Aflac Auditions. What Is This I Don't Even

In IG’s “YouTube NextUp” contest entry, he said he was planning to make skits with his “brilliant“ characters (Ronnie, Devil Bores, Cousin Joey). I predicted that nothing good will come of this.

With his newest video… I was right. Again. We get to watch his various characters audition for Aflac commercials.

For those unaware, Aflac is an insurance company specializing in physical and medical policies (Accidents, Dental, Cancer, Life). Their commercials consisted of people worried about their mortality or job, wondering if someone can help. That’s when a duck shows up and shouts “AFLAC!”

The duck was voiced by comedian Gilbert Gottfried, but was fired after offensive comments about the earthquakes in Japan. Aflac announced they would be accepting applications for a new voice from March 23rd - April 1st. *looks at date of video* Oops.

Well, I’m going to guess that Bores just made this for fun. Well I’m not having fun…

0:01 - 0:32: The video opens with Ronnie and I’ve already given up on this. *sighs* Pull it together Daniel.

The director starts the first take (why yes the director is played by Bores) and Ronnie does his usual gibbering stuff and bumps into the microphone. “Please just read the line please” Please stop being redundant please.

Ronnie reads the line in his same tone of voice and then starts gibbering again. This isn’t funny!

0:33 - 1:17: Next up is Devil Bores, oh for the love of…

Devil Bores is an “actor” asking for his motivation and bragging that he played Macbeth in high school. You’re Satan, you existed before Shakespeare, how the hell could you have… forget it this is just more of Bores’ awful writing.

He reads the line in an overly-raspy tone. I think he was trying to ham it up but only succeeded in boring me.

When the director rejects him, he calls him a motherfucker. Why is it bleeped out? Look Chris, this whole “family-friendly” shit isn’t going to help you.

1:18 - 2:05: Now it’s Shadow Overlord’s turn, ugh this video is dragging.

“I have waited many years for this part” You were waiting for something to happen to Gilbert Gottfried?

Like Ronnie, he reads the line in his normal tone. He threatens to destroy the director if he doesn’t get the job. He reads the line again in the exact same way but instead of destroying the director he leaves. Another unfulfilled promise from Irate Gamer.

2:06 - 2:28: Next audition is AHHHHHHHHHHHH why is wearing overalls?! Jeez, he made Cousin Joey even freakier than before.

Joey wants to see the duck, but the director tells him there is no duck, and he starts arguing that there is. Why did IG create all these characters? There’s nothing good about them.

2:29 - 2:53: Evil Gamer is up, and he wants to do an “Evil Aflac Duck”. Chris, adding evil to the beginning of things ISN’T FUCKING FUNNY! Stop trying to make that his shtick! It didn’t work in “Order Up” and it doesn’t work here!

He continues arguing that he wants to do an evil duck. Wow, IG’s characters are really bratty. Is this part of the joke or something?

2:54 - 3:00: Wilson or Wilkins shows up, but with no fence and a turtleneck over his face. We know that’s you Chris, why do you insist on having this character? But he’s only there for a second before the director says next.

Then Wise Sage shows up, but like “Wilkins” doesn’t get any lines before getting booted. Wow, Chris really does hate that character. In fact, that looks like the same image from his appearance in the Cool Spot video.

Then Tony (the Maplestory sprite) shows up for a second, and we get to see his new look. He’s no longer a Maplestory sprite, but a hand-drawn creation from DatBoiDrew. Damn it Drew, get away from Irate Gamer. You’re better than this! According to the description, we’re going to see more of Tony in the next IG review. NOOOOOOOOO!

Then that goblin from the Monster Party video shows up (you know, the one with the changing accent that Bores told to “Get the fuck off his property”). Are you really that creatively bankrupt that you’ll reuse the Halloween costumes from an old video as “characters”?

