mr. Magoo. HE EXISTED!
EDIT: Turns out the reason the game didn't work is that he was using the wrong controller! In the video he was using the Paddle Controller, NOT the Driving Controller. Only the Driving Controller will work with the game. Nice research Bores! Thank you to Guru Larry for pointing this out.
Then he moves to Video Olympics, and a bit where he overreacts to the fact it’s more Pong. And then a montage of the different games set to Khachaturian’s Sabre Dance (look it up), of course with “jokes” thrown in like “Genghis Pong, King Kong Pong (NO! The joke was right there! It’s King Pong you fool!) and Hong Pong Phooey (oh that’s why he didn’t use King Pong, because “me childhood”)”. Jeez this video is padded.
And of course a pong ball hits the cartridge out of his hand because… yep…
He moves to Street Racer
He briefly explains the mechanics and then a montage of him constantly losing (with more fake text). After a while he stabs his eye out with the joystick and more Mr. Magoo (his impression is as usual terrible). What is the point to any of this?!
And yeah, that’s what people want to see in a documentary about video games, someone stabbing their own eye with a joystick. And he wonders why people don’t take him seriously!
He then shows the other modes, and finds one that he doesn’t understand. That’s skiing, those are skis, you’re going down a mountain. Do research.
5:34 - 6:21: Onto Air-Sea Battle. More gameplay, more of the modes, ending on one where you can move the turrets, leading to one of them to leave the game, go into IG’s room and shoot him in the face. Again, he coughs up Styrofoam. Is that supposed to be his teeth? I’m sure you could find fake teeth out there.
Onto Star Ship. He mentions the stuff you need to shoot, and finds ships that resemble Klingon Warbirds of Prey from Star Trek. *looks up Klingon ships* They look nothing like that! I get the feeling this is just an excuse for more jokes.
Yeeep, Spock appears and has a “shocked” expression, which is just his eyes getting really wide and cartoon-y.
Also, according to Memory Alpha (the Star Trek wiki), there’s a difference between a Klingon Warbird and a Klingon Bird of Prey. I’m sure someone far more versed in Star Trek lore can explain this better.
EDIT: I sort of missed this the first time around, but Bores tells Spock to fire all the weapons. Spock doesn't handle the weapons on Star Trek, usually it's Chekov. Thanks to Jonathan Wilson and Brandon Brown for informing me.
6:22 - 7:14: Onto the last three games!
He shows Blackjack, but needs to put a joke in there so he confuses it with “Jack Black”. Again, keep these “jokes” in the back of your mind.
Then shows Basic Math, looks incredulous, then the Count from Sesame Street appears to tell him the answer to 3+3. Oh my god, that is the worst Count impression I have ever heard. Whoever said you can do voices LIED!
Then Surround, a sort of two-player Snake. It looks like the inspiration for the Tron light cycles. Any mention of that Bores? Of course not, he’s never going to mention how these old games inspired future ones. He knows nothing!
Of course, why explain that when we can have sketches! Enjoy a long sketch of two guys “playing“. It’s pointless and adds nothing. Is this why it took two years? Because you didn’t have enough stupid jokes?
Video concludes with more history. He mentions something about Bushnell not wanting the console to be sold after the holidays (it’d help if you source this stuff), the hiring of Ray Kassar, and then he shows an entire 2600 commercial. Padding?
Afterwards, he says the tide of the industry was turning, and a pointless splash effect. WE GET IT, you have effects! Stop it!
Next time, the Arcade games of 1978. Let me guess, another two years. See what I meant from earlier when I said he’ll never reach the NES? If the next episode is ONLY 1978, this shit is going to take forever and will never end. Cut your losses Bores and stop!
Uggggh.
This was barely informative, and those were barely “reviews”. This was all one giant excuse for Bores to have random Family Guy-esque sketches. Isn’t that the point of the I Rate the 80s series? To stroke his nostalgia and randomness boners over there? You can’t expect people to take either series seriously anyway.
Not to mention getting things wrong… as per usual. And now to wait years on end for Part 7.
Oh and you know how I said to keep all these jokes in the back of your mind? Well, my Facebook informant saw someone post this Top 10 YouTube comedians video. Bores responded saying "A lot of my humor is a bit on the dry side so I doubt I'd be on that list"
… Dry? DRY? You don’t know what dry humor is! It’s deadpan comedy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadpan You are not deadpan, your style is off-the-wall randomness and references. There is nothing dry about reacting to stupid characters. Maybe you should spend more time researching comedy than trying to find ghosts.
Say Bores, how about trying to defend Sonic Boom now? Oh that’s right, you stopped making Neo videos for whatever reason. Somehow, GotGame has yet to dump him. It can’t be site traffic, he hasn’t posted anything there in months. Someone has to know.
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
More "Pursuing". Are We Supposed to Take This Seriously?
Throughout the month, Chris has been posting more "Pursuit of the Paranormal" videos. As in more snippets from the DVD. Despite his claim earlier that the upcoming videos would be from "other investigations" (it's clear these are all from the same place).
The videos are the same dumb crap. Addressing matters that really don't make sense, like the "mass" of a ghost (aren't ghosts incorporeal, as in you can go through them?), or if ghosts are bound by time, and he even prays for them. What is this?
At one point, he brings up an excerpt from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Chris, do you not understand the purpose of these texts? They weren't writing about spirits, they were the culture's interpretation of what happens after we die. Not to mention it's ANCIENT, long before our time. During a time when they made up stories in order to understand the world. And again, how is a book about Egyptian philosophy supposed to help you in FLORIDA?
I've had comments in the last post bring up how Chris' methods are laughable, and nobody would take him seriously. I think that says it all.
And the views reflect that.
*checks his site* Nothing...
You know, I'm starting to wonder if GotGame dropped him and he just doesn't know it.
The videos are the same dumb crap. Addressing matters that really don't make sense, like the "mass" of a ghost (aren't ghosts incorporeal, as in you can go through them?), or if ghosts are bound by time, and he even prays for them. What is this?
At one point, he brings up an excerpt from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Chris, do you not understand the purpose of these texts? They weren't writing about spirits, they were the culture's interpretation of what happens after we die. Not to mention it's ANCIENT, long before our time. During a time when they made up stories in order to understand the world. And again, how is a book about Egyptian philosophy supposed to help you in FLORIDA?
I've had comments in the last post bring up how Chris' methods are laughable, and nobody would take him seriously. I think that says it all.
And the views reflect that.
*checks his site* Nothing...
You know, I'm starting to wonder if GotGame dropped him and he just doesn't know it.
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
Pursuit of the Teaser! Funnier Than You Might Think
I get the feeling that Chris’ plan with that last video was “If I come clean, people will love me now, and they’ll watch anything I put out.” Chris didn’t seem to realize that nobody cares about his ghost hunting. Hence, this barely has any views.
Knowing that Chris probably wouldn’t have anything of substance for a long time, I decided to watch it. It’s merely a 15 minute segment from the 54 minute Pursuit of the Paranormal DVD.
… This was fucking hilarious. I wasn’t going to make a post about it, but oh my god this was funny
To any of the CA reviewers that read my blog, you have to review/riff the whole thing.
0:00 - 0:35: We open with an intro from Chris. Saying that he’s “evolved” since this was taped, and has found so much more. So you went from finding nothing to finding… more nothing?
0:36 - 1:38: “A Chris Bores Film” Calling this a film is being waaay too generous.
“Tonight! We’re headed to one of the most haunted locations in the U.S.” And this is where it hits you. The “pulse-pounding” “spooky” music, the cheesey announcer, this is an episode from a terrible reality TV show. At least with some reality TV, they seem to understand it’s bad, they know it’s a joke. But Chris taking this completely serious, and that’s what makes it hilarious!
They go over some of the other “highlights”, how what they find changes everything, blah blah blah.
Then it cuts to Bores in a graveyeard, and oh my god this shot. He walks up to the camera, and removes his sunglasses in a dramatic fashion. I can’t stop laughing, this is the dumbest thing.
“I am one of the leading ghost communicators in the field of ghost hunting” Hahahahahahaha. Oh wow. Chris, I recommend you look up the term “overly narrow superlative”.
“By using ancient texts like the Tibetan book of the dead, the Egyptian book of the dead, the Kabbalah” How are those first two supposed to help you in Florida and Ohio? Also, isn’t Kabbalah just a philosophy of Judaism, not a “text” like the Necronomicon?
“And using things like Psychology” PSYCHOLOGY?! How mystical! Hahaha. I don’t watch Ghost Hunters, but is it this cheesy and stupid?
“Interacting with spirits has never been more intriguing” If you’re into alternate methods to Ambien, then it’s very intriguing.
“Joining me on this hunt is Alan Cicco” Hi Alan. Wait, his last name is pronounced “Sisko”? Like the Star Trek DS9 captain? I’ve been pronouncing it “Sicko” for all these years! Hey, pardon me if I don’t assume only the first “C” uses the S sound, and the others don’t. It’s not my fault your name is all C’s!
“The pursuit for knowledge is on!” Yeaaaah you’re not going to find anything. You’ll have just as much knowledge about the afterlife as you do about video games.
1:39 - 2:39: The show begins proper. Their “investigation” takes them to St. Augustine, Florida, the location of the St. Augustine Lighthouse. Hmmm *looks up info* Ghost Hunters already did an episode on this! In 2006! With a “Return to” special in 2008! In fact, looking further into the lighthouse, it’s owned by a museum, and they get PAID for people to “hunt ghosts”. It’s a racket! http://www.staugustinelighthouse.com/events/darkofmoon.html
They’re making money off idiots! … Hmmm, I wonder how much cause I’m getting ideas.
It’s not even listed in Wikipedia’s “List of reportedly haunted locations in the United States”.
Bores narrates the history of the lighthouse, that people have seen apparitions of children, “shadow people” (the hell?) and apparently something caught on video. All I see is a dark picture of stairs with something edited in. It looks really fake.
“Once the sun finally sets, we’re anxious to get inside, and begin pursuing the paranormal” Pffffft hahahahahahaha. This is too much.
2:40 - 5:00: So the tour guide (probably laughing his way to the bank as these idiots pay him) explains all these supposed footstep sounds and children giggling, and apparently footstep marks on the ground. We then get a picture that Bores labeled “actual photograph” to try and make it sound this was real. It looks so fake. Like a cartoonist drew in those feet.
You know what these ghost tours remind me of? The Chamber of Farts in South Park. It promises to be scary, but it’s all gas.
The tour guide takes them to the basement. Something about the ghost being a girl who drowned. He claims she follows him, and she’s jealous of other girls… This all sounds like it’s from a script. Like the museum owners hire writers, and tell their employees to memorize this shit.
Around the end of his exposition, the tour guide mentions that a “keeper” would appear at the end of a dark hallway. Sounds like P.T. … Man, I’d rather be playing the new Silent Hill. At least that’s legit spooky.
5:01 - 8:00: The hunt begins! Yaaaay…
Of course, it’s all in night vision.
Alan assures that we’ll “definitely” hear noises. Probably sensible things, like the wind, or the building settling. Things that actually happen.
Bores mentions shadow people again (seriously, what?), Alan puts down a couple of lights on a bench, he sits next to them and starts saying in an almost “sensual” way “I’ve got these lights here, want to come over?” Wow, Shawn at TotalActionAdventure wasn’t kidding about Alan’s “smoothness”.
Then Bores interrupts and exposits how those lights (or K2 Meters) work.
Pauses… then Alan reacts like he hears something. He starts calling out, asking if he could bring a “bucket” upstairs (I must have missed something wha?), and they keep showing the stairs. I told you man, I told you about stairs!
They think they see something (probably a mouse) and start trying to talk to “it”.
Apparently they hear something, and Bores replays it 3 times. … I don’t hear anything. *listens closer* That’s not a girl. It sounds more like a mouse squeaking. I think a lot of these “hauntings” are the works of rodents.
Nothing happens… nothing happens… exactly how is this different from Haunted Investigators? Because it’s a lot of the same shit. Also, how were those books from earlier supposed to help?
8:00 - 11:17: Still a lot of nothing. Then they think they hear footsteps, and the reality show music returns. You know, it’s the music that makes it hilarious. The parts where it’s not playing it’s soooo boring.
Then they think they hear another voice. They replay it but I don’t hear a god damn thing.
He tries calling for the keeper but nothing
“After a few minutes of getting no response…” I realized this was a pointless endeavor and went to find a much more worthy use of my time.
No, they head into the basement instead.
“I’m feeling really odd down here” It’s called primal fear, a fear of the dark. The constant fear that something’s always near, the phobia that someone’s always there. *goes to listen to Iron Maiden for a bit*
Sorry about that.
Bores interrupts to bring up “that feeling”, and they’ve done enough investigations to know that when “that feeling” happens, something is there. What is “that feeling”? He doesn’t really describe it. I still think it’s primal fear.
One of their meters gets a reaction, and they try to call out. They think they hear a voice (again, I don’t hear a damn thing). The cheesy reality show music plays again.
Alan tries the smooth moves again. Too fucking funny.
11: 17 - 13:45: And so begins the “conversation” with the dead. Supposedly the ghost girl they mentioned earlier.
They ask questions, and the lights happen. It’s dumb. It’s all accented by goofy reality show music. Man, he really did want this on TV.
They keep asking questions… I don’t care.
Then Chris asks the “trailer” question. “Is being alive the same as being dead?” And they don’t get a “response” NO SHIT CHRIS! HOW DUMB ARE YOU?!
And then the “ghost” stops “talking”
The video ends back to Chris in his game room.
He claims the reason “she” “responded” is more interesting than what he’s seen on TV. That’s exactly what a snake oil salesman would say!
“BUY DA DVD!”
He mentions “90 minutes” again. We know it’s 54 Chris! Unless you released a new version.
He claims this was his “first steps” in this “case study”. How was that different from what you did before? This was exactly like Haunted Investigators.
And he brags about how his methods aren’t seen anywhere else. Probably because you found nothing! Ghosts. Aren’t. Real.
Oh and he even knows that his subscribers didn’t subscribe for this. Then make a separate channel! Oh wait, you even failed at that! Logic is dead…
Okay, maybe this wasn’t completely hilarious. But it did have moments where Chris wanted it to be serious, but he completely failed. I mean, is rational thought just that hard?
Supposedly, the next ghost videos will have more “proof”. Haha no. Your time would be better spent finding extraterrestrial life. At least I can believe aliens exist, somewhere out there.
I’ll say it again. Making online reviews is more of a “real job” than this.
Knowing that Chris probably wouldn’t have anything of substance for a long time, I decided to watch it. It’s merely a 15 minute segment from the 54 minute Pursuit of the Paranormal DVD.
… This was fucking hilarious. I wasn’t going to make a post about it, but oh my god this was funny
To any of the CA reviewers that read my blog, you have to review/riff the whole thing.
0:00 - 0:35: We open with an intro from Chris. Saying that he’s “evolved” since this was taped, and has found so much more. So you went from finding nothing to finding… more nothing?
0:36 - 1:38: “A Chris Bores Film” Calling this a film is being waaay too generous.
“Tonight! We’re headed to one of the most haunted locations in the U.S.” And this is where it hits you. The “pulse-pounding” “spooky” music, the cheesey announcer, this is an episode from a terrible reality TV show. At least with some reality TV, they seem to understand it’s bad, they know it’s a joke. But Chris taking this completely serious, and that’s what makes it hilarious!
