Tuesday, April 26, 2022

The Irate Gamer Timeline Part 6: 2016-2018

 2016:

Man… 2016 feels so long ago.
He opened the year with Gravity Falls figures. It’s no longer on the channel.

He followed that with a tech review that was bad even by his standards. Disliked to hell. It’s no longer on the channel.

Following that was a review of Lego Dimensions. Surprise surprise, he didn’t beat the game. It’s no longer on the channel.
This would end up being the final episode of Irate Gamer Neo. In a way, it’s a good bookend. He started with The Simpsons Game (he didn’t beat it) and he ended on Lego Dimensions (which features The Simpsons, and he also didn’t beat it).

Around this point, Chris seemed to realize that his Irate Gamer fans did not enjoy his toy content. Can you blame them? They subscribed for video games and you’re not giving them that.
In secret, Chris started another new channel.

Remember when he made that “rebooted” Letter People channel? Since that failed, he figured kids don’t want educational content, but videos about toys. Taking two of the puppets made for the Letter People, he would start his own toy channel. The Marty & Muffin Show.
He would make two videos with this duo, one on Minions Mega Blox (at one point Marty wonders what the Union Jack is) and the other on Gravity Falls.
In the third video, the series would end up getting hijacked by another character. Steve from Minecraft. Introducing Puppet Steve.

Realizing Minecraft was crazy popular, Chris created Puppet Steve (or at least bought him from someone) and the channel would be all about him. Despite the Minecraft theme, he wouldn’t play the game. It’s 99% toys.
He started with Minecraft toys (while also showing he knows nothing about the game), but he also tried throwing ideas at the wall to see what worked. Including a “crazy” review of Zootopia (like his crazy review of Inside Out), a video where he mocks the Enderman, a reaction to the trailer to Sausage Party where he seemingly claims to be a kid?
However, the channel wouldn’t grab much attention, until he found his golden goose. Five Night’s at Freddy’s. Seeing the large number of views his first FNAF video received, he began to push out constant Freddy content. It helped grow his channel far past anything the Irate Gamer ever accomplished.

At one point, he did have his stepdaughter on to talk about girl’s toys as Puppet Alex. But because I said she was a better critic than Chris, he kicked her off the show. *Disclaimer: I do not have any proof of this, just speculation and circumstance*

But the transition to Puppet Steve wasn’t instant, he still put some stuff out on the main channel.
A lot of filler though. Crappy tech, crappy apps, an artbook, supposed Lego Dimensions leaks. All of it is no longer on the channel.

Then came a review of Excitebike. All I remember about this one was a running gag with a drunk Link. It wasn’t funny.

Chris started making some odd changes. Changing of the name of the channel multiple times, from Irategamer to Chris Bores TV to The Irate Gamer.
He deleted a lot of videos (hence why I keep bringing up the missing ones).

He would then promote a bloatware phone app. People REALLY hated that one. It’s no longer on the channel.

Output slowed further as Puppet Steve videos started appearing more and more. With more Skylanders and a Skyrim artbook. It was very dull. It’s no longer on the channel.

Around the end of March, he announced on Facebook that he was “semi-retired”. Complaining that his channel barely saw growth in 2015. I wonder whose fault that was. *looks at Chris’ output* Clearly it’s YouTube.

On April 22nd, Chris would upload a review of Duck Hunt, claiming it was the start of Season 6.
It was a weak video. Less a review and more a tract on how the Dog is annoying. It did not need to be six minutes long.
The video ended with Irate Gamer going into the game and chasing the dog through a multitude of other games. It was pure, unadulterated cringe. It ends with the two arriving in Mortal Kombat and IG uppercutting the dog into the Pit.

And that… was the last Irate Gamer video. For now.
He quickly reversed his stance on Season 6, making this the Season 5 finale. As Puppet Steve began uploading more and more, Chris began to neglect the channel with actual content.

Instead, he looks at more tech, more terrible apps, and started a new series about subscription boxes called Box Wars. He buys a bunch of boxes (like Loot Crate, 1Up Box, etc.), opens them and shows the contents. Where other creators simply use these for sponsorships and opens them at the end of a video, Chris thought “this is the content”. People didn’t like it. Yet he still made multiple Box Wars videos. I guess even Chris realized it was stupid, as they’re no longer on the channel.

More and more filler, until he released a new I Rate the 80’s. It was about Bazooka Joe. A lame video covering something that wasn’t even from the 80’s.
Like Duck Hunt above, this would be the last 80’s video. For now.