3:01 - 3:29: Finally it’s IG’s turn. He says the line and the director likes it. What a surprise, the only audition he liked is Irate Gamer, is there any doubt that he’s a Mary Sue? IG wonders when he’ll get paid, but learns it’s just an audition and doesn‘t have the job. He does his “scowling camera stare” and knocks over the microphone. The director quits.

The video ends with something new. A stinger that links to other videos, his website, and a link to subscribe to his channel. … Weird.

What in the hell was this? Of all the things you could make a video about… and it was so painfully unfunny and… ugggggh.

If Tony is showing up in the next video, I expect pain. Lots and lots of pain.

It's About Damn Time! Bores' 200th Video Brings Up AVGN

After four years of blocking people and being a general ass, Chris Bores FINALLY acknowledges the existence of the AVGN. Wow I never thought this would happen.

What's the context? Well, the video has Bores talking about his history on YouTube in front of the camera. Around 2:33 he mentions people he watched including PlayItBogart, AVGN, and Armake21 (unsurprisingly he pronounces it wrong). Strange how he mentions Armake considering he made one of the most scathing rants about IG.

As for the rest of the video, it's just Bores being his ego-centric self. Nothing exciting or interesting. He talks about getting recognized, meeting people, YouTube partnership, "evolving" the show and blah blah blah I don't care.

Does this mean I'm going to go easy on him? HAHAHAHAHAHA No. He's still a terrible writer and filmmaker. Once again, ignoring the "plagiarism" accusations there are far bigger problems to deal with. Sorry IG fanboys, I'm not stopping just because he briefly mentions The Nerd.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have better things to do.

The Irate Gamer Game: It's Real!

At least it wants to be real, given how long it's taken I wouldn't be surprised if it never comes out.

You might be thinking "Come on, nobody would be dumb enough to make an Irate Gamer video game". Sadly there are some truly stupid people in this world.

There was an actual site but it no longer exists, redirecting to this Facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Irate-Gamer-Game/424852720332

Very little is actually known about the game. It will be a beat-em-up a/la Double Dragon or Final Fight. Well, the "old version" was. Now they want to make it a 3D beat-em-up a/la Castle Crashers. Isn't that cute, they think can match Double Dragon or Castle Crashers level of quality.

The game has gone through three different art styles. The first made IG look like Carl Fredrickson from Up, but Bores hated it. The second was similar, with IG having a permanent grimace. Even in drawings he looks constipated. The third and current art-style is more realistic but looks really ugly.

In January 2010 (when the page was made) they announced the game would be out in the Spring for Xbox Live and PC. Considering all they had amounted to concept art, I didn't see this happening. I was right. The Facebook stopped updating in April 2010, presumably the project was abandoned.

That is until January 2011. The Facebook page updated after nine months of silence, announcing a mid-2011 release for Xbox Live, PC, iOS, and Android.

I have no idea what the game's story is, they don't tell us. But going by the concept art, IG uses two guns attached to his thighs to fight tall robots and fat robots, apparently these robots are the Evil Gamer's minions. The game's big bad is... Doctor Doom? I'm just going by the pictures.

Once again, we have no footage or in-game screenshots, just concept art. The last update was March 8th, reminding people that they're giving a DSi XL. Wow good strategy, give away a DSi in the same window of time as the 3DS' launch!

I don't see this game ever coming out. For all I know these guys could just be scamming Bores out of his money and constantly delaying the game because it doesn't really exist. Even if it does get released, I don't see it being popular. On XBL, it'd have to compete with all the Indie titles. On iOS, good luck fending off Angry Birds or whatever the next fad will be. On PC, it'd be easier to release it for free!

So there you have it, there really is an IG game in the works. Maybe it'll come out by the time Bores covers the Dreamcast in his History of Video Games series.