They go over some of the other “highlights”, how what they find changes everything, blah blah blah.
Then it cuts to Bores in a graveyeard, and oh my god this shot. He walks up to the camera, and removes his sunglasses in a dramatic fashion. I can’t stop laughing, this is the dumbest thing.
“I am one of the leading ghost communicators in the field of ghost hunting” Hahahahahahaha. Oh wow. Chris, I recommend you look up the term “overly narrow superlative”.
“By using ancient texts like the Tibetan book of the dead, the Egyptian book of the dead, the Kabbalah” How are those first two supposed to help you in Florida and Ohio? Also, isn’t Kabbalah just a philosophy of Judaism, not a “text” like the Necronomicon?
“And using things like Psychology” PSYCHOLOGY?! How mystical! Hahaha. I don’t watch Ghost Hunters, but is it this cheesy and stupid?
“Interacting with spirits has never been more intriguing” If you’re into alternate methods to Ambien, then it’s very intriguing.
“Joining me on this hunt is Alan Cicco” Hi Alan. Wait, his last name is pronounced “Sisko”? Like the Star Trek DS9 captain? I’ve been pronouncing it “Sicko” for all these years! Hey, pardon me if I don’t assume only the first “C” uses the S sound, and the others don’t. It’s not my fault your name is all C’s!
“The pursuit for knowledge is on!” Yeaaaah you’re not going to find anything. You’ll have just as much knowledge about the afterlife as you do about video games.
1:39 - 2:39: The show begins proper. Their “investigation” takes them to St. Augustine, Florida, the location of the St. Augustine Lighthouse. Hmmm *looks up info* Ghost Hunters already did an episode on this! In 2006! With a “Return to” special in 2008! In fact, looking further into the lighthouse, it’s owned by a museum, and they get PAID for people to “hunt ghosts”. It’s a racket! http://www.staugustinelighthouse.com/events/darkofmoon.html
They’re making money off idiots! … Hmmm, I wonder how much cause I’m getting ideas.
It’s not even listed in Wikipedia’s “List of reportedly haunted locations in the United States”.
Bores narrates the history of the lighthouse, that people have seen apparitions of children, “shadow people” (the hell?) and apparently something caught on video. All I see is a dark picture of stairs with something edited in. It looks really fake.
“Once the sun finally sets, we’re anxious to get inside, and begin pursuing the paranormal” Pffffft hahahahahahaha. This is too much.
2:40 - 5:00: So the tour guide (probably laughing his way to the bank as these idiots pay him) explains all these supposed footstep sounds and children giggling, and apparently footstep marks on the ground. We then get a picture that Bores labeled “actual photograph” to try and make it sound this was real. It looks so fake. Like a cartoonist drew in those feet.
You know what these ghost tours remind me of? The Chamber of Farts in South Park. It promises to be scary, but it’s all gas.
The tour guide takes them to the basement. Something about the ghost being a girl who drowned. He claims she follows him, and she’s jealous of other girls… This all sounds like it’s from a script. Like the museum owners hire writers, and tell their employees to memorize this shit.
Around the end of his exposition, the tour guide mentions that a “keeper” would appear at the end of a dark hallway. Sounds like P.T. … Man, I’d rather be playing the new Silent Hill. At least that’s legit spooky.
5:01 - 8:00: The hunt begins! Yaaaay…
Of course, it’s all in night vision.
Alan assures that we’ll “definitely” hear noises. Probably sensible things, like the wind, or the building settling. Things that actually happen.
Bores mentions shadow people again (seriously, what?), Alan puts down a couple of lights on a bench, he sits next to them and starts saying in an almost “sensual” way “I’ve got these lights here, want to come over?” Wow, Shawn at TotalActionAdventure wasn’t kidding about Alan’s “smoothness”.
Then Bores interrupts and exposits how those lights (or K2 Meters) work.
Pauses… then Alan reacts like he hears something. He starts calling out, asking if he could bring a “bucket” upstairs (I must have missed something wha?), and they keep showing the stairs. I told you man, I told you about stairs!
They think they see something (probably a mouse) and start trying to talk to “it”.
Apparently they hear something, and Bores replays it 3 times. … I don’t hear anything. *listens closer* That’s not a girl. It sounds more like a mouse squeaking. I think a lot of these “hauntings” are the works of rodents.
Nothing happens… nothing happens… exactly how is this different from Haunted Investigators? Because it’s a lot of the same shit. Also, how were those books from earlier supposed to help?
8:00 - 11:17: Still a lot of nothing. Then they think they hear footsteps, and the reality show music returns. You know, it’s the music that makes it hilarious. The parts where it’s not playing it’s soooo boring.
Then they think they hear another voice. They replay it but I don’t hear a god damn thing.
He tries calling for the keeper but nothing
“After a few minutes of getting no response…” I realized this was a pointless endeavor and went to find a much more worthy use of my time.
No, they head into the basement instead.
“I’m feeling really odd down here” It’s called primal fear, a fear of the dark. The constant fear that something’s always near, the phobia that someone’s always there. *goes to listen to Iron Maiden for a bit*
Sorry about that.
Bores interrupts to bring up “that feeling”, and they’ve done enough investigations to know that when “that feeling” happens, something is there. What is “that feeling”? He doesn’t really describe it. I still think it’s primal fear.
One of their meters gets a reaction, and they try to call out. They think they hear a voice (again, I don’t hear a damn thing). The cheesy reality show music plays again.
Alan tries the smooth moves again. Too fucking funny.
11: 17 - 13:45: And so begins the “conversation” with the dead. Supposedly the ghost girl they mentioned earlier.
They ask questions, and the lights happen. It’s dumb. It’s all accented by goofy reality show music. Man, he really did want this on TV.
They keep asking questions… I don’t care.
Then Chris asks the “trailer” question. “Is being alive the same as being dead?” And they don’t get a “response” NO SHIT CHRIS! HOW DUMB ARE YOU?!
And then the “ghost” stops “talking”
The video ends back to Chris in his game room.
He claims the reason “she” “responded” is more interesting than what he’s seen on TV. That’s exactly what a snake oil salesman would say!
“BUY DA DVD!”
He mentions “90 minutes” again. We know it’s 54 Chris! Unless you released a new version.
He claims this was his “first steps” in this “case study”. How was that different from what you did before? This was exactly like Haunted Investigators.
And he brags about how his methods aren’t seen anywhere else. Probably because you found nothing! Ghosts. Aren’t. Real.
Oh and he even knows that his subscribers didn’t subscribe for this. Then make a separate channel! Oh wait, you even failed at that! Logic is dead…
Okay, maybe this wasn’t completely hilarious. But it did have moments where Chris wanted it to be serious, but he completely failed. I mean, is rational thought just that hard?
Supposedly, the next ghost videos will have more “proof”. Haha no. Your time would be better spent finding extraterrestrial life. At least I can believe aliens exist, somewhere out there.
I’ll say it again. Making online reviews is more of a “real job” than this.
Monday, October 6, 2014
Chris Bores "Opens Up" a Truckload of Bullcrap
Who knew Bores had it in him to make a 39 minute video? *breathes* This isn’t going to be fun.
On October 2nd, Bores posted a video response to TheArchfiend, that in reality is Bores going over his “YouTube career”, and his “connection” with the Angry Video Game Nerd. It’s not a response at all.
Why did Bores choose now to talk about this? My guess, he’s not getting views anymore, so he’s reigniting old drama in the hopes of getting people to watch again. That’s not going to work if you’re just going to go back to more Skylanders vlogs and shit about ghosts.
When he posted the video, I had my reservations talking about it. But a lot of you requested I debunk it as there is a lot of bullshit shoveled forth.
I hope you have time to spare, this is going to be a LONG one.
0:00 - 1:26: Bores opens the video mentioning TheArchfiend’s video, and that it had “great points”. The video was actually Archfiend complaining that people are still hating his new friend and they need to leave him alone and to let him like Skylanders. He seemed to confuse “this is the fucking worst, plz die” with “Please go back to making retro reviews, I’m tired of the Skylanders videos”. Of course, Archfiend usually knows all the facts. Like how movies are the easiest thing to make and don’t require things like lighting, microphones, catering, make-up, equipment rental, renting land, building sets, temporary living space, people to operate all the equipment, actors, VFX work, and of course money to pay for all of this.
Chris claims he hasn’t done a video like this before because “he’s not good at riffing to the camera”. This is riffing? Well, maybe you should have scripted this, that way it wouldn’t be so long-winded and filled with “um uh um”.
1:27 - 4:40: He rewinds back to 2006 and “how it all started”. He mentions he was posting Haunted Investigators on YouTube, and that the views were “mediocre”. OBJECTION! There’s a contradiction here. Back in 2006, you were using your “Y2B2006” account, where you posted Mythbusters “parodies”, that awful “Back to the Past” short, and not actual episodes of Haunted Investigators. Rather, commercials for the DVDs you were trying to sell. You didn’t actually post an episode until 2007 (he made the video private) on your Irate Gamer channel, when you were actually getting views.
See unlike you Chris, I do research. It’s not hard to find this stuff out.
UPDATE (10/8/2014): And apparently I didn't do enough research... Seems he did post shorter Haunted Investigator videos on his Y2B2006. I just got evidence of this (see below). My mistake, I apologize. See, it's not hard to admit your mistakes Chris.
Anywho, he mentions “angry reviewing” and how he stumbled across it.
He mentions James and Armake21 (he finally realizes it’s pronounced Armake, not Armac), he subscribed to a lot of them, even e-mailed them. He never heard back but had hoped to one day collaborate with them (HA!)
UPDATE: (10/8/2014): Mike just sent me this picture of his Y2B2006 account back in August 23rd 2007.
Notice that he's subscribed to only two people. Himself, and James. Either he's lying about being subscribed to all the other reviewers, or for some reason he unsubscribed everyone else.
It also proves that he subscribed to his IG channel with a secondary account. As I mentioned below, I saw him leave comments with it. "Great Video!" he would say, pretending that he's someone else. Like a "sockpuppet". Hmmmmmmmmm.
He said he didn’t start right away because he “didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes” and do what everyone else was doing. That didn’t stop all the other people, and it still doesn’t stop other people from trying to be the next PewDiePie or Game Grumps.
No, his claim is that he knew it would lead to everything that happened over the next few years. Uh, no you didn’t. You say that now after all that’s happened, but I doubt you had the foresight to see all this.
He then goes on to say the “catalyst” for starting was a video someone posted where they asked James about all the “imitators” and other people doing angry reviews, and James responded that he was flattered. So this inspired Bores to do his own reviews. I’m not going to ask about the video as it’s likely loooong-gone.
4:41 - 5:50: Flash forward to March 2007, and he decides to do Back to the Future cause he always hated that game (uh huh). He calls the jokes corny and stupid, and he admits that he “borrowed” from other reviews because he “didn’t know what to do”. Well, if you always hated the game, surely you could have come up with some original material. Don’t try to claim “it’s my first time” as a reason to steal. This only makes it more obvious you were never a gamer.
He brings up that his circle of friends found it funny, he made more videos (Where’s Waldo, Goonies II), and that they barely got views. Say Chris, why aren’t these friends in your videos? Serious question, you really could benefit from more people in them.
5:51 - 8:36: Summer of the same year, GameTrailers had an “OutNerd the Nerd” competition. I tried looking this up and very little info is out there. A couple of the videos are still up on GameTrailers, and Derek “Happy Video Game Nerd” Alexander’s old site mentions it, but I can’t find something like an announcement page or video.
He says his few fans at the time told him to enter, and that someone from GameTrailers told him to enter (I doubt this, it’s likely just a person that had a forum account telling him to do it, not someone that actually worked with the company), and so every video from Summer 2007 was entered into this contest. They were? Cause looking at the videos, there’s zero mention of this contest. Unless he went back and removed that…but why mention that now and nowhere else? Like his biography, or the 200th video that’s pretty similar to this but waaaay shorter?
Basically, he uses this contest as an excuse for why his early videos were exactly like the AVGN’s. Well, maybe you should have put “OutNerd the Nerd contest” in them, and maybe you wouldn’t have gotten flack for it!
He claimed the people at GT told him he was going to win (again, likely just forum users, not actual staff)
Then he finds out the Happy Video Game Nerd won, and he was angry because he watched the video and “it was nothing like the Nerd”. It may have not been exact, but he did “outnerd” him, by bringing up more info, trivia, and just being a bigger “nerd”. Your videos were full of inaccurate info, likely the biggest reason you lost. Or the other likely reason is that you didn’t mark them as contest entries.
Then he claims that he heard the contest was rigged, and that James had a hand in it. WRONG! According to Mike Matei, GameTrailers did the contest without their consent and James didn’t even see the HVGN videos until after it ended. James had no hand in choosing the contests winners. They likely chose HVGN over you because his videos were better. Sure you had “flashy effects”, but his info was better, and he didn’t get things wrong.
Also, prove that he rigged it. Show us evidence. We live in a world where “pics or it didn’t happen” is becoming less of a joke.
“So he snuffed me” Just keep believing that Bores, I’m sure it will open so many doors.
8:36 - 11:05: After all that, he made more videos (Mario 2, MUSCLE) and… hold on. *looks at dates* According to Derek’s old site, he posted the MetalStorm video on August 29th. The Mario 2 and MUSCLE videos were posted before that. Man, I really wish I could find more info about this contest… like the dates and all that. http://lophatjello.com/history/
UPDATE (10/7/2014): Mike managed to find out the OutNerd the Nerd contest began in August 2007. The first IG video to come out that month was... Super Mario Bros. 2
That means he still made his Back to the Future, Where's Waldo, Goonies II, Mission Impossbile, Ghosts n Goblins, Jaws, and Temple of Doom reviews, with the full intention of being "serious", not being part of a contest, and full of material taken from other sources. Chris, the number of holes in your story keeps growing.
Anywho, his Mario 2 video got featured which meant front page coverage, side-bar coverage, etc.
But then he brings up the “pecking order” of reviewers at the time. How James was at the top, then Armake21 was after that, and the huge gap between them. Then he just keeps listing old reviewers like “Fat Man Cometh” (UrinatingTree), jedite1, SlyDogStudios, AkewsticRockr, he even mentions Spoony (who still does videos). Jeez, no wonder Bores believes there’s “not many of us left”, if these are the reviewers he asked to be in his stupid cheering scene. Learn about new ones!
“Anyway, I ended up getting featured” What was the point of the pecking order shit?! I swear, this video would be 20 minutes long if it wasn’t for the padding!
11:05 - 15:30: It all happened overnight, his inbox was full, the views skyrocketed, his sub count shot up to 11k, making him the “second most popular reviewer on YouTube”. Something he couldn’t sustain for a number of reasons.
Other reviewers watched his stuff, wondered who he was, where he came from… seriously it’s taking so long to get to the point.
The other reviewers were accusing of him lifting material, and he says “Of course I was, I only had 200 subscribers”. That’s not a fucking excuse! Also, if you didn’t want heat, you should have marked your videos as part of a contest. But you didn’t.