More and more filler that’s no longer on the channel. Including a Tennis game that has a busty player for Chris to put in the thumbnail.

Then another app video that was literally a scam. He swiftly removed it, but only to delete the negative comments. Though now, it’s no longer on the channel.

On July 20th, Chris made it official. The Irate Gamer was no more. It wasn’t the first time he announced retirement, but this was likely the one that stuck. For now…

Though that didn’t stop him from posting another tech review. It’s no longer on the channel.

Over the week following the announcement, he revealed some details. The reason for stopping was time & money (money for what?) He considered crowd-funding Season 6, no longer anti-crowdfunding (he never went through with it), and when asked to do Patreon, he refused saying “it’s not for me”. He didn’t elaborate on what that meant.

Despite the “retirement”, Chris still used the channel to sell out. Like a video talking about Soylent, or a video promoting a Wisdom Tree run Kickstarter. Seems rather hypocritical considering the reason the Ebegging Spoof was made. Both videos are no longer on the channel.

This was around the point I learned about Puppet Steve. Part of me does wonder if my discovery is what lead to its exponential growth. Probably not.

It became clear to me that the shilling videos were done to fund the toys for Puppet Steve. Maybe his ghost hunting habit too.

In October, he started posting gaming content again. … On Puppet Steve. Keep in mind that at this point, he didn’t have as many subscribers as Irate Gamer.
First one was gameplay of Lego Diimensions’ Ghostbusters 2016 pack. Best part about this one is that he exposed his PlayStation Network handle and for a brief period of we could see his Trophy status. It revealed quite a few lies about the games he reviewed for Neo. Like how he barely played them or lied about beating them.

He also played Five Nights at Freddy’s: Sister Location. Revealing that he can indeed play PC games. He just chose not to for Irate Gamer.
He never beat the game.

Around the end of the year, he changed the name of his channel again to the “CB Network”. Going for an “all-purpose” channel rather than Irate Gamer focused.
He also posted a snippet of Pursuit of the Paranormal. The opening made it clear that Chris wanted this to be a successful reality TV show. It was never picked up.

Rest of the year was shilling videos and Puppet Steve.

2017:

This was a dead year. Not much happened.
At least on the Irate Gamer side. Puppet Steve was very active.

He did change the Irate Gamer channel description to outright say he’s retired. No final video, no big goodbye, just some text hidden away in the “About” page.

A little spark of activity appeared in September when he made a Facebook post about Toys R Us going bankrupt, believing that the end of Skylanders is what killed it. Not even remotely close to how that works.

The month after that, a post about Machinima trying to bury him because he didn’t want to join them. Calling them “YouTube’s gaming division”. Chris cannot accept responsibility for his own channel’s failure.

When talking about ghost content he “can’t show”, fans keep asking for more Irate Gamer, but he claims to have no time. He refused to come clean about Puppet Steve, pretending it doesn’t exist. In fact, posting about Steve on his Facebook would result in a deleted comment and blocked account.

He also got super salty when someone posted a picture of his book in a toilet.

2018:

I told you 2017 was a dead year.

January started off on a hilarious note as he made an unhinged Facebook post about the Kids Choice Awards promoting the Illuminati. I am not kidding.
All because they showed the Eye of Providence in the background. You know, the one that’s on every US Dollar bill? That was enough for him to ban his family from watching Nickelodeon. Yet he still talked about SpongeBob on Puppet Steve… rules for thee not for me.
All this made me realize how far off the deep end he was. I saw signs of it with his support of Alex Jones, but this really pushed it.

Chris also showed up in a small indie film called “Black Friday”, and unlike Gore Orphanage, his scene wasn’t cut. Though it wasn’t much, he shows up at the very end in front of his greenscreen. He looks out of place compared to the rest of the movie too.

In February, Chris got to go to ToyFair and did coverage… as Puppet Steve. His videos were full of errors. He also tried doing some “live” segments, but his phone is so shitty that they came out poorly.

As March was closing out, Chris dropped one hell of a surprise. He was coming back to the Irate Gamer. Except not quite.
He changed his channel name once again from CB Network to Chris-Tube, and over on Twitter he changed his handle to “Chris Neo”.