2011 Summer Movies. Oh Good, More Trailer Praise

Here we go again. Time to hear Bores gush about movies that aren't out yet. I hope you like hearing “It looks awesome from the trailer”. Before we start, let’s tally last year’s list with the majority consensus. 10. Inception: Confusing but good fun. 9. The A-Team: Forgettable action from a memorable show. 8. Toy Story 3: One of the best films of the year 7. Grown Ups: Remember when Adam Sandler was funny? Yeah, hard to believe. 6. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time: The best video game movie ever, but that’s not saying much. 5. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps: Why did this need a sequel? 4. Tron: Legacy: Major love it or hate it 3. The Last Airbender: I’d call it a train wreck but that would insulting train wrecks. 2. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice: Nicholas Cage needs to stop doing Disney movies. 1. Iron Man 2: Not as good as the first but still a lot of fun. Alright, enough stalling. Let’s get through this. The video begins with Bores in front of his green screen telling us he’ll be counting down by release date. Considering his habit of ranking awful movies highly because “the trailer looked awesome” I can understand why he’s doing this. 10. Thor (why is talking like he just smoked a carton of Marlboros? Is he trying to sound badass?) Looks like Bores is done using static images and is now showing trailer footage. Effort? Maybe. “Before I watched the trailer, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to see this movie or not. But after seeing the trailer, it’s pretty much ultimately changed my mind.” So the trailer set out to accomplish what a trailer does, make people want to see the movie. Good God that was a badly written line. At least he didn’t say “I never read any of the Thor comics”. 9. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides He said he enjoyed the first movie but the two sequels left him confused. The sequels weren’t confusing. Overblown, ridden with plotholes, poorly-written and developed? Sure. But not confusing. Blah blah movie looks good from trailers. “Ponce de Leon eat your heart out matey”. Don’t compare a fictional adventure to something that happened in real life. 8. The Hangover: Part II He hopes it doesn’t fall into sequelitis. Next! 7. X-Men: First Class He remarks on all the negative reception but still thinks it looks cool from the movie trailer. You know what else looked cool from the trailer? Attack of the Clones. What did it have? Clunky dialogue, bad characterization, boring action scenes, and a painfully forced attempt at making Darth Vader a sympathetic character. Again Chris, don’t judge everything on the trailer. People are skeptical because X-Men 3 and Wolverine suuuuuucked. He also brings up that he read the Legion Quest storyline and is excited to see how the movie handles it. Legion Quest had nothing to do with how Xavier and Lehnsharr met. In fact, everything I read about First Class says nothing about Xavier’s son. 6. Super 8 Blah blah not much known blah blah attempts to explain the plot blah blah trailer looks cool blah blah big names attached. And that’s where the video ends. Bores needs money so he split the list in two. And you were doing so well last year with only one video. After reminding us he’s counting down by release date, because he thinks we’re idiots, he continues the list. 5. Green Lantern He brings up the negative reception towards the first trailer but then gushes over the second one. I like how he avoids giving his thoughts on the first trailer with the obviously unfinished effects. “Expect a lot of CGI scenes” Noooooooo really? I thought all of those scenes were stop-motion. At least he got Sinestro’s name right. 4. Transformers: Dark of the Moon (or as he calls it, Transformers 3) He’s aware that Bayformers are bad but because it’s Transformers he has to see it. No you don’t! You can choose not to see it. It’s not like you still do movie reviews. He’s hoping since Michael Bay admitted Revenge of the Fallen was bad that this will be an improvement. No, it won’t. It’s Michael Bay, he’s been making the same movie for years. It’s going to be loud, it’s going to be annoying, it’s going to be racist, and it’s going to suck. 3. Captain America: The First Avenger “Trailer made it look awesome” Yes Chris, that’s what a trailer does. You get a gold star. “A Super Soldier from the 1940’s being created to stop bad guys?” Woooow, he completely ignored the biggest aspects of Cap’s origin. It was during World War II and they’re fighting Nazis. Not “a hero in the 40’s fighting bad guys”. Just… ugh. “Now I know nothing about Captain America’s origin story” Oh well that explains it. Still it wouldn’t have hurt to do a little research. Oh wait, you’re Chris Bores. You don't do research. 2. The Smurfs He acknowledges the viewers confusion but says Smurfs were a part of his childhood so he’s curious how this works out. He says the CGI looks decent (no it doesn’t) but is leery of the NYC setting and the voice actors (specifically Katy Perry and George Lopez) because the voices from the 80’s series were “iconic”. He hopes a good script will save it. The footage shows Smurfette imitating Marilyn Monroe. Nothing about this will be good. 1. Cowboys & Aliens (at least he knows what an ampersand is and didn’t call it Cowboys vs. Aliens) He knows it’s corny but it has a lot of big names and the trailer looks awesome *headdesk* Sorry I needed a jolt, the blandness was knocking me out. By the way Chris, her name is Olivia Wilde. Not “the chick from House”. You couldn’t even say Thirteen, her character’s name? Whatever the list is done. Bores closes out saying if he has time he’ll review some of the movies (considering you only reviewed two movies last year, I don’t see this happening). “Cut, print, that’s a wrap” That’s still a lame catchphrase. Then a CGI rendering of a clapboard. Seriously what’s with all the CGI in his videos lately? It’s really off-putting. This was predictable as hell. I knew he would put all the comic book adaptations on there. Hell, I somehow predicated the Smurfs and that was as a joke. Now I feel sad. I need to go cheer myself up.