He also adds “I wasn’t taking this seriously”. Bullcrap, if you weren’t taking it seriously then you wouldn’t put so many pointless effects in. You wouldn’t have said in your Temple of Doom review that you put your “blood, sweat, and tears” into the “angel & devil” effect. If you weren’t taking it seriously, you would have said so a LOOOONG time ago.
At one point, he mentions “doing it for my friends“ again. I really have a hard time believing that considering he made a DVD 7 months into his “career”. Who does that?
He goes on and on about the hate he got, how the other reviewers made videos trashing him, and their followers were trashing him. There’s quite a few reasons for that Chris. You were trashing good games, acted like Mario 2 being a reskinned game was a big secret, clearly didn’t know what you were talking about, and of course that whole lifting material from others. But really, that last one isn’t the point of my blog, contrary to what some believe.
Anyway, he was public enemy #1, he was the villain, people wanted his blood, blah blah blah.
He asked himself what he should do, then brings up that he took psychology in college (the same one you dropped out of?) and felt the best course of action was to say “nothing”. Yeaaaah nooooo, that was probably the worst course of action Chris. Had you addressed the hate, that is, the people that called you a rip-off, then maybe things would have been better. Made a pledge to be more original. But you never did that, and that’s why the hate persisted.
15:31 - 18:00: Despite the hate, he decided to continue making videos and tells us we would do the same, and we would be lying if we didn’t. Or again, you could have addressed the issues people had. Sure there was hate (Silent Rob), but I’m sure people had legit criticism for you.
The MUSCLE review came out, it also got featured, people got pissed and started spreading “rumors” and “lies” (sure…) and that Bores was making sock-puppet accounts. He denies this saying he never had the time to make all these accounts. Well, you made some, like iratefanboy345, and a lot of old (likely dead) accounts that 5-starred only your videos, I’ve seen you comment with your Y2B2006 account. I’m not saying that all your subs were sock puppets, but you still partook in that.
He also brings up his mom. Chris, we know that’s you! The evidence is everywhere! “She” writes like you do, “she” disappears when you go to E3 or some other event, and of course you have the same IP address. Unless you live with her (which you deny) or she takes control of your account (which would just be sad), then it’s pretty obvious that it’s you posing as your mom. By the way, the damage “she” did to your reputation was staggering. Don’t pretend “she” helped.
Bores also brings up Eric Allen, which I can understand. Back then he was a venomous IG fan boy that went around arguing for him. He’s calmed down now and has been willing to talk to IG’s critics.
EDIT: Credit to lasersquad for exposing IG and LadyBuggin having the same IP address. My apologies for not doing this earlier.
18:01 - 21:30: At this point, only one person’s opinion of him mattered, and that was James Rolfe. Oh dear, we’re at this point.
Bores sent an e-mail to James, apologizing for “copying”, saying he didn’t mean to (that’s not what you said earlier), and some other stuff. He then claims that James replied, saying that he had “demands”. … This is new.
Apparently the “demand” was that Bores acknowledge James was his inspiration. That’s easy, why did Bores have a problem with this? He makes it sound like he wanted him to lick his boots, but this is simple. Also, do you have proof of this? Like the e-mail in question? Cause you’re making a lot of accusations without backing them up.
According to Mike, James never gave any demands. Again Chris, proof or get out.
Then, Bores brings up that his e-mail was posted online, because “he didn’t write back”.
That. Is. Wrong. Here’s what really happened (thanks to Mike Matei for informing me).
Bores wrote the e-mail to James, that much is true. The e-mail said “I will stop copying you”, and they left it at that. A week or so after, Bores posted his TMNT video, which was full of material lifted from the AVGN’s video. James learned about this, and forwarded the e-mail to Mike. Angered, he posted the e-mail online, showing that Bores LIED to them. People don’t like being lied to, that’s why the e-mail was posted.
What Bores is doing is trying to play the victim, something narcissists do when they have no real argument.
He’s also blaming James for this. I thought he knew it was Mike that posted the letter. I recall a fan boy that messaged him about it, and he said “that asshole Mike posted my e-mail”. It’s like this video is going out of its way to discredit James as much as possible.
And then he goes on about how he lost respect and wouldn't watch his videos or talk about him. Again, you copied him when you told him you wouldn’t. This was all your fault. Don’t deflect the blame.
He continues whining about how people still hated him, and that people accused him of doing it for the money. He quickly pauses to mention he “hasn’t heard that since James did the Kickstarter”. Really now? Let me change that. YOU STILL DO IT FOR THE MONEY! You’re constantly whining about views, that you won’t do retro games anymore because views are low, and that you only do Skylanders because they give you views. That’s something people doing it for the money would say! Not to mention your low quality DVDs. You left POWER RANGERS FOOTAGE on your last one because you wanted a quick buck. How many episodes does the History of Video Games DVD have? 5? Fuck off with that, you’re clearly in it for the cash!
More whining… he brings up that he’s a religious person. I’m pretty sure all religions tell you that lying is a sin. In fact you don’t need to be religious to know lying is awful. Did you bring that up in an attempt to garner sympathy?
21:31 - 25:25: He claims he understands the hate, that people might have seen him as a threat or something. I’m so bored.
He then mentions his next review was Tetris. Wait, you’re skipping some. You forgot to mention TMNT (gee, I wonder why), Yo! Noid, and Zombies Ate My Neighbors. No drama for these? Nothing on how you criticized an excellent game like ZAMN because “wah it’s too hard”? People really should have noticed back then that you didn’t know a damn thing about games.
Anyway, the Tetris review got a ton of views (probably because of it’s click-bait title, using the word “scandal”), and at one point Bores was the 55th most subscriber user on the site. I love that he still holds on to that one accomplishment to this day. He doesn’t seem to get that people don’t care now. “You were 55th at one point? What are you now? 7135?! Forget you, I’m going to find someone that actually matters now.”
More about hate, plugging Archfiend’s video again, he brings up the time James was asked about IG and he said “he doesn’t acknowledge me, I’m not going to acknowledge him” and cries about how he was such a dick. AGAIN! Mike (not James) posted the letter because YOU LIED!
He keeps blaming James for the letter, and asks “What do you want me to do, keep kissing his butt?” No, we wanted you to be honest, and acknowledge him you dumbass. I swear…
Then out of nowhere, he brings up PewDiePie. What? Yeah, apparently he questions why people didn’t accuse James of being a PewDiePie rip-off when he started doing Let’s Play videos. Oh wow this argument is beyond flimsy. First of all, PewDiePie’s first LP was posted December 2010 (some Minecraft thing). As Mike pointed out to me, this video of the two of them playing the Magnavox Odyssey (http://cinemassacre.com/2009/04/27/playing-odyssey/) was posted April 2009. Second, PewDiePie is soooooo not the first Let’s Player. A lot of people predate him. Slowbeef, ProtonJon, chuggaaconroy, ChipCheezum, and sooo many others. You probably only know PewDiePie because he’s popular and you never leave your bubble, thus you never learned that Let’s Plays have been a thing for years. Third, people don’t give them shit for doing Let’s Plays because they have their own “style” of LP. They just casually play the game, and talk about it, or about other stuff. It’s all about how entertaining the commentary is. Whether you like it or not that’s up to you.
Chris, realize that what you did back then was steal without claiming to be parody. You’re claiming parody these days, but only after years of being called a thief. This is not the same thing.
25:26 - 27:32: He then claims that he started noticing “issues” with James, “chinks in his armor”. I thought you said you didn’t watch him? You’re changing your story in the same video. Hello?
He claims that his “haters” began to “see the light”. Oh fuck off with that.
He claims they noticed “things weren’t adding up” and they saw the side of him that Bores saw years ago. … You’re talking about Mike right? Because James didn’t do anything… besides the one comment about acknowledgement. I know people have issues with Mike, is that who you’re talking about?
He then starts talking about his Mario Bros 2 review. He claims James watched it (prove it…), and then “shortly after”, James released his Mario Bros 3 review. If by shortly you mean eight months…
He claims there are “similarities”. … No. What are you talking about?
His accusation is that both are set-up like “half-documentary/half review” and both have a satanic theme. That is a bigger stretch than Dhalsim and Monkey D. Luffy at a stretchy-guys convention. First off, “half-documentary/half-review”. The Nerd’s review really wasn’t like a documentary, he was just talking about how The Wizard was an important part of any Nintendo kid’s childhood, and how it introduced the world to Super Mario Bros. 3. Your idea of a documentary was “SCANDAL! MARIO 2 ISN’T MARIO 2! LOOK AT THIS SHOCKING EVIDENCE!” even though by 2007, most people half-versed in gaming history know this! Second, the satanic theme? Well, the Nerd review said that Super Mario Bros 3 was so good it’s a sin, and jokingly pointed out Satanic images and symbolism (often going to crazy lengths like 8/5/12/12 = Hell ). All this leading to a fight with the Devil at the end. Your so-called “Satanic theme”, was putting the Devil at the end because you killed your evil twin, and thus he went to Hell. Only a tinfoil hat wearing, Alex Jones listening DUMBASS would say these two videos are similar. Other than they both involve Mario. You’re trying way too fucking hard to discredit him.
Actually, it’s not the first time he said this. He believed this way back in 2010: http://irategamersucks.blogspot.com/2010/08/bores-hits-new-low-attempts-to-own.html Good lord, this makes even less sense now.
He claims that if he did his Mario 2 review afterwards, he would have been ‘drug through the mud”. You sure? Cause I think people would bash you because your video was full of inaccurate info, like saying Toad was useless. Again, the Mario 2 video had waaay more problems than any possible plagiarism (“perfect predecessor to the first Mario”)
He brings up that he used to announce games he would review. Saying he announced Silver Surfer, and James reviewed it a month later. Wait what? That’s not how it happened. You announced Silver Surfer and Superman reviews in 2008 (Third Rate Gamer mocked this in his Battletoads video from 2008). The Nerd’s Silver Surfer review was released in 2007! Sure, it was posted to YouTube in 2008, but you’re ignoring that he used to be exclusive to GameTrailers and that videos would be there for a year before going on YouTube.
In fact, I checked the Wayback Machine. Here’s what I found from October 2008: http://web.archive.org/web/20081007023041/http://www.theirategamer.com/reviews.htm “Awaiting the Chopping Block: Silver Surfer/Superman” In fact, I recall that people gave you shit for this because the Nerd already covered these games. So you’re distorting history saying that James reviewed it after you announced this?
Oh and he mentions Superman (and Superman 64). He did that back in July 2008, before you announced it! Distorting history again. Also, you never said Superman 64.
He claims that he had to stop posting what his next reviews were because “James would beat him to the punch” That is such a fucking lie. You stopped because people were giving you crap for doing something James already did! He didn’t purposely sabotage you, you were just late.
27:32 - 30:20: He now decides to address the “R.O.B. the robot controversy”
The controversy in question involve the ending of the Nerd’s NES Accessories review, where he said he’ll eventually review R.O.B. (took three years, but he did get to it), and then “a couple days later” (it was actually a couple weeks, I checked the dates), Bores released his review of R.O.B. He still says he wasn’t watching him at this point.
“How can I put a review like this together in 3 or 4 days” Again, it was two weeks, and two weeks is possible.
“It took me a good month to put this together” Wait a month? In your trailer, you said TWO months. Either you were lying back then, you’re lying now, or you really don’t know how time works.
Or it was two months, as his second bit of evidence is that he put a clip of him choking R.O.B. in the intro of one his previous reviews. Who the hell was supposed to pay attention to that? For all we know, that was just a “fun bit”. Like that clip of you next to Doc Louis from Punch-Out, that was never in an episode. Or the clip where you parody James Bond, that was never in an episode. Or the clip of the Nerd putting a Neo-Geo cartridge on a scale, that was never in an episode. If this was your evidence at a trial, you’d be laughed out of the courtroom by the judge and jury.
To humor him, I checked the previous videos. It was in the Q*bert review, but it went by so quickly that I’m not surprised nobody noticed.
He goes on about how people didn’t care, they hated just to hate, and people still do that today. Hi Chris! And no, I don’t hate just to hate, I provide evidence. I’ve even been nice, I praised you for making a separate channel for your Skylanders habit. But then you snuffed that out by abandoning the channel in less than a month! Maybe you should look into yourself Chris.
“Let’s just discredit him anyway we can was the mindset back then whether it was true or not” Oh the irony. You just tried to discredit James multiple times without offering proof. And you’re calling your “haters” out for doing the same?
He then brings up the Odyssey. Uh oh…
He mentions how he foreshadowed it at the end, and then claims that “James got to it before I did”. … You’re distorting history again.
The Nerd’s Odyssey review came out April 21st 2009. You released the trailer for History of Video Games May 5th 2009. Once again, two weeks. I even remember in the comments, someone said to you that the Nerd just reviewed the Odyssey (and I understand why they brought that up, first console, history of video games), and you responded with “Did he? I didn’t know, I don’t watch him”. You released part 1 where you foreshadowed the Odyssey on May 8th. You didn’t “review” the Odyssey until October 2nd 2009.
The way he’s phrasing all this, he makes it sound like he released part 1, foreshadowed the Odyssey, and then James released his video afterwards. Again, that’s not how it happened. Anyone can check the timestamps.
For some reason, he claims this isn’t what James normally reviews. Uh, actually it was perfectly in line with what he talks about. He doesn’t just talk about Nintendo and Atari games, he looks at obscure consoles too. Sega CD, Sega 32x, Intellivision and Colecovision, Phillips CD-I, it was completely in line with what he does. You just didn’t know because as you claimed, you don’t watch him.
30:21 - 34:30: Nine more minutes….
He suddenly brings up Asalieri and TheArchfiend claiming they too found something wrong. … You know, I saw reactions to this video on /v/, and people that made it to this point immediately discredited it just because he plugged Asa. That is how toxic his name is.
Also, I’m surprised you’re so forgiving of TheArchfiend Bores. After all, he sabotaged your radio interview. You remember, with the Uncensored Net Noise, they called you a hack, compared you to Gallagher and Carrot Top, all because TheArchfiend told them about you? In fact, he did more sabotage to you than James had ever done. And yet you’ll forgive him? Is this really the company you want to be associated with?
Of course, he mentions those because it’s onto the “Kickstarter is the devil” portion! For the record, he used IndieGoGo, it’s a different site overall.
“Making all this money, why did he need a Kickstarter for a movie” As I sarcastically mentioned above, movies are expensive. They require all kinds of people to work on them, and people usually like to get paid for their work. Not to mention sets, locations, equipment, again movie-making is not cheap. Remind me, how much did you spend on Pursuit of the Paranormal? Didn’t you say you emptied your bank account trying to get it on TV?
“I don’t fault him for using Kickstarter” If you don’t fault him, why did you make the “spoof” video? Okay, that was two years ago, maybe he finally realized crowd-funding has benefits.
And apparently that’s kind of true now, as he mentions the Reading Rainbow Kickstarter and believes “education comes first” or something. So you only care for Kickstarter if it’s for educational purposes? Then why did you write up two articles about Mighty No. 9 on your site? That’s not an educational game.
Oh my god he mentions the Cheetaman II Kickstarter. James got nothing from that! Neither did Pat the NES Punk or the Game Chasers! They did the video because they were asked to! But people prefer to ignore that because rabble rabble rabble…
Apparently to Bores, he thought James was bragging. … How? I didn’t see that at all.
