Video games have a voice, and it’s quite interesting to me to see how they communicate. An unfortunately large amount of games speak to the user in very literal ways: through writing and sound. A tutorial consisting of a series of text boxes or voice commands is tolerable (though grating in some cases), but a more elegant solution is preferable when possible. It's when the game dis-empowers the player completely that I think such methods commit a cardinal sin of game design. Video games are a visual medium, and the most important feedback a player can receive is through observation. I don't need to be told that piranha plants will kill me in Super Mario Bros., even if I've never played it before. I can figure that out simply by looking at them. That's visual language, and it influences us in ways we might not even notice. Every single game we play utilizes it, though some better than others. There are probably a hundred videos and articles out there explaining how genius the visual language in The Legend Of Zelda, Doom, Mega Man and other classics are, but what's more interesting to me is how fighting games take advantage of this concept to teach players extremely complex and dexterously challenging systems.

Fighting games don't have a "level 1" with which to slowly introduce a player to their mechanics. In the old days, you dropped a quarter into a cabinet and jumped right into a match, where you got your shit pushed in over and over, against man or machine. And even while getting digitally dunked on, you'd be learning how to play, getting better every time you did it. It's this steep, never ending learning curve which makes fighting games so compelling for some people. It's no wonder that they took off in the 90's with the release of Street Fighter 2, a game which still sets the benchmark for the genre.

I attribute the great success of the Street Fighter series partly to its marvelous use of visual language. And I further attribute the relatively slow growth of its audience, the near death of the entire genre in the early 2000's, and its notoriously high barrier-to-entry to a severe lack of good visual language in many respects. How can something have both excellent and terrible visual language at the same time? We need only look to Street Fighter 4 for examples!

Let's assume you've never played a fighting game before, so you just hop right into a match against the AI. Upon selecting the character you most identify with or would make the best waifu, the game pretty much drops you in and makes you fend for yourself. But right away you're given enough information to at least familiarize yourself with the playing field before your inevitable, shameful defeat.



Since I picked Ryu, it couldn't be made more obvious to me that the big yellow bar next to my characters portrait is somehow linked to me. It's above my character, on my side of the screen, with Ryu's name under it. This is the same format used since Street Fighter 2 to indicate our life bars, and the reason it hasn't been changed in 20 years is because it's perfect. You can't do anything else to make it better. If one somehow didn't know what a life bar was, the game would be quick to teach them:



I don't care if you've never played a video game in your life, you know that getting punched is bad for you. When the long, yellow bar connected to your character is reduced because a Mike Tyson look-alike clocks your stupid face, you'll know right away that you should always want that yellow bar to be as filled up as possible. We take such a simple and obvious visual cue for granted, but there was a time when game designers just didn't know about this stuff. Street Fighter 1, for example, positioned both health bars in the center of the screen, one atop the other. Other early fighting games used numbers instead of bars.

Now, take a look at the first picture again. We can figure out a lot more than just our life bars from the start of the round. First, that there is a time limit. Second, that some strange series of blocks with the word "combo" at the end and a 3/4ths circle with the word "ultra combo" in it are also connected to us in a similar manner to the life bar. And third, that the stage we're in appears to be only partially revealed to us. One only needs to wiggle the stick around to discover that the stage extends both forwards and backwards from the player, and that they can not see the whole stage at once.

All of this is so intuitive that it seems weird to have it explained. You might think, "Duh, of course that's how it is, anyone who's played the game could tell you that." And it's true, but that's my point. This is visual language so strong even a child could understand it. That alone is appreciable on some level, to be able to convey such information so vividly. Stuff like HUD’s and menus are the groundwork of visual language, any competent development team knows how to make them because they’re something the player needs to utilize constantly. So, let's move on and examine something a little more complex and unique: blocking.

For any readers familiar with traditional fighting games, ask yourself this: how did you figure out blocking? Did someone tell you? Was it through trial and error? Do you even remember, or was it so simple that you forgot how you even learned it? For those few not in the know, in many traditional 2D fighting games one blocks attacks by holding the stick/d-pad in the direction opposite their opponent. Unlike Mortal Kombat or Smash Bros., there isn't a block button. A block button is easy to figure out, just press everything on the controller and you'll find it eventually, but directional blocking is a bit trickier to teach. The way Street Fighter does it is pretty brilliant.