April Fool's Insanity. Lots of Stuff.

Wow, lots of stuff to say today. First thing, Linkara has done a great parody of the Irate Gamer for his April Fool's Triple Feature. Watch it! (Also thanks for the plug) Blog link: http://atopfourthwall.blogspot.com/2011/04/triple-feature.html Blip link: http://at4w.blip.tv/file/4937321/ Now, where did Guru Larry's parody go? According to Joe, the video wasn't screened with the higher-ups, and the overly-negative reception lead to people blaming the entirety of Channel Awesome instead of just one guy. They still found it funny though. See here: http://www.blisteredthumbs.net/forum/user-editorials-top-lists/blistered-thumbs-should-own-up-to-its-stupidity/ The video can still be seen here: http://gurularry.blip.tv/file/4954935/ I made a mistake. I believed that LadyBuggin777 really was Chris Bores' mother. I was wrong. After seeing some recent comments I'm inclined to believe it's just a blithering troll. This also means that Eric Allen lied to me and I have lost some respect for the Wise Sage. Then again, she made a similar comment on Bores' old Geocities page (long before the Irate Gamer) so I'm not sure what to believe. Oh yeah, there's IG's new video. His entry to the "YouTube NextUp Contest". In this contest, the winner gets $35,000 in funding and a spot at the four-day "YouTube Creator Camp". Is that a joke? However, only YouTube Partners may enter. Screw you regular users! The video has Bores blabber on about how great History of Video Games is, how he spends a lot of money on old consoles and music (wait what? It's Digital Juice! All you did was pay for the program!) Honestly what is his obsession with talking about the music in the series? It's not special. He also said he wants to make it look professional, as in something you'd see on the Discovery Channel or History Channel. But it doesn't have enough "End of the World" prophecies. And to get across his combination of "History, reviews and comedy" he uses the "Simon Says Penis?" joke. Even if you get past the voting, I doubt this will win over the judges. Moving from History, he says he "rebooted" the regular Irate Gamer show. Adding "complex and thought-out" storylines and multiple characters. He even announces that he's planning spin-off skits for these characters. ... Guys, I want you to imagine an entire skit with just Ronnie the Skeleton or just Devil Bores. You hear that cracking sound? That's your brain snapping from the expected atrocity this will become. In the description, IG says there's an NES review coming soon and that the story gets "complicated". The last time he advertised something as hard-to-follow, we got a lame parody of Sliding Doors. If his idea of "complicated" is having Ronnie stay or go, then we're in trouble. Whew. Have a wonderful April Fool's Day everyone. Don't get punked too badly.