And that “bragging” was the whole point of his “e-begging spoof” as that’s “exactly what he did”. Do YOU feel that way, or are you just aping what TheArchfiend told you? Because I recall him crying about James “bragging”.
“I don’t hate the guy” … But… *sighs* Moving on.
And he just keeps going on about how people were “second-guessing” or “seeing the light” or whatever.
He claims people were asking if “this really happened”. Can you prove this?! Because unless you prove all this, it sounds like another made up story. Show us the e-mails!
Blah blah blah blah, YouTube has changed, angry reviewing isn’t a thing anymore, people would rather watch “celebrities”. What celebrities? Do you mean PewDiePie? Do you not notice how HUGE gaming is on YouTube now? You could have evolved with the times like James did, but you refused to, you stayed in the same rut, and your new content of “talking about Skylanders” isn’t winning new viewers.
He mentions Asa and Archfiend, and he’s glad they “mellowed out”. Asa, mellowed out? If stalking is your idea of mellow, then I don’t want to know what you think “angry” is.
“If you still think I’m a douche, it is what it is. If you still want to hate me, go for it.” Okay. … As long as you keep making videos.
And so into the last five minutes:
He claims he’s “content” with what he does now, bringing up Skylanders (ugggh) and ghost stuff that will be posted in October (the perfect alternative to Ambien), and that he “does the channel for himself”. So you don’t care about your fans? Called it!
He mentions History of Video Games, saying it’s been shot but he needs to edit it. Why are you still trying that?
As well as I Rate the 80s.
He says his problem is the lack of time, and how YouTube has changed. … Maybe you should take some time to research the current trends. Start doing Let’s Plays. “But my job” You teach people how to hunt for something that’s not real! Playing video games for the internet is a better use of time than that!
More crying about how he doesn’t get views these days. Again, you claim you’re not doing it for the money?
He also brings up how he works with the community and does charity. Why bring this up? More sympathy?
He keeps going and going about how he learned so much, how he went to E3, formed relationships with Activison, Sega and Nintendo (only one of these matters considering they seem to be sending him free garbage), learned to do interviews (they’re still terrible)…
“I don’t hate James, I never hated James” But but but… but…. You just.. Nearly 40 minutes… ugggggh the video is just about over.
He once again goes over his point, that James “screwed him over”, deflecting the blame away from him.
“There’s stuff I can’t remember right now where people are all *weird sounds*” Let’s see, all your research errors, your poorly-written reviews, the fact that your modern “reviews” are only from an hour of playing, the stolen footage on your DVDs, that god-awful abortion of a story arc, oh and what you said about Justin Carmical. I’ll get to that in a bit.
“I apologize if I offended anyone, but it’s YouTube. It’s not the movies or TV, it’s YouTube. Get over it”. You can’t say that in 2014, when internet entertainment is starting to take over. Netflix originals, YouTube talent is starting to get noticed more often, this isn’t 2008 anymore. If you do something terrible, people will still call you out, no matter what medium. TV does get misinterpreted too (complaints about the last two episodes of Doctor Who being racist and pro-life…)
Blah blah blah he thanks the fans, they watched him “grow up” and he wants nothing more than to entertain. No, it’s still clear you only want money. If you wanted to entertain, you would still be doing retro reviews. The thing that fans keep asking for you and you keep ignoring.
VIDEO OVER!
Ugggggggh. Where do I begin?
First off, WHERE IS THE PROOF? A lot of what he said was just his own word, he didn’t provide any evidence. Well, some things he did. He happened to have the image of him as the 55th most subscribed user on YouTube, and his Tetris review having lots of views. But James’ so called demands, the contest being rigged, he provides no evidence of this and just expects us to swallow it.
And the whole time he tries to act like he’s the hero, like how people “saw the light” and began to question everything and oh my god it was so bad.
I find it strange that he cries about the “OutNerd the Nerd” contest being rigged, but his contests were no better. I mean, one kid won twice, because he was a major IG fan boy and was nice to his “mother”. And when Guru Larry confronted Bores about it, he gave a very rude reply. Nice guy huh?
Of course, he brings up crowd-funding. Does he not know the movie is real? Does he still think James took the money and ran? Because the movie is out there, on Vimeo, with a Blu-Ray/DVD release sometime soon. Why didn’t he bring this up? Oh right, because it would show he was wrong about everything.
And for a video about his career, one site was strangely absent. GotGame. Why no mentions of them? They gave you a ton of free shit. All those modern consoles and games, they handed to you on a silver platter. And you say nothing about them. Does GotGame mean anything to you now? Or are they just your golden ticket to E3 and more Skylanders coverage? If someone at GotGame ever reads this, drop him. He’s doing nothing for your site now. Why did you even pay for his blog? He never talks about video games.
By the way Chris, are you ever going to apologize for what you said about Justin “JewWario” Carmical? Or do you not understand that what you said was offensive?
Now, people are speculating that this is Chris’ final video, and I can understand why. Everything about it screams “I’m done with YouTube, peace out mofos”. Well, we’ll just have to wait and see. Eventually he might post something new that’s not fucking Skylanders. Maybe I’ll mock one of his new ghost videos, if it isn’t the most boring thing ever.
And that, my friends, is that. I’m going to go lie down now.
On October 2nd, Bores posted a video response to TheArchfiend, that in reality is Bores going over his “YouTube career”, and his “connection” with the Angry Video Game Nerd. It’s not a response at all.
Why did Bores choose now to talk about this? My guess, he’s not getting views anymore, so he’s reigniting old drama in the hopes of getting people to watch again. That’s not going to work if you’re just going to go back to more Skylanders vlogs and shit about ghosts.
When he posted the video, I had my reservations talking about it. But a lot of you requested I debunk it as there is a lot of bullshit shoveled forth.
I hope you have time to spare, this is going to be a LONG one.
0:00 - 1:26: Bores opens the video mentioning TheArchfiend’s video, and that it had “great points”. The video was actually Archfiend complaining that people are still hating his new friend and they need to leave him alone and to let him like Skylanders. He seemed to confuse “this is the fucking worst, plz die” with “Please go back to making retro reviews, I’m tired of the Skylanders videos”. Of course, Archfiend usually knows all the facts. Like how movies are the easiest thing to make and don’t require things like lighting, microphones, catering, make-up, equipment rental, renting land, building sets, temporary living space, people to operate all the equipment, actors, VFX work, and of course money to pay for all of this.
Chris claims he hasn’t done a video like this before because “he’s not good at riffing to the camera”. This is riffing? Well, maybe you should have scripted this, that way it wouldn’t be so long-winded and filled with “um uh um”.
1:27 - 4:40: He rewinds back to 2006 and “how it all started”. He mentions he was posting Haunted Investigators on YouTube, and that the views were “mediocre”. OBJECTION! There’s a contradiction here. Back in 2006, you were using your “Y2B2006” account, where you posted Mythbusters “parodies”, that awful “Back to the Past” short, and not actual episodes of Haunted Investigators. Rather, commercials for the DVDs you were trying to sell. You didn’t actually post an episode until 2007 (he made the video private) on your Irate Gamer channel, when you were actually getting views.
See unlike you Chris, I do research. It’s not hard to find this stuff out.
UPDATE (10/8/2014): And apparently I didn't do enough research... Seems he did post shorter Haunted Investigator videos on his Y2B2006. I just got evidence of this (see below). My mistake, I apologize. See, it's not hard to admit your mistakes Chris.
Anywho, he mentions “angry reviewing” and how he stumbled across it.
He mentions James and Armake21 (he finally realizes it’s pronounced Armake, not Armac), he subscribed to a lot of them, even e-mailed them. He never heard back but had hoped to one day collaborate with them (HA!)
UPDATE: (10/8/2014): Mike just sent me this picture of his Y2B2006 account back in August 23rd 2007.
Notice that he's subscribed to only two people. Himself, and James. Either he's lying about being subscribed to all the other reviewers, or for some reason he unsubscribed everyone else.
It also proves that he subscribed to his IG channel with a secondary account. As I mentioned below, I saw him leave comments with it. "Great Video!" he would say, pretending that he's someone else. Like a "sockpuppet". Hmmmmmmmmm.
He said he didn’t start right away because he “didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes” and do what everyone else was doing. That didn’t stop all the other people, and it still doesn’t stop other people from trying to be the next PewDiePie or Game Grumps.
No, his claim is that he knew it would lead to everything that happened over the next few years. Uh, no you didn’t. You say that now after all that’s happened, but I doubt you had the foresight to see all this.
He then goes on to say the “catalyst” for starting was a video someone posted where they asked James about all the “imitators” and other people doing angry reviews, and James responded that he was flattered. So this inspired Bores to do his own reviews. I’m not going to ask about the video as it’s likely loooong-gone.
4:41 - 5:50: Flash forward to March 2007, and he decides to do Back to the Future cause he always hated that game (uh huh). He calls the jokes corny and stupid, and he admits that he “borrowed” from other reviews because he “didn’t know what to do”. Well, if you always hated the game, surely you could have come up with some original material. Don’t try to claim “it’s my first time” as a reason to steal. This only makes it more obvious you were never a gamer.
He brings up that his circle of friends found it funny, he made more videos (Where’s Waldo, Goonies II), and that they barely got views. Say Chris, why aren’t these friends in your videos? Serious question, you really could benefit from more people in them.
5:51 - 8:36: Summer of the same year, GameTrailers had an “OutNerd the Nerd” competition. I tried looking this up and very little info is out there. A couple of the videos are still up on GameTrailers, and Derek “Happy Video Game Nerd” Alexander’s old site mentions it, but I can’t find something like an announcement page or video.
He says his few fans at the time told him to enter, and that someone from GameTrailers told him to enter (I doubt this, it’s likely just a person that had a forum account telling him to do it, not someone that actually worked with the company), and so every video from Summer 2007 was entered into this contest. They were? Cause looking at the videos, there’s zero mention of this contest. Unless he went back and removed that…but why mention that now and nowhere else? Like his biography, or the 200th video that’s pretty similar to this but waaaay shorter?
Basically, he uses this contest as an excuse for why his early videos were exactly like the AVGN’s. Well, maybe you should have put “OutNerd the Nerd contest” in them, and maybe you wouldn’t have gotten flack for it!
He claimed the people at GT told him he was going to win (again, likely just forum users, not actual staff)
Then he finds out the Happy Video Game Nerd won, and he was angry because he watched the video and “it was nothing like the Nerd”. It may have not been exact, but he did “outnerd” him, by bringing up more info, trivia, and just being a bigger “nerd”. Your videos were full of inaccurate info, likely the biggest reason you lost. Or the other likely reason is that you didn’t mark them as contest entries.
Then he claims that he heard the contest was rigged, and that James had a hand in it. WRONG! According to Mike Matei, GameTrailers did the contest without their consent and James didn’t even see the HVGN videos until after it ended. James had no hand in choosing the contests winners. They likely chose HVGN over you because his videos were better. Sure you had “flashy effects”, but his info was better, and he didn’t get things wrong.
Also, prove that he rigged it. Show us evidence. We live in a world where “pics or it didn’t happen” is becoming less of a joke.
“So he snuffed me” Just keep believing that Bores, I’m sure it will open so many doors.
8:36 - 11:05: After all that, he made more videos (Mario 2, MUSCLE) and… hold on. *looks at dates* According to Derek’s old site, he posted the MetalStorm video on August 29th. The Mario 2 and MUSCLE videos were posted before that. Man, I really wish I could find more info about this contest… like the dates and all that. http://lophatjello.com/history/
UPDATE (10/7/2014): Mike managed to find out the OutNerd the Nerd contest began in August 2007. The first IG video to come out that month was... Super Mario Bros. 2
That means he still made his Back to the Future, Where's Waldo, Goonies II, Mission Impossbile, Ghosts n Goblins, Jaws, and Temple of Doom reviews, with the full intention of being "serious", not being part of a contest, and full of material taken from other sources. Chris, the number of holes in your story keeps growing.
Anywho, his Mario 2 video got featured which meant front page coverage, side-bar coverage, etc.
But then he brings up the “pecking order” of reviewers at the time. How James was at the top, then Armake21 was after that, and the huge gap between them. Then he just keeps listing old reviewers like “Fat Man Cometh” (UrinatingTree), jedite1, SlyDogStudios, AkewsticRockr, he even mentions Spoony (who still does videos). Jeez, no wonder Bores believes there’s “not many of us left”, if these are the reviewers he asked to be in his stupid cheering scene. Learn about new ones!
“Anyway, I ended up getting featured” What was the point of the pecking order shit?! I swear, this video would be 20 minutes long if it wasn’t for the padding!
11:05 - 15:30: It all happened overnight, his inbox was full, the views skyrocketed, his sub count shot up to 11k, making him the “second most popular reviewer on YouTube”. Something he couldn’t sustain for a number of reasons.
Other reviewers watched his stuff, wondered who he was, where he came from… seriously it’s taking so long to get to the point.
The other reviewers were accusing of him lifting material, and he says “Of course I was, I only had 200 subscribers”. That’s not a fucking excuse! Also, if you didn’t want heat, you should have marked your videos as part of a contest. But you didn’t.
He also adds “I wasn’t taking this seriously”. Bullcrap, if you weren’t taking it seriously then you wouldn’t put so many pointless effects in. You wouldn’t have said in your Temple of Doom review that you put your “blood, sweat, and tears” into the “angel & devil” effect. If you weren’t taking it seriously, you would have said so a LOOOONG time ago.
At one point, he mentions “doing it for my friends“ again. I really have a hard time believing that considering he made a DVD 7 months into his “career”. Who does that?
He goes on and on about the hate he got, how the other reviewers made videos trashing him, and their followers were trashing him. There’s quite a few reasons for that Chris. You were trashing good games, acted like Mario 2 being a reskinned game was a big secret, clearly didn’t know what you were talking about, and of course that whole lifting material from others. But really, that last one isn’t the point of my blog, contrary to what some believe.
Anyway, he was public enemy #1, he was the villain, people wanted his blood, blah blah blah.
He asked himself what he should do, then brings up that he took psychology in college (the same one you dropped out of?) and felt the best course of action was to say “nothing”. Yeaaaah nooooo, that was probably the worst course of action Chris. Had you addressed the hate, that is, the people that called you a rip-off, then maybe things would have been better. Made a pledge to be more original. But you never did that, and that’s why the hate persisted.
15:31 - 18:00: Despite the hate, he decided to continue making videos and tells us we would do the same, and we would be lying if we didn’t. Or again, you could have addressed the issues people had. Sure there was hate (Silent Rob), but I’m sure people had legit criticism for you.
The MUSCLE review came out, it also got featured, people got pissed and started spreading “rumors” and “lies” (sure…) and that Bores was making sock-puppet accounts. He denies this saying he never had the time to make all these accounts. Well, you made some, like iratefanboy345, and a lot of old (likely dead) accounts that 5-starred only your videos, I’ve seen you comment with your Y2B2006 account. I’m not saying that all your subs were sock puppets, but you still partook in that.
He also brings up his mom. Chris, we know that’s you! The evidence is everywhere! “She” writes like you do, “she” disappears when you go to E3 or some other event, and of course you have the same IP address. Unless you live with her (which you deny) or she takes control of your account (which would just be sad), then it’s pretty obvious that it’s you posing as your mom. By the way, the damage “she” did to your reputation was staggering. Don’t pretend “she” helped.