Start with the obvious: walking away from your opponent is an inherently defensive action. If you don't want to get punched by a mean person, walk away from them. Perhaps by mere chance most of us found out that we could block attacks when we were trying to get away from our opponent. But by walking away you would put yourself out of range of your opponent’s attacks in the first place, and you can also block while sitting still by holding down-back, which isn't a very instinctive action. Even though it’s possible many players discovered blocking on accident, I think there’s another reason. Watch what happens when Balrog throws some jabs in Ryu's vicinity:


Ryu flinches, stops moving and enters his block animation even though he's not being hit by the punches; the same thing happens while I'm crouching and holding away. This only occurs when you point the directional stick away from the opponent. If you're standing still, or holding forward, or any direction but back or down-back you won't activate these animations. Street Fighter has what is known as proximity guard. Every attack in the game has a hitbox, which registers whether or not the attack collided with your character, and a proximity guard box, which tells your character to enter their blocking animation when the attack is within a certain range of them and you're holding back or down-back. Not only does this help to teach players how to block without actually putting them in danger, it indicates how powerful an attack is too. Stronger attacks have bigger proximity guard boxes and leave the player stuck in the guard animation for longer.

Incidentally, proximity guard happens to open up the game for some very strange exploitation and abuse, but the idea behind it is clever. At some point you're going to be walking away from the opponent, and at some point your opponent is going to be trying to attack you at the same time. Proximity guard increases the chances of someone organically learning to block while reducing the chance of them being in real harms way simultaneously. So, now a prospective scrub has learned how to directional block, but Street Fighter also has high/low blocking. That is, some attacks can only be blocked standing, some only crouching, and some either way. Guess what motherfuckers, the game uses visual language to teach you that too!

Let's start with low attacks, the ones you have to crouch to block. The visual language here is very strong and very obvious; you're going to be able to figure out what all these attacks have in common pretty easily:


Crouching kicks hit low. Crouching punches generally do not, though there are notable exceptions, namely among the two boxing characters who use punches for everything. Even then, there are pretty clear visual cues that indicate where to block. Basically, if it looks like it hits low, it does. Fancy that, huh? It’s extremely simple, but there’s something to be said for consistency when helping guide players in a game.

On the flip side, moves that need to be blocked standing, overheads, are telegraphed with arguably even stronger visual consistency. If someone attacks from the air, it’s safe to assume it hits overhead. Easy. As for grounded overheads, you can spot a theme here:



Almost all overheads look alike. What I didn’t show were the few kick overheads in the game, which, much like punch lows, also share qualities that would indicate to block them high (I just didn't feel like making gifs for them). You aren’t necessarily going to react to an overhead and block it correctly, what’s important is that when you get hit by it that you know exactly what happened so that in the future you’re more ready for that option from the opponent. In the heat of the moment you may not know what hit you unless the game provides this information in an easy to see way.

There are a lot of other ways Street Fighter uses visual language well, but I think it’s important to also know what bad visual language looks like. Whether intentional or not, the Street Fighter series has a lot of it. It begins with another very basic feature: throwing.

Every character has a throw, known as a normal throw. Throws can not be blocked. Courtesy of our renowned Russian wrestler Zangief, here’s what a normal throw looks like:


Guess how fast a throw is? If you go back to the gif of Balrog jabbing at Ryu, the jabs that Balrog throws are 3 frames in startup. Since Street Fighter runs at 60 frames per second, the moment the Balrog player hits his jab button, it only takes 30 milliseconds for that jab to come out. A well trained human might be able to react to the startup of a 14 frame move in Street Fighter. My point is, a jab is really fucking fast, it’s far beyond the capabilities of any persons reaction speed. A throw is just as fast. So imagine those jabs that Balrog is throwing, but you can’t block them, and they do a 10th of your life and knock you down. There’s a reason one of the most infamous complaints new players have about Street Fighter is that throws are cheap. The truth is that they aren’t, the game simply fails to convey important information about them, like their speed. How would anyone be able to tell that a throw is as fast as a jab? Here’s what a throw looks like when it misses:



What this would wrongly imply is that throws are slower than they are. The truth is that everything you see there is not a throw; it’s the animation of a throw missing. The actual animation for the start-up of a throw is almost nothing, because it’s so fucking fast. Additionally, throws are much shorter than they appear. You can see Zangiefs hands passing right through Ryu like he isn't there.This is frustrating as a player because you have no good reference for how far away someone has to be for you to throw them. It’s not just point blank, it’s a teeny tiny bit further than that, and that range makes all the difference between getting a vital grab and getting slapped in your kisser. It's important to note that you can stop someone from throwing you by doing a throw tech. Essentially, when someone throws you, you have a small window where if you also press throw you’ll completely negate their attempt. This window is 12 frames long, and has no indication of where it stops or ends. The game never tells you or hints in any way that you can tech a throw. You’ll learn that you can by complete accident only. Have fun.

A few characters have special throws, known as command throws. Command throws can NOT be stopped. If you’re hit by a command throw, that’s it, you can’t tech it and you take a large chunk of damage. Guess what idiot, these moves are sometimes faster than normal throws. They can be 2 frames rather than 3, which means they'll beats every normal throw if done at the same time. How would you know that? 3 frames is fucking ridiculous, 2 frames is so fast you can’t even comprehend it. It takes 100 milliseconds for you to blink, those throws are five times faster. Five Zangiefs could spin your ass halfway to Siberia one after the other before you open your eyes. They also have a range WAY bigger than you'd think. Like, it’s funny how huge the distance is. Once again, the patriotic Zangief demonstrates, using his Spinning Piledriver™:


It happens instantly. You’ll be minding your own business, and then suddenly Zangief is there, and his arms are around you, you’re upside down, KO. There’s no visual language, only the sting of defeat, and a cry of rage echoing in the night to signify what occurred. The only language we speak here is a language of hatred and fear, and it is universal. Note, by the way, that you'd never be able to tell just based on the animation that a Spinning Piledriver™ is faster than a normal throw. It certainly looks slower, doesn't it?

In all seriousness, while Zangiefs command throw is really good, it has problems, namely in that if the Zangief player guesses wrong and ends up whiffing it he’s open for serious punishment. But as a new player, characters like Zangief are the scariest of them all, because throws are so powerful when you don’t really know what they are. And the game fails to teach on any meaningful level.

Then there’s bullshit like Blanka, who seems to break every rule of visual communication that I can’t even make enough gifs to show you. Just watch this video:


Blanka is actually pretty bad. But if you’ve never played against him before, you’re fucked. He thrives on being weird and impossible to understand. This is intentional. Why??? It seems like this only discourages new players from picking up the game. It’s a baffling design philosophy, but you can see it in every Street Fighter game. For some god forsaken reason, Capcom really likes putting gimmicky bullshit in their fighting games.

A lot of these problems come from a lack of foresight. Capcom balances the game assuming the player already knows how to play. For example, Zangief needs a huge throw range because he'd be pretty bad without it, and that loss of visual language doesn't matter to an experienced player because they'll instinctively know the range just from playing a lot. But I don't think balance and visual language can't be reconciled, I think sometimes developers get lazy. It's easy to change a few numbers to make a throw have better range, it's much harder to create a new animation for the character every time an adjustment is made. However, concepts like throw techs never being taught is unacceptable, and I refuse to believe there's no way to properly communicate it. A developer has to think about applying visual language in every aspect of their game or risk alienating their potential audience. Losing isn't always the worst thing ever, but losing for reasons you can't understand has to be one of the most frustrating experiences you can subject a player to. There's a broken controller somewhere that can attest to that. It's a shame that a series which essentially kick-started the genre, and uses visual language in such effective ways, still has issues communicating to its players.

When designing games, one aspect that often requires rigorous amounts of testing is the difficulty curve. The developers themselves can, will, and indeed do, test their own game while making it, but as the developers of the game are so intimately familiar with it and spend so much time involved with it (for obvious reasons), oftentimes they can become desensitized to the difficulty some levels or areas may have. This is the reason that other people, unaffiliated or otherwise mostly uninvolved with the project at large, are brought in to help with game testing, as a fresh pair of eyes with little knowledge of the game and its mechanics provides a perspective closer to what most of the game's buyers will likely have: going into the game with little to no prior knowledge.