Irate Gamer Joins Channel Awesome?!

http://www.blisteredthumbs.net/2011/03/irategamerintro/ (EDIT: Scroll down) Wait what? Blistered Thumbs now hosting the Irate Gamer?! This can't be right! What has happened to this site? Robble robble greedy shitheads only care abou- *looks at calendar* Oh that's right. It's almost April 1st. Don't worry I knew it was a joke the entire time. Guru Larry decided to troll the site for April Fool's Day and with One176's help made that short video. Yeah I know it's early buuuut it's March 31st in the UK and the 31st is still an acceptable day for April Fool's jokes. As an IG parody it's a great one. The jump-cuts, the stuttering, the repetition, it's all spot-on. Though I can't imagine a lot of people getting fooled by it. Ah well, still a great joke. EDIT: Though, instead of Scott Pilgrim music I would have used a stock, public-domain track. That's what he does all the time. So Zeldara, when will we see that crossover? Maybe with your help he'll finally get to that X-Men comics review he promised back in 2008 (see 1:53 here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USwkfhf9UII). EDIT: Looks like BT took the video down. Thankfully Larry still has it up on Blip. http://gurularry.blip.tv/file/4954935/ I kind of wonder why they took it down.

Ralph Baer Responds. No Chris, He Didn't Like It

I know I just uploaded something yesterday but I feel this needs a post. Back in October 2009, IG uploaded the 2nd part of his History of Video Games series, covering the Magnavox Odyssey. It was full of inaccurate information and needless references. Annoyed by this, vicviper592 sent Ralph Baer an e-mail showing him the video. Baer responded saying "it's full of inaccurate information".You can see that e-mail here: http://irategamersucks.blogspot.com/2009/10/ralph-baer-has-seen-odyssey-video.html A day after I put up that post, Bores wrote on his site that Ralph Baer responded to him. Chris claimed he was honored and that Baer "didn't understand it". Outright insulting the pioneer. http://www.theirategamer.com/news.htm Read under "10-18-09". Time passes. The other day Bores uploaded that "Making-Of" documentary going on about how much research and work went into it and how he received e-mails from college professors. That last line was the final straw. I myself sent Ralph Baer an e-mail, asking for his detailed thoughts on the Odyssey video. Here's a screen-cap of his response. So with a little prodding from me and the knowledge that Bores insulted him, Mr. Baer wrote a response to the videos. I'll post what was said here. I'll also remind you that I did not edit any of this. This is all Ralph Baer's words. Comments re. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgAbLUTb0Lg and at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnocN1dE5QQ re. "Ralph Baer spent a few years building a prototype of his idea" Fact: I had the idea on 3/31/66 and wrote a 4-page paper describing the whole scene on 4/1/66. A year and a half of part-time work with Bill Harrison, a technician and a few months of assistance by Bill Rusch, an MIT graduate engineer, and the Brown Box played ping-pong, volley ball, handball, light gun games, etc. All of the documents generated (several thousand) during that period starting with the 4-page document can be found by anyone at http://invention.smithsonian.org/resources/fa_baer_index.aspx, the Lemelson Center at the Smithsonian's website. re. Magnavox..."they also filed patents on his technology"...Wrong: Sanders Associates filed all videogame patents for the simple reason that I worked there (I was a division manager there with some 600 engineers, techs and support people in my division, none of whom worked on anything whatsoever that had to do with videogames. All patent applications, prosecutions etc. were funded by Sanders and worked on by Baer and by members of Sanders' patent department. ......"any company going into the videogame business had to pay royalties to Magnavox..." Wrong: The lawsuits were not about "videogames" in general but about games that contained game action in which machine-controlled symbols on-screen interacted with manually-controlled symbols (like the ball and the paddles in a ping-pong game)....in the early and mid-seventies, virtually all home and arcade games had that game action and were subject to license and were subject to being sued if they didn't take a license. ...Magnavox began producing the Odyssey...and as you can see, the console is very crude in design"....says who? It's actually very nice looking and a typical 1970's design. At 01.56...the swearing begins...for no