Bores also brings up Eric Allen, which I can understand. Back then he was a venomous IG fan boy that went around arguing for him. He’s calmed down now and has been willing to talk to IG’s critics.
EDIT: Credit to lasersquad for exposing IG and LadyBuggin having the same IP address. My apologies for not doing this earlier.
18:01 - 21:30: At this point, only one person’s opinion of him mattered, and that was James Rolfe. Oh dear, we’re at this point.
Bores sent an e-mail to James, apologizing for “copying”, saying he didn’t mean to (that’s not what you said earlier), and some other stuff. He then claims that James replied, saying that he had “demands”. … This is new.
Apparently the “demand” was that Bores acknowledge James was his inspiration. That’s easy, why did Bores have a problem with this? He makes it sound like he wanted him to lick his boots, but this is simple. Also, do you have proof of this? Like the e-mail in question? Cause you’re making a lot of accusations without backing them up.
According to Mike, James never gave any demands. Again Chris, proof or get out.
Then, Bores brings up that his e-mail was posted online, because “he didn’t write back”.
That. Is. Wrong. Here’s what really happened (thanks to Mike Matei for informing me).
Bores wrote the e-mail to James, that much is true. The e-mail said “I will stop copying you”, and they left it at that. A week or so after, Bores posted his TMNT video, which was full of material lifted from the AVGN’s video. James learned about this, and forwarded the e-mail to Mike. Angered, he posted the e-mail online, showing that Bores LIED to them. People don’t like being lied to, that’s why the e-mail was posted.
What Bores is doing is trying to play the victim, something narcissists do when they have no real argument.
He’s also blaming James for this. I thought he knew it was Mike that posted the letter. I recall a fan boy that messaged him about it, and he said “that asshole Mike posted my e-mail”. It’s like this video is going out of its way to discredit James as much as possible.
And then he goes on about how he lost respect and wouldn't watch his videos or talk about him. Again, you copied him when you told him you wouldn’t. This was all your fault. Don’t deflect the blame.
He continues whining about how people still hated him, and that people accused him of doing it for the money. He quickly pauses to mention he “hasn’t heard that since James did the Kickstarter”. Really now? Let me change that. YOU STILL DO IT FOR THE MONEY! You’re constantly whining about views, that you won’t do retro games anymore because views are low, and that you only do Skylanders because they give you views. That’s something people doing it for the money would say! Not to mention your low quality DVDs. You left POWER RANGERS FOOTAGE on your last one because you wanted a quick buck. How many episodes does the History of Video Games DVD have? 5? Fuck off with that, you’re clearly in it for the cash!
More whining… he brings up that he’s a religious person. I’m pretty sure all religions tell you that lying is a sin. In fact you don’t need to be religious to know lying is awful. Did you bring that up in an attempt to garner sympathy?
21:31 - 25:25: He claims he understands the hate, that people might have seen him as a threat or something. I’m so bored.
He then mentions his next review was Tetris. Wait, you’re skipping some. You forgot to mention TMNT (gee, I wonder why), Yo! Noid, and Zombies Ate My Neighbors. No drama for these? Nothing on how you criticized an excellent game like ZAMN because “wah it’s too hard”? People really should have noticed back then that you didn’t know a damn thing about games.
Anyway, the Tetris review got a ton of views (probably because of it’s click-bait title, using the word “scandal”), and at one point Bores was the 55th most subscriber user on the site. I love that he still holds on to that one accomplishment to this day. He doesn’t seem to get that people don’t care now. “You were 55th at one point? What are you now? 7135?! Forget you, I’m going to find someone that actually matters now.”
More about hate, plugging Archfiend’s video again, he brings up the time James was asked about IG and he said “he doesn’t acknowledge me, I’m not going to acknowledge him” and cries about how he was such a dick. AGAIN! Mike (not James) posted the letter because YOU LIED!
He keeps blaming James for the letter, and asks “What do you want me to do, keep kissing his butt?” No, we wanted you to be honest, and acknowledge him you dumbass. I swear…
Then out of nowhere, he brings up PewDiePie. What? Yeah, apparently he questions why people didn’t accuse James of being a PewDiePie rip-off when he started doing Let’s Play videos. Oh wow this argument is beyond flimsy. First of all, PewDiePie’s first LP was posted December 2010 (some Minecraft thing). As Mike pointed out to me, this video of the two of them playing the Magnavox Odyssey (http://cinemassacre.com/2009/04/27/playing-odyssey/) was posted April 2009. Second, PewDiePie is soooooo not the first Let’s Player. A lot of people predate him. Slowbeef, ProtonJon, chuggaaconroy, ChipCheezum, and sooo many others. You probably only know PewDiePie because he’s popular and you never leave your bubble, thus you never learned that Let’s Plays have been a thing for years. Third, people don’t give them shit for doing Let’s Plays because they have their own “style” of LP. They just casually play the game, and talk about it, or about other stuff. It’s all about how entertaining the commentary is. Whether you like it or not that’s up to you.
Chris, realize that what you did back then was steal without claiming to be parody. You’re claiming parody these days, but only after years of being called a thief. This is not the same thing.
25:26 - 27:32: He then claims that he started noticing “issues” with James, “chinks in his armor”. I thought you said you didn’t watch him? You’re changing your story in the same video. Hello?
He claims that his “haters” began to “see the light”. Oh fuck off with that.
He claims they noticed “things weren’t adding up” and they saw the side of him that Bores saw years ago. … You’re talking about Mike right? Because James didn’t do anything… besides the one comment about acknowledgement. I know people have issues with Mike, is that who you’re talking about?
He then starts talking about his Mario Bros 2 review. He claims James watched it (prove it…), and then “shortly after”, James released his Mario Bros 3 review. If by shortly you mean eight months…
He claims there are “similarities”. … No. What are you talking about?
His accusation is that both are set-up like “half-documentary/half review” and both have a satanic theme. That is a bigger stretch than Dhalsim and Monkey D. Luffy at a stretchy-guys convention. First off, “half-documentary/half-review”. The Nerd’s review really wasn’t like a documentary, he was just talking about how The Wizard was an important part of any Nintendo kid’s childhood, and how it introduced the world to Super Mario Bros. 3. Your idea of a documentary was “SCANDAL! MARIO 2 ISN’T MARIO 2! LOOK AT THIS SHOCKING EVIDENCE!” even though by 2007, most people half-versed in gaming history know this! Second, the satanic theme? Well, the Nerd review said that Super Mario Bros 3 was so good it’s a sin, and jokingly pointed out Satanic images and symbolism (often going to crazy lengths like 8/5/12/12 = Hell ). All this leading to a fight with the Devil at the end. Your so-called “Satanic theme”, was putting the Devil at the end because you killed your evil twin, and thus he went to Hell. Only a tinfoil hat wearing, Alex Jones listening DUMBASS would say these two videos are similar. Other than they both involve Mario. You’re trying way too fucking hard to discredit him.
Actually, it’s not the first time he said this. He believed this way back in 2010: http://irategamersucks.blogspot.com/2010/08/bores-hits-new-low-attempts-to-own.html Good lord, this makes even less sense now.
He claims that if he did his Mario 2 review afterwards, he would have been ‘drug through the mud”. You sure? Cause I think people would bash you because your video was full of inaccurate info, like saying Toad was useless. Again, the Mario 2 video had waaay more problems than any possible plagiarism (“perfect predecessor to the first Mario”)
He brings up that he used to announce games he would review. Saying he announced Silver Surfer, and James reviewed it a month later. Wait what? That’s not how it happened. You announced Silver Surfer and Superman reviews in 2008 (Third Rate Gamer mocked this in his Battletoads video from 2008). The Nerd’s Silver Surfer review was released in 2007! Sure, it was posted to YouTube in 2008, but you’re ignoring that he used to be exclusive to GameTrailers and that videos would be there for a year before going on YouTube.
In fact, I checked the Wayback Machine. Here’s what I found from October 2008: http://web.archive.org/web/20081007023041/http://www.theirategamer.com/reviews.htm “Awaiting the Chopping Block: Silver Surfer/Superman” In fact, I recall that people gave you shit for this because the Nerd already covered these games. So you’re distorting history saying that James reviewed it after you announced this?
Oh and he mentions Superman (and Superman 64). He did that back in July 2008, before you announced it! Distorting history again. Also, you never said Superman 64.
He claims that he had to stop posting what his next reviews were because “James would beat him to the punch” That is such a fucking lie. You stopped because people were giving you crap for doing something James already did! He didn’t purposely sabotage you, you were just late.
27:32 - 30:20: He now decides to address the “R.O.B. the robot controversy”
The controversy in question involve the ending of the Nerd’s NES Accessories review, where he said he’ll eventually review R.O.B. (took three years, but he did get to it), and then “a couple days later” (it was actually a couple weeks, I checked the dates), Bores released his review of R.O.B. He still says he wasn’t watching him at this point.
“How can I put a review like this together in 3 or 4 days” Again, it was two weeks, and two weeks is possible.
“It took me a good month to put this together” Wait a month? In your trailer, you said TWO months. Either you were lying back then, you’re lying now, or you really don’t know how time works.
Or it was two months, as his second bit of evidence is that he put a clip of him choking R.O.B. in the intro of one his previous reviews. Who the hell was supposed to pay attention to that? For all we know, that was just a “fun bit”. Like that clip of you next to Doc Louis from Punch-Out, that was never in an episode. Or the clip where you parody James Bond, that was never in an episode. Or the clip of the Nerd putting a Neo-Geo cartridge on a scale, that was never in an episode. If this was your evidence at a trial, you’d be laughed out of the courtroom by the judge and jury.
To humor him, I checked the previous videos. It was in the Q*bert review, but it went by so quickly that I’m not surprised nobody noticed.
He goes on about how people didn’t care, they hated just to hate, and people still do that today. Hi Chris! And no, I don’t hate just to hate, I provide evidence. I’ve even been nice, I praised you for making a separate channel for your Skylanders habit. But then you snuffed that out by abandoning the channel in less than a month! Maybe you should look into yourself Chris.
“Let’s just discredit him anyway we can was the mindset back then whether it was true or not” Oh the irony. You just tried to discredit James multiple times without offering proof. And you’re calling your “haters” out for doing the same?
He then brings up the Odyssey. Uh oh…
He mentions how he foreshadowed it at the end, and then claims that “James got to it before I did”. … You’re distorting history again.
The Nerd’s Odyssey review came out April 21st 2009. You released the trailer for History of Video Games May 5th 2009. Once again, two weeks. I even remember in the comments, someone said to you that the Nerd just reviewed the Odyssey (and I understand why they brought that up, first console, history of video games), and you responded with “Did he? I didn’t know, I don’t watch him”. You released part 1 where you foreshadowed the Odyssey on May 8th. You didn’t “review” the Odyssey until October 2nd 2009.
The way he’s phrasing all this, he makes it sound like he released part 1, foreshadowed the Odyssey, and then James released his video afterwards. Again, that’s not how it happened. Anyone can check the timestamps.
For some reason, he claims this isn’t what James normally reviews. Uh, actually it was perfectly in line with what he talks about. He doesn’t just talk about Nintendo and Atari games, he looks at obscure consoles too. Sega CD, Sega 32x, Intellivision and Colecovision, Phillips CD-I, it was completely in line with what he does. You just didn’t know because as you claimed, you don’t watch him.
30:21 - 34:30: Nine more minutes….
He suddenly brings up Asalieri and TheArchfiend claiming they too found something wrong. … You know, I saw reactions to this video on /v/, and people that made it to this point immediately discredited it just because he plugged Asa. That is how toxic his name is.
Also, I’m surprised you’re so forgiving of TheArchfiend Bores. After all, he sabotaged your radio interview. You remember, with the Uncensored Net Noise, they called you a hack, compared you to Gallagher and Carrot Top, all because TheArchfiend told them about you? In fact, he did more sabotage to you than James had ever done. And yet you’ll forgive him? Is this really the company you want to be associated with?
Of course, he mentions those because it’s onto the “Kickstarter is the devil” portion! For the record, he used IndieGoGo, it’s a different site overall.
“Making all this money, why did he need a Kickstarter for a movie” As I sarcastically mentioned above, movies are expensive. They require all kinds of people to work on them, and people usually like to get paid for their work. Not to mention sets, locations, equipment, again movie-making is not cheap. Remind me, how much did you spend on Pursuit of the Paranormal? Didn’t you say you emptied your bank account trying to get it on TV?
“I don’t fault him for using Kickstarter” If you don’t fault him, why did you make the “spoof” video? Okay, that was two years ago, maybe he finally realized crowd-funding has benefits.
And apparently that’s kind of true now, as he mentions the Reading Rainbow Kickstarter and believes “education comes first” or something. So you only care for Kickstarter if it’s for educational purposes? Then why did you write up two articles about Mighty No. 9 on your site? That’s not an educational game.
Oh my god he mentions the Cheetaman II Kickstarter. James got nothing from that! Neither did Pat the NES Punk or the Game Chasers! They did the video because they were asked to! But people prefer to ignore that because rabble rabble rabble…
Apparently to Bores, he thought James was bragging. … How? I didn’t see that at all.
And that “bragging” was the whole point of his “e-begging spoof” as that’s “exactly what he did”. Do YOU feel that way, or are you just aping what TheArchfiend told you? Because I recall him crying about James “bragging”.
“I don’t hate the guy” … But… *sighs* Moving on.
And he just keeps going on about how people were “second-guessing” or “seeing the light” or whatever.
He claims people were asking if “this really happened”. Can you prove this?! Because unless you prove all this, it sounds like another made up story. Show us the e-mails!
Blah blah blah blah, YouTube has changed, angry reviewing isn’t a thing anymore, people would rather watch “celebrities”. What celebrities? Do you mean PewDiePie? Do you not notice how HUGE gaming is on YouTube now? You could have evolved with the times like James did, but you refused to, you stayed in the same rut, and your new content of “talking about Skylanders” isn’t winning new viewers.
He mentions Asa and Archfiend, and he’s glad they “mellowed out”. Asa, mellowed out? If stalking is your idea of mellow, then I don’t want to know what you think “angry” is.
“If you still think I’m a douche, it is what it is. If you still want to hate me, go for it.” Okay. … As long as you keep making videos.
And so into the last five minutes:
He claims he’s “content” with what he does now, bringing up Skylanders (ugggh) and ghost stuff that will be posted in October (the perfect alternative to Ambien), and that he “does the channel for himself”. So you don’t care about your fans? Called it!
He mentions History of Video Games, saying it’s been shot but he needs to edit it. Why are you still trying that?
As well as I Rate the 80s.
He says his problem is the lack of time, and how YouTube has changed. … Maybe you should take some time to research the current trends. Start doing Let’s Plays. “But my job” You teach people how to hunt for something that’s not real! Playing video games for the internet is a better use of time than that!
More crying about how he doesn’t get views these days. Again, you claim you’re not doing it for the money?
He also brings up how he works with the community and does charity. Why bring this up? More sympathy?
He keeps going and going about how he learned so much, how he went to E3, formed relationships with Activison, Sega and Nintendo (only one of these matters considering they seem to be sending him free garbage), learned to do interviews (they’re still terrible)…
“I don’t hate James, I never hated James” But but but… but…. You just.. Nearly 40 minutes… ugggggh the video is just about over.