If the game devs have gotten so used to their own skill and testing of the game that they've made the game difficult for themselves – instead of difficult for the main group of consumers – then it's likely that the project will need to undergo a large shift. The levels may need to be tweaked or even overhauled outright, in order to make sure that the game has a proper, smoother difficulty curve.

Not every game is able to undergo that sort of heavy amount of testing, however. Open-world games, for example, are just that: open-world, and thus due to the freedom the player is provided, there isn't a way to fully design the game to have a universally smooth difficulty curve. Some players might head for the intended starting village, while others may choose to explore and potentially wander into areas that you wanted to be more dangerous.

One way of ensuring the difficulty is to simply ignore this issue and design the areas of the game in a linear way, despite the fact that it's an open-world game. Players can choose to travel to the harder areas right from the start, certainly, but due to how strong the enemies are, it's next-to-impossible for new players to truly progress in those areas, thus forcing them to head to the area you wanted new players to go. This solution works, but it results in a game at odds with itself, wanting the player to explore freely in an open world while simultaneously blocking players from exploring until they're powerful enough to defeat the monsters within.

Another solution is to utilize level-scaling, a system that, in a way, ignores the issue entirely while solving it at the same time.


No, no, not that kind of level scale.

The way level-scaling works is that when your character levels up and grows more powerful, in one way or another, the entire game world will level up with you. In theory, as you continue to explore the world, go dungeoneering and discovering useful treasures or equipment, buying and selling things, and doing quests, you will continue to fight enemies that provide a challenge, instead of getting a quest that brings you to an early area where everything is easy to fight and there isn't any sort of difficulty. Depending on the other parts of the game, this can manifest in a number of ways.

In an RPG where you level up by gaining experience points, then getting a handful of points to put into your statistics, like Strength, Dexterity and whatnot, how easy or hard the game is will mainly depend on your ability to strategize, affected somewhat by what stats you choose to increase. If you play as a warrior character, and you focus on increasing your magic-related stats each time you gain enough experience points to level up, you will probably have a harder time than if you focused on your speed, strength and endurance.

On the flipside, if you have an RPG where you level up by increasing skills through use rather than gaining experience points (think of The Elder Scrolls), the difficulty comes from what skills you choose to focus on increasing, affected somewhat by what you actually choose to do in the game. You can level up by playing a warrior and focusing on combat skills, or you could stay in town all day, gather ingredients and such, leveling up simply by increasing speech and crafting.

Of course, up above, I said “in theory”. Level scaling, like everything else related to game design, is fickle, and when it goes right, it can work quite well... but when it goes wrong, it's possible for its implementation to be very, very poor.

One very infamous example of a poorly-done level-scaling system is The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.


Oh, did you get to level 20 by increasing your Alchemy, Speechcraft, Mercantile, Illusion magic, and all those other non-combat skills? Too bad! You get Minotaurs anyway.

Oblivion's problems stem from a mixture of issues carried over from its predecessor, Morrowind. Morrowind also included level-scaling to a degree, but it was much less noticeable (and was also much more enjoyable as a result). Oblivion included a much higher degree of level-scaling, implementing it not just in terms of the enemies you would face, but also in terms of the randomly-picked loot you could find, different versions of a quest's reward depending on what level you were when you completed the quest, so on and so forth.

Where the problems lie is with the leveling itself. When you increase your class-specialty skills enough to level up, you're able to choose three statistics to increase. The increase is governed by how many times you leveled up a skill related to it: if you are a mage, yet you decided to increase your swordplay ten times for some reason, you would be able to get five extra points in Strength instead of just one. Later in the game, these higher increases became more and more important as the enemies grew tougher and tougher to deal with, and since their major skills and statistics weren't that helpful, it simply became a mess. Oblivion did include a difficulty slider, but due to these issues it often served as a crutch to help players continue playing with their poorly-built characters, and since the game didn't explain its own inner workings well enough, if clearly at all, the game's problems were made very, very obvious.