Shortly afterward, he would drop a new review. On Sewer Shark for the Sega CD.
And this was no longer the Irate Gamer show, this was the Chris Neo show. What is his obsession with that word?
In the time since, he moved from Sandusky to Toledo, so he was filming in a different location. He also started wearing these neon glasses. What purpose did they serve? *shrugs*

How was this big comeback video? Boring…
Like, way more boring than usual. But it did have some issues. Like claiming this was the first Sega CD game he ever looked at, somehow forgetting that he talked about Power Rangers in 2014.
Otherwise, it was like a real slow Let’s Play with some brief reviewing thrown in.
But hey, he’s back. …  Right?

It did not take long for awfulness to set in as he posted a clickbait video talking about a Sewer Shark Easter Egg. Put the game in a CD player and it plays a creepy message. A guy answers a phone and hears some backwards speak. Play it backwards and he’s just saying, “Number 9”. It’s a Beatles reference.
He claims the hasn’t seen that message anywhere else. That was, of course, a lie, as a simple Google search found a YouTube upload 8 years prior to the video’s posting.

Following that was a look at… mini-Arcade cabinets. Cheap trinkets that play NES ports of Arcade games (rather than the actual one). What makes this worse is that he already talked about these on Puppet Steve, so even here he’s recycling content. If you think Chris Neo would escape the eraser, you are wrong. It’s no longer on the channel.

Afterwards, he would look at a game he’s promised to look at for a looooong time. How long? He brought it up in the comments of his Where’s Waldo video.

Deadly Towers. Claiming multiple times to have played this as a kid and says “30 years” over and over. Otherwise, it’s boring, and he openly cheats to get to the end. He’s also blatantly using an emulator as the footage is far too clean. Despite having the cartridge and the system.

Chris never learned his lesson about false copyright flagging. In 2017, CommonNonsenseMedia produced a video debunking the many claims shown in his big Opening Up video. There were no issues with it, when out of nowhere, Chris decided to take it down for copyright infringement. Not even under a company name, just as “Chris Bores”.
One of Chris’ own fans confronted him, and it was made clear Chris had no idea what he was doing, or at least played ignorant and kept deflecting away.
Thankfully, the video was reinstated and can still be viewed today.

He talked about more mini-Arcade cabinets. Noticing a theme?

Then came the videos that killed Chris Neo. A pair of videos about Mario. The first one has him gushing over the NES trilogy, and attempt to damage control his Mario 2 video (to little success). Then he claims he’s going to “blow our minds” by showing there’s a World 9 only accessible through Game Genie. Except not really, Game Genie alters the existing assets and makes something new. These aren’t secret or hidden.
He posted a follow-up with more Game Genie codes.
Only the first one is still up on the channel.

Chris made a video in response to the ending of Infinity War. A month after it came out and it became common knowledge.
It was a skit where after seeing the movie, he returns home to play Maximum Carnage (as you do) and finds Spider-Man is no longer in the game. Somehow Thanos erased him from games too.
Then he checks other games and finds missing characters all over. Except the Duck Hunt Dog because he never gets tired of hating that dog. It’s so old…

He ignored E3 on “Chris Neo” but made one video over on Puppet Steve about Super Smash Bros Ultimate. It was lazy and poorly researched. Referring to alternate colors as “new characters” and being surprised that female Pikachus exist.

Back on the main channel, more Mario Game Genie… It’s no longer on the channel.

Followed by looking at an Atari artbook. It’s no longer on the channel.

It almost seems like he forgot about the channel, neglecting to post anything for a month.
He did post a rant on Facebook claiming that his site went down not because he forgot to pay the fees, but due to the “paranormal elite” trying to silence him as his views are so controversial. That was an actual claim he made.

Then three months after the last Mario Game Genie video, he posted the finale. He explained his absence as a “summer hiatus” (not an excuse for YouTube). This video is also gone. But there is a reason why most of the Mario Game Genie videos were removed. We’ll get to that in 2021.

The final Chris Neo video, a 13-minute look at Arcade1Up cabinets.
Chris Neo was an absolute failure. But Chris was not discouraged as he would find another route. Next year.

Before the year went out, he posted another conspiracy about YouTube and Machinima. Saying he could “write a book” about all the stuff he’s seen and heard in “the system”. Where is that book Chris? Come on, stop leaving us in suspense.
He also makes some bizarre claims about PewDiePie rejecting Disney and that somehow connects to Felix’s fans attacking a teacher that didn’t like him? Except he didn’t reject Disney, Disney rejected him. For making a video where he paid two guys to write “Death to All Jews”. It’s not that hard to look up.

Next time: 2019 to present

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