He once again goes over his point, that James “screwed him over”, deflecting the blame away from him.
“There’s stuff I can’t remember right now where people are all *weird sounds*” Let’s see, all your research errors, your poorly-written reviews, the fact that your modern “reviews” are only from an hour of playing, the stolen footage on your DVDs, that god-awful abortion of a story arc, oh and what you said about Justin Carmical. I’ll get to that in a bit.
“I apologize if I offended anyone, but it’s YouTube. It’s not the movies or TV, it’s YouTube. Get over it”. You can’t say that in 2014, when internet entertainment is starting to take over. Netflix originals, YouTube talent is starting to get noticed more often, this isn’t 2008 anymore. If you do something terrible, people will still call you out, no matter what medium. TV does get misinterpreted too (complaints about the last two episodes of Doctor Who being racist and pro-life…)
Blah blah blah he thanks the fans, they watched him “grow up” and he wants nothing more than to entertain. No, it’s still clear you only want money. If you wanted to entertain, you would still be doing retro reviews. The thing that fans keep asking for you and you keep ignoring.
VIDEO OVER!
Ugggggggh. Where do I begin?
First off, WHERE IS THE PROOF? A lot of what he said was just his own word, he didn’t provide any evidence. Well, some things he did. He happened to have the image of him as the 55th most subscribed user on YouTube, and his Tetris review having lots of views. But James’ so called demands, the contest being rigged, he provides no evidence of this and just expects us to swallow it.
And the whole time he tries to act like he’s the hero, like how people “saw the light” and began to question everything and oh my god it was so bad.
I find it strange that he cries about the “OutNerd the Nerd” contest being rigged, but his contests were no better. I mean, one kid won twice, because he was a major IG fan boy and was nice to his “mother”. And when Guru Larry confronted Bores about it, he gave a very rude reply. Nice guy huh?
Of course, he brings up crowd-funding. Does he not know the movie is real? Does he still think James took the money and ran? Because the movie is out there, on Vimeo, with a Blu-Ray/DVD release sometime soon. Why didn’t he bring this up? Oh right, because it would show he was wrong about everything.
And for a video about his career, one site was strangely absent. GotGame. Why no mentions of them? They gave you a ton of free shit. All those modern consoles and games, they handed to you on a silver platter. And you say nothing about them. Does GotGame mean anything to you now? Or are they just your golden ticket to E3 and more Skylanders coverage? If someone at GotGame ever reads this, drop him. He’s doing nothing for your site now. Why did you even pay for his blog? He never talks about video games.
By the way Chris, are you ever going to apologize for what you said about Justin “JewWario” Carmical? Or do you not understand that what you said was offensive?
Now, people are speculating that this is Chris’ final video, and I can understand why. Everything about it screams “I’m done with YouTube, peace out mofos”. Well, we’ll just have to wait and see. Eventually he might post something new that’s not fucking Skylanders. Maybe I’ll mock one of his new ghost videos, if it isn’t the most boring thing ever.
And that, my friends, is that. I’m going to go lie down now.
Thursday, October 2, 2014
Bores "Opens Up" After Eight Years
*sighs* I'm not sure how to start this post. This really came out of nowhere.
On October 2nd, 2014 (for posterity's sake), Chris Bores posted a 39 minute video detailing his "career" on YouTube. In reality, it's a whiny petty rant on how James Rolfe is the worst person ever, and how all the "other guys" are jealous of him and losers, and how he believes James was out to sabotage him.
It's a long video, and detailing it all would take too much time and energy that I no longer have.
In fact, it proves everything I've been saying is true. Bores paints himself as a petty douchebag that despite his claim of having grown up, he clearly won't let go of certain things.
He even admits at the end that he only makes videos for himself now. Basically giving a giant middle finger to his remaining fans.
Honestly... what's left for me to say?
EDIT: After taking some time to breathe, relax, and hearing quite a few requests, I will do a post about the video. Eventually. It's a big video, and it's wall-to-wall bullshit. It's not going to get done in a couple hours.
On October 2nd, 2014 (for posterity's sake), Chris Bores posted a 39 minute video detailing his "career" on YouTube. In reality, it's a whiny petty rant on how James Rolfe is the worst person ever, and how all the "other guys" are jealous of him and losers, and how he believes James was out to sabotage him.
It's a long video, and detailing it all would take too much time and energy that I no longer have.
In fact, it proves everything I've been saying is true. Bores paints himself as a petty douchebag that despite his claim of having grown up, he clearly won't let go of certain things.
He even admits at the end that he only makes videos for himself now. Basically giving a giant middle finger to his remaining fans.
Honestly... what's left for me to say?
EDIT: After taking some time to breathe, relax, and hearing quite a few requests, I will do a post about the video. Eventually. It's a big video, and it's wall-to-wall bullshit. It's not going to get done in a couple hours.
Monday, September 22, 2014
Bringing Dull Blog Posts to Dull Videos
*gets message that Bores posted a new video*
I don't care about the deluge of Skylanders crap he keeps putting o- It's not Skylanders?!
*goes to check*
... Oh.
For those that don't follow IG's blog (and I do not blame you if you don't), sometimes Bores would review art books. Usually video game related like Titanfall, Watch_Dogs and Thief 2014. And yet he wouldn't even bother to actually play these games. Hmmmm.
Well, he decided to review an art book on video, as he felt "this was too good to simply make a blog post about".
The art in question is the work of the late John Alvin, an artist specializing in movie posters. Blazing Saddles, E.T. Batman Returns, Blade Runner, plenty of Disney movies, etc etc. You have more than likely seen his work.
The video itself is just boring. It's Bores going on about how pretty the pictures are, at one point mentioning he hasn't even read the text (then why are you reviewing it?). There's jump cuts so this isn't just "one take", but it's clearly unscripted.
He mentions his "work" of ghost hunting as the reason why he hasn't been posting videos. I feel like I've said enough about that for the moment (I'll probably say more when he posts that shit next month).
Is this really the content you want your fans to see Bores? What little fans you have left that is? Boring videos talking about picture books? I can see another wave of people unsubscribing from this.
I don't care about the deluge of Skylanders crap he keeps putting o- It's not Skylanders?!
*goes to check*
... Oh.
For those that don't follow IG's blog (and I do not blame you if you don't), sometimes Bores would review art books. Usually video game related like Titanfall, Watch_Dogs and Thief 2014. And yet he wouldn't even bother to actually play these games. Hmmmm.
Well, he decided to review an art book on video, as he felt "this was too good to simply make a blog post about".
The art in question is the work of the late John Alvin, an artist specializing in movie posters. Blazing Saddles, E.T. Batman Returns, Blade Runner, plenty of Disney movies, etc etc. You have more than likely seen his work.
The video itself is just boring. It's Bores going on about how pretty the pictures are, at one point mentioning he hasn't even read the text (then why are you reviewing it?). There's jump cuts so this isn't just "one take", but it's clearly unscripted.
He mentions his "work" of ghost hunting as the reason why he hasn't been posting videos. I feel like I've said enough about that for the moment (I'll probably say more when he posts that shit next month).
Is this really the content you want your fans to see Bores? What little fans you have left that is? Boring videos talking about picture books? I can see another wave of people unsubscribing from this.
Wednesday, September 10, 2014
GHOSTS. ARE NOT. REAL!
As you've likely noticed, Bores has not posted anything of substance in a while. Last two videos were Skylanders related and they were the same vlog crap he's been doing for a while now.
So what has he been doing? Well, my Facebook informant has noticed he's been talking about ghosts a lot. Constantly pushing his new "Pursuit of the Paranormal" fan page (and yet he didn't bother to make one for the Irate Gamer... shows where his priorities truly lie). He's been mentioning "something huge" for Halloween. Considering how his past "successes" were nothing more than blinking lights, I can't imagine this will be much different.
Well, Bores posted a newspaper with an article about what he does for a living. Yeah, we finally figured out his job outside of YouTube. He provides lectures on how to hunt ghosts at a Toledo-based art center. .......................................... Oh wow. (http://issuu.com/toledofreepress/docs/tfp_090714/1?e=1807196/9203184 Article on Page 17 and 18)
Look Chris, if you worked in an office, or in retail, or a restaurant, or even a factory, I would have just said "alright" and moved on, understanding why you don't make videos often. But the fact that your job, the way you make a living, is to teach people how to find something that isn't even fucking real. You are soooo not off the hook. If anything, this just gives people more fuel.
I know there are quite a few people that complain that producing online reviews "isn't a real job". It's far more real than this, online reviews are something tangible, something with substance. They're a far better use of time and money than lecturing people on how to hunt something that's not real!
And what gets me is another comment he made the other day, saying how other panelists at this convention he was at were never giving straight answers and he was giving nothing but facts. What facts? The ones from your ass? You were at a convention with psychics and similar new-age bullshit people. Nothing said there was "factual", don't try to make yourself sound superior.
It's just like the time he called into the Coast to Coast radio show while they had another paranormal person on and tried to give his own opinion on ghosts, with the guest answering his question, but then he went to Facebook and tried to claim how "my evidence disproves his evidence" and that they muted and hung up on him. It sounded like he wanted to use the show as a platform for what he thinks but they "didn't allow him". Hear what really happened here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEmyawwLN60
Is this really what you truly want Chris? Trying to teach people something that won't help them? Your video game reviews sucked, but they were something. Had you not burned every possible bridge out there, maybe you wouldn't be trying to teach people bullcrap, or only making stupid vlogs about Skylanders.
You think we'll get anything of substance for the rest of the year?
So what has he been doing? Well, my Facebook informant has noticed he's been talking about ghosts a lot. Constantly pushing his new "Pursuit of the Paranormal" fan page (and yet he didn't bother to make one for the Irate Gamer... shows where his priorities truly lie). He's been mentioning "something huge" for Halloween. Considering how his past "successes" were nothing more than blinking lights, I can't imagine this will be much different.
Well, Bores posted a newspaper with an article about what he does for a living. Yeah, we finally figured out his job outside of YouTube. He provides lectures on how to hunt ghosts at a Toledo-based art center. .......................................... Oh wow. (http://issuu.com/toledofreepress/docs/tfp_090714/1?e=1807196/9203184 Article on Page 17 and 18)
Look Chris, if you worked in an office, or in retail, or a restaurant, or even a factory, I would have just said "alright" and moved on, understanding why you don't make videos often. But the fact that your job, the way you make a living, is to teach people how to find something that isn't even fucking real. You are soooo not off the hook. If anything, this just gives people more fuel.
I know there are quite a few people that complain that producing online reviews "isn't a real job". It's far more real than this, online reviews are something tangible, something with substance. They're a far better use of time and money than lecturing people on how to hunt something that's not real!
And what gets me is another comment he made the other day, saying how other panelists at this convention he was at were never giving straight answers and he was giving nothing but facts. What facts? The ones from your ass? You were at a convention with psychics and similar new-age bullshit people. Nothing said there was "factual", don't try to make yourself sound superior.
It's just like the time he called into the Coast to Coast radio show while they had another paranormal person on and tried to give his own opinion on ghosts, with the guest answering his question, but then he went to Facebook and tried to claim how "my evidence disproves his evidence" and that they muted and hung up on him. It sounded like he wanted to use the show as a platform for what he thinks but they "didn't allow him". Hear what really happened here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEmyawwLN60
Is this really what you truly want Chris? Trying to teach people something that won't help them? Your video game reviews sucked, but they were something. Had you not burned every possible bridge out there, maybe you wouldn't be trying to teach people bullcrap, or only making stupid vlogs about Skylanders.
You think we'll get anything of substance for the rest of the year?
Monday, September 1, 2014
An Irate Game Theory by Brandon Brown
Hey everybody. Since Bores is drilling himself deeper into the Skylanders hole with no intention to get out, the blog has been sparse.
So a reader offered to contribute content, his own theory on what the Irate Gamer is.
After this line, read Brandon's theory. Enjoy.
Just What is Up With the Irate Gamer Anyway?
Hello there, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Brandon Brown. It might not mean much right now, but let it be known for the record. Now, the following exposition assumes that you're vaguely familiar with the Irate Gamer's work at best (unless, of course, you're reading this from the blog; in which case, the majority of it will be preaching to the choir.) If you're not, you will be by the end of this.
Started in 2007 by Chris Bores, the Irate Gamer became one of the better known reviewers of the first game reviewing boom that occurred in the infancy of YouTube. Though his show was one of the more successful ones to come out of this lucrative time, it was also, quite possibly, the most universally reviled of all. The reasons for this ranging from, what many viewers perceived to be, a lack of substance suffocated with gratuitous special effects, intellectually dishonest representations of many beloved games, sub-par writing, acting, and direction, and even plagiarism from the works of other reviewers, most notably the Angry Video Game Nerd. However, the past transgressions of Mr. Bores will not be the main focus of this exposition, but will be cited at certain times to give backing to the assertions to which they apply.
Let's begin with the very character of the Irate Gamer himself. If there's one thing Mr. Bores has done right by the character, it's that he consistently gets mad about some of the details of each game that he reviews. Unfortunately, that's one of the only things about the Irate Gamer that is consistent. For example, he gets mad at Contra for being difficult, but then gets mad at Power Rangers on the Sega Genesis for being easy. On top of that, he's very inconsistent with how he treats his friends. In the MUSCLE review, he makes his friend Tony welcome to be a part of the review and even values his opinion of the game. In the review of Power Rangers on the Super Nintendo, however, he throws him out after making a simple observation. What's worse than this is the Irate Gamer's tendency to frequently dabble in a bit of the old ultra-violence. This can be seen not only in the ways that he destroys many of the games he reviews, which would be extremely gruesome if recreated on humans, but also in the ways that he just plays the games. Like in the Goonies 2 episode where the Irate Gamer repeatedly strikes an elderly woman in the game with a hammer, and takes pleasure in needlessly causing her pain.
Not only does he dabble in that, but also in the occasional killing of other characters. Unlike the Angry Video Game Nerd's violent encounters with Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, and even Bugs Bunny, where his killings are more justified as his life appears to be in grave danger as a result of their actions, most of the Irate Gamer's homicidal incidents are either caused by an annoyance or, in the case of R.O.B. The Robot, his abusive nature.
A truly odd phenomenon you might pick up on as you watch the Irate Gamer Show is that most of victims who are killed off in this fashion tend to reappear alive in a later episode. Though an average viewer could chalk this up to one of the many discontinuities that Bores' flawed writing lets slide, I believe that it's possible that they are apparitions formed by the Irate Gamer's conscience, the voices of his victims resonating with the hope that he will reflect on the consequences of his actions. Their cries fall on deaf ears, as the Irate Gamer doesn't pay them the attention that the reappearance of a previously killed off character should reasonably be getting or even show remorse for any of his actions, and since their deaths don't have any major impact whatsoever as far as the narrative is concerned, it's almost as if he wants the viewer not to think about it either.
This isn't to say that he has only shed the blood of innocents in his 7-year run. The most justifiable is found in the Predator episode. While it's questionable as to why the Predator appears in the way that he does, it's unmistakable that he wants to kill the Irate Gamer. In spite of the Predator's uncharacteristic weakness, the Irate Gamer overpowers and kills him, and he never reappears in the later episodes. If you've seen the Season 4 story arc, you might be wondering why I've omitted the Odyssey clones, namely the giant one, but I'll explain that later.