This ended up encouraging players to either never level their character at all, thus keeping all the enemies at a low, manageable level as well, or to choose a class that wasn't what they planned to focus on, increase the skills they did plan to focus on, and then work on their class's major skills whenever they wanted to level up and get some stat boosts. A player who wanted to play a mage, for example, would pick a warrior class, increase their magic skills a fair amount, then play as a warrior for a short while just so they could increase their “major” skills enough to get a level up. If it sounds like a completely backwards system, that's because it is. If you reached level 20, and you weren't able to increase your stats enough thanks to the game's backwards leveling system, then you would be forced to fight the scaling enemies with a weaker character. Even if you managed to increase your sword skill all the way to 100, if you were lacking in the Strength, you would still be in trouble.


Maybe he's a bandit because despite all that high-end equipment he still can't afford some better pants.

Not just a gameplay issue, the level-scaling in Oblivion also extended to its atmosphere. At high levels, players could fight bandits on the road that would be equipped with incredibly rare or valuable weapons and armor, so valuable that in terms of the game world, the bandits could simply take off their armor, sell it to someone, and end up with more money than they could likely ever make by being a bandit. This wasn't just an immersion-breaker, but also an economy-breaker: instead of rare and valuable glass, ebony, or Daedric items being rare and valuable, you could easily find some bandits in the wilderness wearing some, give them the boot, then take all the loot and sell it off for far more cash than you could ever need.

Another, less wonky version of level-scaling was also used in Wizardry 8, which was released a good half-a-decade before Oblivion.

Wizardry 8, like Wizardry 7 and 6 before it, utilized the series' traditional party system, making a team of six characters to wander around a world, and dungeons, in a first-person perspective. Unlike Oblivion, which was more of an action-RPG open-world game, Wizardry 8 was a far more traditional RPG, not just with the party system, but also including turn-based battles and much more focus on character-building and dungeon-crawling.

Wizardry's level-scaling worked in the ways you might expect: your characters would level up after gaining enough experience points, and with each level you could increase a couple stats, increase a couple skills, and for mages, you could pick a new spell to learn if you wanted to (if nothing caught your eye, you could always save your spell picks for next time). Your party's average level determined what enemies you would face, but since the positioning of your characters was important in battle, strength wasn't always everything. This became most apparent once leaving the tutorial dungeon, as enemies on the overworld were often spawned in larger groups, ranging from five or six enemies to possibly fourteen foes, or even more.


Since Wizardry 8 functions more as an RPG than an action-RPG (like Oblivion), these big groups of enemies can often inflict status effects on you, too! Fun!

The problem with this is similar to Oblivion's, in that if your characters were built poorly, or your stats weren't well-focused or your skills weren't chosen smartly, you would often be too overwhelmed to continue. Unlike Oblivion, Wizardry 8's leveling system was much, much more logical and intuitive, but like Oblivion, it still didn't provide enough clear information and explanation to ease new players in well enough.

Of course, what that meant was that a player playing on Novice could easily make some characters that worked alright at the start of the game, but would quickly become overwhelmed during the middle, thus making that need to restart with new characters much more harmful. If a player's team was around level 10 or 12, with quite a lot of hours already invested into it, and then the player realized that they had messed up badly and needed to start from scratch, the realization could be enough to push the player away from playing the game, at least for some time.

Despite how negative the examples I've given have been, this isn't to say that level-scaling is an inherently bad system, because it's not. Wizardry 8 actually does it quite well, and the problem more comes from a potential newbie's lack of know-how rather than the system itself. The point is that level-scaling is a design choice that requires a very careful set of hands and a great deal of focus and understanding to get right.

With all that said, here are some things to think about when implementing a level-scaling system into a game.