good reason...and his criticism of the cables and the RF antenna switch box (which had to meet FCC interference specs) is all just so much ranting and raving. What he completely ignores (or just doesn't know because he is too young) is that the only way for a videogame signal to enter a current TV set was through the antenna terminals...there were no video or cable connections on 1970 and 1980 TV sets.....a situation which I complained about as early as 1972 when I told Magnavox that if they made access via an RCA jack to the first video amplifier in their TV set. I could give them a whole new set of novel products to plug in there....but they didn't want to add 5 cents to their product cost. At 03:04 he says: "When a card is plugged into the Odyssey card it actually creates new command codes..." What command codes ?...there is no microprocessor involved....micrprocessors didn't appear on the scene until many years later. What the cards actually do is to interconnect various logic circuits inside the Odyssey in different ways so as to produce different games. He shows a large circuit board in the background that is full of logic IC's. That board may represent what was in the mid-seventies arcade games ( like a hundred dollar's worth of IC's) but it has nothing to do with what is in an Odyssey, namely about 40 transistors, 20-odd diodes and a lot of resistors and capacitors, typical of the components in then-current TV sets, so that a TV manufacturer could handle the product on existing production lines. At 03:44 he completely ignores the use of the English control which determines the ball's vertical trajectory. Without the use of that control, there is no game. He also ignores the fact that there is a Speed control at the back of the unit so that both novice and experienced players can have challenging games.....this business of "falling off the end of the screen" is total nonsense...he just didn't bother to read to Instruction Book or to explore what that third (concentric) English knob is for at the left side of the hand-controller. At 04:08 he laments the lack of scoring....that was just not practical for a consumer product at the time. besides, we all have played ping-pong and other ball games since time immemorial by shouting out the score as we went along.....so who needed on-screen scores? At 04:27 he runs into some glitches and doesn't realize that he has an ancient device that undoubtedly has badly corroded contact fingers on the card and the connector in the Odyssey...a typical Odyssey problem. He doesn't seem to know that all connectors in old equipment are subject to this problem and that it can often be resolved by running an eraser over the contacts to get rid of the accumulated oxidation. At 04:42 he starts ranting about "you can do anything you want....". Since when does anyone play tennis or ping-pong or handball etc. without agreed-upon game rules beforehand. You just don't move into your opponents field (over the net), etc...this is really dumb stuff... Around 05:14 he shows "HAL" on-screen. He apparently uses one of the white spots of a chase game, covers the screen with a black overlay and inserts a red glassine window to color the spot...very creative, but irrelevant to a discussion of the Odyssey game. At 05:39 he starts to make silly remarks about the overlays that were optional for most games but actually lent a lot of color and relevance to such games as the light-gun (shooting) games and others intended for small children. Re. his description of all of the rest of the accessories (cards, chips, play money, etc.) he is basically correct. I doubt whether many people actually played with those things )ping-pong being the universal game played by everybody..it needs no overlay). Thhe packaging of these items with the Odyssey game just reflected Magmavox' management doubt about the validity of honest-to-goodness on-screen games. Why he feels it necessary to swear is beyond me. He then berates the simple games addressed at preschoolers....enough said. This guy has obvious talents...he knows how to put a good-looking video presentation on-screen. Now if he had just done it without the unnecessary vulgarity, stopped making faces and got some of his "facts" straight, this would be a presentation with a lot of interesting historical information, presented in a fun way. Ralph H. Baer 3/26/11 There we go Chris. Facts from the man himself. Many of which could be found through proper research. This also goes back to the fact that Mr. Baer did not like Chris' video, despite what he claims. I would like to see Bores try and talk his way out of this one.