As deplorable or occasionally understandable each killing is, none of them is surpassed by his actions in the conclusion of his ET episodes. Following a highly improbable escape from the FBI, and the subsequent “reviews” which, for no explained reason, required him to return to the place that they were at in order to be completed, the Irate Gamer puts all of the ET games into a box with what is supposed to be an explosive device. The box is then retrieved by what we can assume are the aliens that brought ET home in the film. The Irate Gamer seems satisfied to have made the reunion possible. This is until he reflects on all of the displeasure that the games caused him over the past two episodes. Without any hesitation, he triggers the explosives, destroying the alien spacecraft in the process.
Any person who knows their history and/or keeps track of world events can reasonably infer that an attack on a vessel, military or civilian, is usually elevated to a global crisis soon after it occurs. By extension, an attack on an extraterrestrial vessel, could quite possibly spur a conflict of interstellar proportions. A conflict that could lead to an all-out war against humanity, one that could bring its extinction well into the realm of possibility, all because of one ultra-violent video game reviewer's petty annoyance with some poorly made games. Nevertheless, it won't matter because no matter how much trouble his weakness in the forebrain will cause him to get into, his most ideal scenario will always play out in the end. It's mainly because of Bores' anemic writing that all of the Irate Gamer's conflicts are ultimately rendered pointless and cheap, as he never really has to grow or overcome anything because something will always happen, whether logic permits or not, that will solve his problems for him. The ultimate casualties are the missed opportunities for interesting and satisfying stories, such as an interstellar war that could have been rich in science fiction themes; but even if Bores were to do such a thing now, it would seem like quite the afterthought given how far removed the subsequent episodes are from the idea.
Now, it would be wise for me to get off the subject of killing before it becomes cancerous and corrupts the bigger theory ahead, so I'll now turn to the Evil Gamer for the time being. The Evil Gamer first appeared in the Super Mario Bros. 2 episode, and despite his namesake, he began as a relatively mild character who looked exactly like the Irate Gamer. Despite having less than a minute of screen time before hand, he attempts to violently takeover the Irate Gamer's show, but fails and gets killed by the Irate Gamer (trust me, we're past the whole killing thing... for now). He spends a considerable amount of time plotting against the Irate Gamer in Hell, yet this can only be assumed since none of the planning is shown or explained until it has been executed, and he eventually ends up roaming the Earth once more. The Monster Party episode begins with him explaining that he was the mastermind of certain attempts on the Irate Gamer's life, and that he is going to put his ultimate scheme to get rid of the Irate Gamer into motion very soon. Predictably, it ends in failure. It's also notable that the Evil Gamer's appearance changes to, based on Bores' Back to the Past video, what is assumed to be the way Bores looked in his younger years.
The Season 4 story arc has the Evil Gamer demoted to being a simple minion of the Shadow Overlord (clever name, by the way, Bores). It's in the 7-Up Spot episode that we see Evil Gamer making an attempt to steal the Irate Gamer's Magnavox Odyssey so that the Shadow Overlord can make an army of robots based on the computer HAL that the Irate Gamer fought against during the History of Video Games series. After finally accomplishing something, the Evil Gamer, along with the original HAL who has been given a body and the name RED (which stands for, get this, Robotic Electromat[sic] Device. Pure genius), gives orders to the army of Odyssey clones to start a war.
Irate Gamer responds by sending ROB the Robot, who, despite being completely disintegrated in the conclusion of the eponymous episode, has been repaired and reprogrammed to be one of the “good guys” (Again, I'll be explaining this at the end, which is near), out to fight the clones. Seven episodes (and two years in real time) later, the Shadow Overlord unleashes his final ace-in-the-hole: a giant Odyssey Clone which, oddly enough, is the only one that even begins to demonstrate that it's actually a threat. He does this by knocking down buildings and trampling the X-Men, half of them having just come back to life after being killed four episodes prior by, who else, the Irate Gamer (and here I was thinking that he should be the hero of the story. Syndrome from The Incredibles seems to be a more benign character than him, and a better written one I might add).
A mysterious figure then appears before the Irate Gamer and takes him somewhere to “meet up with his friends”. This mysterious figure, for those who can recall the highly forgettable He-Man and the Masters of the Universe episode, is the same person who gave the Irate Gamer the Sword of Macguffin and the Power of Macguffin/Macguffin Force that accompanies it (No, that's not a cheap insult, it's merely the form of the plot device stripped of its total unoriginality). What does this omnipotent force afford him you ask? It pretty much just changes his shirt a different color, allows him to go inside a television, and gives him the ability to attempt to suspend disbelief to the point that one could think that the X-Men, despite having dealt with many superior behemoths, namely the Sentinels, throughout the comics, TV shows, and even the most recent film, are incapable of handling the situation yet a homicidal, third-rate, Internet video game “reviewer” and his merry band of severely underdeveloped companions are the only people who can get the job done.
So, after over six months of real time, the cloaked stranger takes the Irate Gamer to a place where we see his frequent punching bags (I mean, friends) and an elderly fellow named the Sage Elder (refer to Shadow Overlord comment) who tells them that they must pilot a Megazord just like in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, as the Wise Sage points out. “Quiet you, you wanna get us all sued?” says the Elder not realizing that a simple name drop is trivial compared to the blatant lifting of copyrighted ideas and footage found over the next two episodes (Episodes which Bores fully intends to sell on a DVD for the purpose of economic gain despite not owning of all their content or likely even having the proper authorization to profit from it).
Their plan hits a snag as the Megazord is out of power, and the Irate Gamer must use the Power of Macguffin/Macguffin Force in order to make it fully operational. Conveniently, the way he is told to summon it is by “reviewing” another game: Mighty Morphin Power Rangers for the Sega Genesis. (Now here's a fast fact: This episode was my main motivation for escalating my distaste with the Irate Gamer Show to the point of actually writing about it. More specifically, it was the fact that he “reviewed” a game on the Sega Genesis, which was the first console I ever played extensively and could recall fond memories of.) After successfully regaining power, the Irate Gamer and company take on the giant Odyssey Clone. Despite the stock footage having put up a strong fight, the Megazord falls and is about to be destroyed.
In the final episode, the Genie saves the day just before the giant Odyssey Clone can finish the Irate Gamer Team. He diverts the Clone's attention long enough for the Irate Gamer to “review” Mighty Morphin Power Rangers for the Sega CD. It's when the Genie becomes fatigued that the Megazord reaches full power once more. This time, Irate Gamer is equipped with the Sword of Macguffin (which, despite originally being made of plastic and small enough to be handled by a single man, is now the same as the sword used by the Megazord in the TV show). The Irate Gamer makes short work of the Clone, with the Clone yielding and uttering “Please don't hurt me.” before being killed. The citizens of Nondescript Greenscreen City, populated by a few guest stars, some of whom were former detractors of his, and, as the credits read, “a lot of Chris Bores's” (Now that's guaranteed to have a red line under it, SuperGGangsta.), make a joyful noise unto the Zord. Even the departed X-Men cheer from the heavens despite having been sent there by the Zord's pilot in the first place. The body of the giant Odyssey then crushes the Shadow Overlord, making RED and the Evil Gamer free to go get pizza, and the Irate Gamer inspired to “review” more games in the future; and there you have the Season 4 story arc in summary (An arc that would probably take as long, if not a shorter lapse of time, to watch it as it would to read it).
Now, before I get to the big reveal, I'll give my final thoughts on how Mr. Bores can improve future episodes should he decide to keep the show alive. First and foremost, the very structure of the reviewing portion needs an almost complete makeover. So little is actually done right (among those most of the basic facts) with his current reviewing format that each flaw continually becomes more obvious with each episode, culminating in the last two episodes where he transparently shows us that even though he and everyone around him are in “immediate danger”, the Irate Gamer still has all the time he needs to play and review games with the same demeanor and amount of content as other less perilous episodes. Despite what that little metahumor suggests, I'm not so dense as to not mention that Mr. Bores most likely spends more time than that playing the games, but such gems as the Brutal Legend and South Park: Stick of Truth IG Neo episodes seem to raise doubts on the notion. Last but not least, he should sharpen the writing as a whole. Besides the reviewing, the plots should be more complex, the characters, Irate Gamer most of all, should be more likable, the comedy should be more set-up and deliberate instead of opting for the Seltzerberg-esque approach which has plagued his videos in varying degrees. I could go on, but, quite frankly, enough is enough. Now we get to the marrow, and perhaps the very soul, of this misguided work of fiction we know as the Irate Gamer.
Trusting that you'll recall the reappearance phonemenon that I mentioned (if you don't, I suggest scrolling up a bit), I'll continue with the example of the Evil Gamer. The change in his appearance which I spoke on earlier has a more symbolic meaning than it seems to let on. This is because the Evil Gamer represents Bores' opinions of the Angry Video Game Nerd. At first glance, he looks identical to the Irate Gamer and, despite not being much of a friend to him, has a noticeable yet downplayed presence in the show until he unsuccessfully attempts to kill him. Following this failure, the Evil Gamer continues to bear the same resemblance and attempt to kill the Irate Gamer. It's after the Evil Gamer's escape from Hell that his appearance changes to that of the younger Bores and his schemes turn even more cartoonishly grandiose, with him spawning an entire army of clones who oppose the Irate Gamer with a Magnavox Odyssey.
Translated, the identical appearance refers to vast similarity between AVGN and the Irate Gamer (which is widely believed to have been caused by Bores plagiarizing AVGN material) and Evil Gamer's initial presence represents James Rolfe's intention to ignore Bores' work. The Evil Gamer's fruitless efforts in Hell represents the “retaliatory” increase in production scale that AVGN episodes of the time began to see. The change in appearance, logically, represents the Irate Gamer becoming a more different reviewer than the AVGN by depicting AVGN as what he used to look like. The Magnavox Odyssey represents the old technology that the AVGN built his show on and the clones represent the mindless entities who are assumed to be his fans.
Let's now move onto RED and the Giant Odyssey Clone. While RED could possibly be, by loose interpretation, a more contemporary gaming personality such as JonTron considering Evil Gamer brought him to life in his more refined form and he commands a sizable following, RED most likely represents Mike Matei as he previously did battle with the Irate Gamer, is close to Evil Gamer, and commands a sizable following alongside Evil Gamer. While the battle I refer to occurred during the History of Video Games series, it represents another incident where Mike Matei leaked a PM that was sent to the AVGN's YouTube channel by Chris Bores wherein he confessed that he was fully aware of the similarities between their programs, and even showed interest in doing a crossover. The Giant Odyssey Clone is a collective representation of AVGN's fame, credibility, character, and influence. In more concise terms, the Giant Odyssey Clone is everything that AVGN built. It's portrayed as only being destructive, and most of the time that it's onscreen, it is seen muttering “Destroy.” with every building it knocks down. This changes when it is brought to the brink of destruction by the Irate Gamer, at which point it cries “Please, don't hurt me.” However, it must be noted that the deus ex machina in the form of the Genie was the only thing that made Irate Gamer victorious, otherwise, he and his friends would most likely have fallen. Oddly enough, the Genie himself has a symbolic meaning, but he does not represent a specific person.
In fact, he represents the Cheetahmen 2 incident that occurred in 2012 which he exploited to turn misinformed AVGN fans and former detractors into his fans through the use of the Ebegging spoof video (cleverly titled Ebegging: The Spoof). To those who turned, the Giant Odyssey Clone and all that it stood for had been destroyed indefinitely.
And now, as we come to all of these conclusions, we answer the titular question: just what is up with the Irate Gamer anyway? The answer may come as a shock, but I will explain it as gently as possible. The Irate Gamer represents everything that society at large believes is wrong with gamers. Among these things are immaturity, antisocial behavior, exaggerated motions when seen playing (like in various movies), and the pathological need to kill. On the other hand, he also represents everything that many gamers want to be. That is, his character and the events that make up the show's continuity are the embodiment of the fantasy he has constructed within his mind, a trait widely believed to tap into the escapist fantasies that many gamers construct when left to their own devices. What makes the show suffer in its quality lies in the deeply rooted and tightly coiled tether of harsh reality that keeps his fantasy from truly becoming as elaborate and gratifying as he wishes. The harsh reality being that he is actually a repressed, mentally off-balanced, homicidal weakling who is the polar opposite of what he imagines himself as. It is in the finale that he finally receives the adoration he needs in order to make his fantasy complete. However, like the peace that Adrian Veidt brokered in Watchmen, his ultimate victory isn't truly won.
Like the Irate Gamer wouldn't have been able to save the day without the Genie suddenly sparring with the Giant Odyssey Clone, Bores wouldn't even have a prayer of taking down the AVGN had it not been for the Cheetahmen 2 incident. There is a disconnect, however, as not only did the incident not destroy anything that the Giant Odyssey Clone signified, AVGN remains far more popular than the Irate Gamer to this day. On top of that, when the Irate Gamer expects to be further praised on the news for what he just did, the newscaster instead drops some more cold, hard reality by saying that the Power Rangers were responsible for the saving the day (because apparently newscasters like their metahumor with a strong dash of karma).
Given the fact that this may not be the end of the Irate Gamer Show, maybe the Irate Gamer will come to grips with the issues that he has. Maybe he will fulfill that fantasy that he created for himself. Maybe he will get better; but should that not be the case, anyone who has the indignation to be critical of Mr. Bores would do well to steer clear of future blunders.
So what do you think? Do you agree or disagree? Do you think Bores is really smart enough to pull this off? Discuss among yourselves.
So a reader offered to contribute content, his own theory on what the Irate Gamer is.
After this line, read Brandon's theory. Enjoy.
Just What is Up With the Irate Gamer Anyway?
Hello there, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Brandon Brown. It might not mean much right now, but let it be known for the record. Now, the following exposition assumes that you're vaguely familiar with the Irate Gamer's work at best (unless, of course, you're reading this from the blog; in which case, the majority of it will be preaching to the choir.) If you're not, you will be by the end of this.
Started in 2007 by Chris Bores, the Irate Gamer became one of the better known reviewers of the first game reviewing boom that occurred in the infancy of YouTube. Though his show was one of the more successful ones to come out of this lucrative time, it was also, quite possibly, the most universally reviled of all. The reasons for this ranging from, what many viewers perceived to be, a lack of substance suffocated with gratuitous special effects, intellectually dishonest representations of many beloved games, sub-par writing, acting, and direction, and even plagiarism from the works of other reviewers, most notably the Angry Video Game Nerd. However, the past transgressions of Mr. Bores will not be the main focus of this exposition, but will be cited at certain times to give backing to the assertions to which they apply.
Let's begin with the very character of the Irate Gamer himself. If there's one thing Mr. Bores has done right by the character, it's that he consistently gets mad about some of the details of each game that he reviews. Unfortunately, that's one of the only things about the Irate Gamer that is consistent. For example, he gets mad at Contra for being difficult, but then gets mad at Power Rangers on the Sega Genesis for being easy. On top of that, he's very inconsistent with how he treats his friends. In the MUSCLE review, he makes his friend Tony welcome to be a part of the review and even values his opinion of the game. In the review of Power Rangers on the Super Nintendo, however, he throws him out after making a simple observation. What's worse than this is the Irate Gamer's tendency to frequently dabble in a bit of the old ultra-violence. This can be seen not only in the ways that he destroys many of the games he reviews, which would be extremely gruesome if recreated on humans, but also in the ways that he just plays the games. Like in the Goonies 2 episode where the Irate Gamer repeatedly strikes an elderly woman in the game with a hammer, and takes pleasure in needlessly causing her pain.