• If your game has enemies that can give characters status effects, how will you design the level-scaling system to make this fairer all around? If a somewhat-poorly-built character is blinded by an enemy and has no skills or magic to deal with it due to the poor build, what can you do to even things out? Statuses could wear off after some time, for example, or you could group statuses into tiers, with potions to cure all low-tier status effects, ones for mid- and high-tier, so on and so forth.
• How do a player's character, or characters, level up in the game, and what effect does the level up have on them? Do they level up by using skills, and each level lets you increase stats? Do they level up by gaining experience points, and you can use this to increase their proficiency in skills? Level-scaling needs to have synergy with the actual leveling system, so study the way your game uses leveling and then think of how scaling would work in tandem.
• Perhaps most importantly, how will you have the game help new players learn and understand the leveling system, and how will that affect the worth of the level-scaling? Will you include little blurbs of information for the stats, skills and things accessible at any time? Will you give players a brief yet succinct explanation at the start, discussing ways to start? It's easy to simply type out huge detailed explanations and then put them in a game's manual, but many players, especially in recent times, are more likely to jump into the game itself rather than peruse a manual. Perhaps, as discussed in the article on tutorials, you could implement a tutorial that experienced players could turn off?

I know that there was going to be something with the Recommended YouTube Poops that would be coming out in September, but sometimes life gives you rather unexpected surprises that affect us in more ways than one. Between preparations for the Halloween festivities and the fact that some of us are entering various segments of our university days (or in my case, just about getting close to exiting them), we realized that there were some aspects that were a bit more important for us to work with than others. With that said, we still have been able to find various videos that we've somehow found a way to really enjoy them in our own, unique ways, regardless of how early or late they were released within these respective months. We hope you enjoy each of these videos we present to you, and we can't wait to actually get some enjoyable videos down for November as well (and hopefully meet that deadline this time).
 
Crazy Luigi's Pick: "Underwater Octagon [200 Subspecial]" by Mr. Lenoz (September)



Throughout my time covering various YouTube Poops for YouChew, there have been many different methods of video making that I’ve seen people use in various videos. However, one of the types that I rarely end up talking about would be the YouTube Poop Music Video kinds of videos. To me, these types of videos are just a bit too simplistic to talk about since a good majority of them are basically overlapping certain characters’ sounds over a song you like. Granted, as someone that’s tried to make one myself (and personally speaking kind of failed at making a proper one), I know how more complex it really is to implement the sounds to match up with the music properly, but I just don’t really find it all that original. In fact, the only real ways that I would like talking about a YTPMV like that is if it does something unique and interesting that none of us have ever really seen before.

Enter this magical piece with Jack Black in Sesame Street going on an underwater adventure with Elmo (wow…). Now if you were viewing this video under only an audio standpoint, you might think to yourself “this is nothing really special.” However, even though the idea may be simplistic, it’s the execution that makes it go over the top with its quality. Some of the sound effects that were used, such as Jack Black saying “oh man!” and Elmo saying “ow!” might be easy to understand why they were used, but they really are quite memorable and likable enough to not think of anything negative with them. However, if you thought the musical cues were good, then just wait until you get to the actual visuals.

I swear that the visuals that were used were what brought this thing up to the top of my interests here! Many of the visual effects that this video provides are things that would make any other YouTube Pooper feel jealous on how it worked out so damn efficiently. After what looked like a simplistic introduction, the video cuts into water bubble effects to Jack Black being trapped in multiple octagon prisons that really bring on the Sesame Street simplicity to action. Another detail that I really enjoyed here was when Elmo said stop; there would be dozens of stop signs around the screen showing up at the right place and time with Elmo’s face being in the middle of it all. The green screen effects that were used to separate the original background with the action that was going on with new, trippy backgrounds really helped it out as well. However, it’s only in the second half where I can say that the effects truly shine brighter than ever to the point where I just can’t help but recommend this to you almost like a thousand times over here! That’s honestly how good I thought this video is.

HerrVarden's Pick: Simpsums & Son: Tales From the Sock Drawer by Nineroe (September)