Not only does he dabble in that, but also in the occasional killing of other characters. Unlike the Angry Video Game Nerd's violent encounters with Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees, and even Bugs Bunny, where his killings are more justified as his life appears to be in grave danger as a result of their actions, most of the Irate Gamer's homicidal incidents are either caused by an annoyance or, in the case of R.O.B. The Robot, his abusive nature.
A truly odd phenomenon you might pick up on as you watch the Irate Gamer Show is that most of victims who are killed off in this fashion tend to reappear alive in a later episode. Though an average viewer could chalk this up to one of the many discontinuities that Bores' flawed writing lets slide, I believe that it's possible that they are apparitions formed by the Irate Gamer's conscience, the voices of his victims resonating with the hope that he will reflect on the consequences of his actions. Their cries fall on deaf ears, as the Irate Gamer doesn't pay them the attention that the reappearance of a previously killed off character should reasonably be getting or even show remorse for any of his actions, and since their deaths don't have any major impact whatsoever as far as the narrative is concerned, it's almost as if he wants the viewer not to think about it either.
This isn't to say that he has only shed the blood of innocents in his 7-year run. The most justifiable is found in the Predator episode. While it's questionable as to why the Predator appears in the way that he does, it's unmistakable that he wants to kill the Irate Gamer. In spite of the Predator's uncharacteristic weakness, the Irate Gamer overpowers and kills him, and he never reappears in the later episodes. If you've seen the Season 4 story arc, you might be wondering why I've omitted the Odyssey clones, namely the giant one, but I'll explain that later.
As deplorable or occasionally understandable each killing is, none of them is surpassed by his actions in the conclusion of his ET episodes. Following a highly improbable escape from the FBI, and the subsequent “reviews” which, for no explained reason, required him to return to the place that they were at in order to be completed, the Irate Gamer puts all of the ET games into a box with what is supposed to be an explosive device. The box is then retrieved by what we can assume are the aliens that brought ET home in the film. The Irate Gamer seems satisfied to have made the reunion possible. This is until he reflects on all of the displeasure that the games caused him over the past two episodes. Without any hesitation, he triggers the explosives, destroying the alien spacecraft in the process.
Any person who knows their history and/or keeps track of world events can reasonably infer that an attack on a vessel, military or civilian, is usually elevated to a global crisis soon after it occurs. By extension, an attack on an extraterrestrial vessel, could quite possibly spur a conflict of interstellar proportions. A conflict that could lead to an all-out war against humanity, one that could bring its extinction well into the realm of possibility, all because of one ultra-violent video game reviewer's petty annoyance with some poorly made games. Nevertheless, it won't matter because no matter how much trouble his weakness in the forebrain will cause him to get into, his most ideal scenario will always play out in the end. It's mainly because of Bores' anemic writing that all of the Irate Gamer's conflicts are ultimately rendered pointless and cheap, as he never really has to grow or overcome anything because something will always happen, whether logic permits or not, that will solve his problems for him. The ultimate casualties are the missed opportunities for interesting and satisfying stories, such as an interstellar war that could have been rich in science fiction themes; but even if Bores were to do such a thing now, it would seem like quite the afterthought given how far removed the subsequent episodes are from the idea.
Now, it would be wise for me to get off the subject of killing before it becomes cancerous and corrupts the bigger theory ahead, so I'll now turn to the Evil Gamer for the time being. The Evil Gamer first appeared in the Super Mario Bros. 2 episode, and despite his namesake, he began as a relatively mild character who looked exactly like the Irate Gamer. Despite having less than a minute of screen time before hand, he attempts to violently takeover the Irate Gamer's show, but fails and gets killed by the Irate Gamer (trust me, we're past the whole killing thing... for now). He spends a considerable amount of time plotting against the Irate Gamer in Hell, yet this can only be assumed since none of the planning is shown or explained until it has been executed, and he eventually ends up roaming the Earth once more. The Monster Party episode begins with him explaining that he was the mastermind of certain attempts on the Irate Gamer's life, and that he is going to put his ultimate scheme to get rid of the Irate Gamer into motion very soon. Predictably, it ends in failure. It's also notable that the Evil Gamer's appearance changes to, based on Bores' Back to the Past video, what is assumed to be the way Bores looked in his younger years.
The Season 4 story arc has the Evil Gamer demoted to being a simple minion of the Shadow Overlord (clever name, by the way, Bores). It's in the 7-Up Spot episode that we see Evil Gamer making an attempt to steal the Irate Gamer's Magnavox Odyssey so that the Shadow Overlord can make an army of robots based on the computer HAL that the Irate Gamer fought against during the History of Video Games series. After finally accomplishing something, the Evil Gamer, along with the original HAL who has been given a body and the name RED (which stands for, get this, Robotic Electromat[sic] Device. Pure genius), gives orders to the army of Odyssey clones to start a war.
Irate Gamer responds by sending ROB the Robot, who, despite being completely disintegrated in the conclusion of the eponymous episode, has been repaired and reprogrammed to be one of the “good guys” (Again, I'll be explaining this at the end, which is near), out to fight the clones. Seven episodes (and two years in real time) later, the Shadow Overlord unleashes his final ace-in-the-hole: a giant Odyssey Clone which, oddly enough, is the only one that even begins to demonstrate that it's actually a threat. He does this by knocking down buildings and trampling the X-Men, half of them having just come back to life after being killed four episodes prior by, who else, the Irate Gamer (and here I was thinking that he should be the hero of the story. Syndrome from The Incredibles seems to be a more benign character than him, and a better written one I might add).
A mysterious figure then appears before the Irate Gamer and takes him somewhere to “meet up with his friends”. This mysterious figure, for those who can recall the highly forgettable He-Man and the Masters of the Universe episode, is the same person who gave the Irate Gamer the Sword of Macguffin and the Power of Macguffin/Macguffin Force that accompanies it (No, that's not a cheap insult, it's merely the form of the plot device stripped of its total unoriginality). What does this omnipotent force afford him you ask? It pretty much just changes his shirt a different color, allows him to go inside a television, and gives him the ability to attempt to suspend disbelief to the point that one could think that the X-Men, despite having dealt with many superior behemoths, namely the Sentinels, throughout the comics, TV shows, and even the most recent film, are incapable of handling the situation yet a homicidal, third-rate, Internet video game “reviewer” and his merry band of severely underdeveloped companions are the only people who can get the job done.
So, after over six months of real time, the cloaked stranger takes the Irate Gamer to a place where we see his frequent punching bags (I mean, friends) and an elderly fellow named the Sage Elder (refer to Shadow Overlord comment) who tells them that they must pilot a Megazord just like in Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, as the Wise Sage points out. “Quiet you, you wanna get us all sued?” says the Elder not realizing that a simple name drop is trivial compared to the blatant lifting of copyrighted ideas and footage found over the next two episodes (Episodes which Bores fully intends to sell on a DVD for the purpose of economic gain despite not owning of all their content or likely even having the proper authorization to profit from it).
Their plan hits a snag as the Megazord is out of power, and the Irate Gamer must use the Power of Macguffin/Macguffin Force in order to make it fully operational. Conveniently, the way he is told to summon it is by “reviewing” another game: Mighty Morphin Power Rangers for the Sega Genesis. (Now here's a fast fact: This episode was my main motivation for escalating my distaste with the Irate Gamer Show to the point of actually writing about it. More specifically, it was the fact that he “reviewed” a game on the Sega Genesis, which was the first console I ever played extensively and could recall fond memories of.) After successfully regaining power, the Irate Gamer and company take on the giant Odyssey Clone. Despite the stock footage having put up a strong fight, the Megazord falls and is about to be destroyed.
In the final episode, the Genie saves the day just before the giant Odyssey Clone can finish the Irate Gamer Team. He diverts the Clone's attention long enough for the Irate Gamer to “review” Mighty Morphin Power Rangers for the Sega CD. It's when the Genie becomes fatigued that the Megazord reaches full power once more. This time, Irate Gamer is equipped with the Sword of Macguffin (which, despite originally being made of plastic and small enough to be handled by a single man, is now the same as the sword used by the Megazord in the TV show). The Irate Gamer makes short work of the Clone, with the Clone yielding and uttering “Please don't hurt me.” before being killed. The citizens of Nondescript Greenscreen City, populated by a few guest stars, some of whom were former detractors of his, and, as the credits read, “a lot of Chris Bores's” (Now that's guaranteed to have a red line under it, SuperGGangsta.), make a joyful noise unto the Zord. Even the departed X-Men cheer from the heavens despite having been sent there by the Zord's pilot in the first place. The body of the giant Odyssey then crushes the Shadow Overlord, making RED and the Evil Gamer free to go get pizza, and the Irate Gamer inspired to “review” more games in the future; and there you have the Season 4 story arc in summary (An arc that would probably take as long, if not a shorter lapse of time, to watch it as it would to read it).
Now, before I get to the big reveal, I'll give my final thoughts on how Mr. Bores can improve future episodes should he decide to keep the show alive. First and foremost, the very structure of the reviewing portion needs an almost complete makeover. So little is actually done right (among those most of the basic facts) with his current reviewing format that each flaw continually becomes more obvious with each episode, culminating in the last two episodes where he transparently shows us that even though he and everyone around him are in “immediate danger”, the Irate Gamer still has all the time he needs to play and review games with the same demeanor and amount of content as other less perilous episodes. Despite what that little metahumor suggests, I'm not so dense as to not mention that Mr. Bores most likely spends more time than that playing the games, but such gems as the Brutal Legend and South Park: Stick of Truth IG Neo episodes seem to raise doubts on the notion. Last but not least, he should sharpen the writing as a whole. Besides the reviewing, the plots should be more complex, the characters, Irate Gamer most of all, should be more likable, the comedy should be more set-up and deliberate instead of opting for the Seltzerberg-esque approach which has plagued his videos in varying degrees. I could go on, but, quite frankly, enough is enough. Now we get to the marrow, and perhaps the very soul, of this misguided work of fiction we know as the Irate Gamer.
Trusting that you'll recall the reappearance phonemenon that I mentioned (if you don't, I suggest scrolling up a bit), I'll continue with the example of the Evil Gamer. The change in his appearance which I spoke on earlier has a more symbolic meaning than it seems to let on. This is because the Evil Gamer represents Bores' opinions of the Angry Video Game Nerd. At first glance, he looks identical to the Irate Gamer and, despite not being much of a friend to him, has a noticeable yet downplayed presence in the show until he unsuccessfully attempts to kill him. Following this failure, the Evil Gamer continues to bear the same resemblance and attempt to kill the Irate Gamer. It's after the Evil Gamer's escape from Hell that his appearance changes to that of the younger Bores and his schemes turn even more cartoonishly grandiose, with him spawning an entire army of clones who oppose the Irate Gamer with a Magnavox Odyssey.
Translated, the identical appearance refers to vast similarity between AVGN and the Irate Gamer (which is widely believed to have been caused by Bores plagiarizing AVGN material) and Evil Gamer's initial presence represents James Rolfe's intention to ignore Bores' work. The Evil Gamer's fruitless efforts in Hell represents the “retaliatory” increase in production scale that AVGN episodes of the time began to see. The change in appearance, logically, represents the Irate Gamer becoming a more different reviewer than the AVGN by depicting AVGN as what he used to look like. The Magnavox Odyssey represents the old technology that the AVGN built his show on and the clones represent the mindless entities who are assumed to be his fans.
Let's now move onto RED and the Giant Odyssey Clone. While RED could possibly be, by loose interpretation, a more contemporary gaming personality such as JonTron considering Evil Gamer brought him to life in his more refined form and he commands a sizable following, RED most likely represents Mike Matei as he previously did battle with the Irate Gamer, is close to Evil Gamer, and commands a sizable following alongside Evil Gamer. While the battle I refer to occurred during the History of Video Games series, it represents another incident where Mike Matei leaked a PM that was sent to the AVGN's YouTube channel by Chris Bores wherein he confessed that he was fully aware of the similarities between their programs, and even showed interest in doing a crossover. The Giant Odyssey Clone is a collective representation of AVGN's fame, credibility, character, and influence. In more concise terms, the Giant Odyssey Clone is everything that AVGN built. It's portrayed as only being destructive, and most of the time that it's onscreen, it is seen muttering “Destroy.” with every building it knocks down. This changes when it is brought to the brink of destruction by the Irate Gamer, at which point it cries “Please, don't hurt me.” However, it must be noted that the deus ex machina in the form of the Genie was the only thing that made Irate Gamer victorious, otherwise, he and his friends would most likely have fallen. Oddly enough, the Genie himself has a symbolic meaning, but he does not represent a specific person.
In fact, he represents the Cheetahmen 2 incident that occurred in 2012 which he exploited to turn misinformed AVGN fans and former detractors into his fans through the use of the Ebegging spoof video (cleverly titled Ebegging: The Spoof). To those who turned, the Giant Odyssey Clone and all that it stood for had been destroyed indefinitely.
And now, as we come to all of these conclusions, we answer the titular question: just what is up with the Irate Gamer anyway? The answer may come as a shock, but I will explain it as gently as possible. The Irate Gamer represents everything that society at large believes is wrong with gamers. Among these things are immaturity, antisocial behavior, exaggerated motions when seen playing (like in various movies), and the pathological need to kill. On the other hand, he also represents everything that many gamers want to be. That is, his character and the events that make up the show's continuity are the embodiment of the fantasy he has constructed within his mind, a trait widely believed to tap into the escapist fantasies that many gamers construct when left to their own devices. What makes the show suffer in its quality lies in the deeply rooted and tightly coiled tether of harsh reality that keeps his fantasy from truly becoming as elaborate and gratifying as he wishes. The harsh reality being that he is actually a repressed, mentally off-balanced, homicidal weakling who is the polar opposite of what he imagines himself as. It is in the finale that he finally receives the adoration he needs in order to make his fantasy complete. However, like the peace that Adrian Veidt brokered in Watchmen, his ultimate victory isn't truly won.
Like the Irate Gamer wouldn't have been able to save the day without the Genie suddenly sparring with the Giant Odyssey Clone, Bores wouldn't even have a prayer of taking down the AVGN had it not been for the Cheetahmen 2 incident. There is a disconnect, however, as not only did the incident not destroy anything that the Giant Odyssey Clone signified, AVGN remains far more popular than the Irate Gamer to this day. On top of that, when the Irate Gamer expects to be further praised on the news for what he just did, the newscaster instead drops some more cold, hard reality by saying that the Power Rangers were responsible for the saving the day (because apparently newscasters like their metahumor with a strong dash of karma).
Given the fact that this may not be the end of the Irate Gamer Show, maybe the Irate Gamer will come to grips with the issues that he has. Maybe he will fulfill that fantasy that he created for himself. Maybe he will get better; but should that not be the case, anyone who has the indignation to be critical of Mr. Bores would do well to steer clear of future blunders.
So what do you think? Do you agree or disagree? Do you think Bores is really smart enough to pull this off? Discuss among yourselves.
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