Ah, who doesn't love the Simpsums? It's a wonderful recap of all the forgettable, awful and bizarre moments that the recent seasons of the longest running animated sitcom have given us. Joe Matar does a great job of getting the voices and the effects right to deliver a shoddy looking, but very apt summary of the episode that he tortured himself with. With that in mind, it only seemed fitting someone would take their hand at bastardizing the bastardization of a bastardization of the Simpsons. And that person is Ninero, who I previously commended for his work in Robotnik, in victor stupri. From the start I could tell that this video was going to be quite a ride. The slow-down of the intro of the video as clips of recent Simpsons blunders show up in inverted grayscale set the mood perfectly for an eerie/surreal approach but it's quickly switched once the first FAT comes along. From there comes an ear-rape and tons of stutters and repetition and it only keeps building up. The choices for music in this video are interesting. Certainly there was a cliched choice but it was pulled off with a good amount of skill. The background ones were more fitting and wove the piece together a lot better than if the clips were just there without any audio. The zoom-ins and stretching really add to the visual appeal of the poop, as well as the colorful effects that Nineroe comes up with. The best effect of this video I won't spoil but I mean it's a 3 minute video, you can totally catch it and relish in all it's brilliance. Overall, I think this poop serves to show how useful the Simpsums can be as a source.

Crazy Luigi's Pick: "YTP: DK Raps his way to hell and back." by Dark Fox (October)



With the new environment of YouTube Poop these days, it really takes quite a good personality and effective learning skills to succeed as a newcomer. Usually, these types of qualities are quite rare to have in most people, especially when dealing with a type of genre that involves heavy editing and working with multiple video files and editors at once. Unfortunately, while newer users may have the advantage of finding a viable video editor like the most recent version of Sony Vegas or Adobe Premiere Pro that most people back in the 2000's didn't have, the trouble that can plague most people with their videos is the fact that people have to deal with an over-saturation of ideas that have already been done thousands of times beforehand. Like many memes from the late 2000's (WHAT THE FUC- Boom being an example off the top of my head), video sources from not only cartoons like Super Mario World and the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, video games like the animated CD-i games and I.M. Meen, and even video reviewers like the Angry Video Game Nerd and the Nostalgia Critic have already been done by many different people beforehand, and it kind of leads to the idea that your video is somewhere along the lines of unoriginal .Now the best solution would normally be to avoid it altogether, but if you must use them, then your best bet is subverting expectations in that regard.

Enter Dark Fox, who had entered the YouChew world only last year (being known as TAW012294 back in the day), yet has already found his own voice both here and in the world of YouTube Poops. Now admittedly, in the past, I've always viewed his videos that something that were considerably good (especially his Halloween video from last year that admittedly got snubbed from a third place medal), but could have been a bit better. Usually that type of feature that made me think that way was because of sources or ideas that I had thought were a bit too... overused, to say the least. However, with this video, I see this being a point where he's really grown with not only his effects, but also his way of providing jokes for people that see it. It's almost like in due time, we'll be seeing Dark Fox as a viable YouTube Pooper that will get many subscribers and fans in due time with the way his craft has been working these days.

Anyways, getting away from that subject for just one moment, the actual video by Dark Fox to me has basically been very surprising to not only watch, but really enjoy as well! After starting out with Donkey Kong's shit-eating NES grin, we get to see a pretty humorous Donkey Kong Country Returns bit with not only a playful mocking of the Shrek fad that's currently going on, but also a pretty funny thing with Donkey Kong "jizzing" on the screen and having some of it covering the screen up. In fact, most of the video has a surprisingly trusting method on somewhat honoring the memes that would normally be considered respectable even while removing context (such as the Scatman song and that Mmm-Whatcha Say song that was around in the late 2000's), while also poking around with said memes like the Wombo Combo and those "joke videos" that happen with the 9/11 attacks (or rather, the World Trade Center attacks) from an idea that "yes, they are old as fuck, but I'm going to play around with them as a means of pumping something new out of them." As for the visual effects that were used in that video, there were effects that were used around the halfway to second half portion of the video that kind of surprised me as thinking "that's something Dark Fox put in with his own video?" that left me impressed by him, such as Mario jumping out of the screen or Donkey Kong travelling around multiple worlds and dimensions in the process. Throw in a rather funny newspaper gag and a joke that really worked wonders for itself in more ways than one, and you got a video that leaves this long-time lurker, part-time maker impressed with his efforts and hopeful he remains an integral part of the YouTube Poop system for years to come.

TheOneManBoxOffice's Pick: "Frying Nemo" by EmperorLemon (October)



EmperorLemon never ceases to amaze me on how well crafted and hilarious his poops are. Just recently, he's been tackling Pixar movies as his main sources, from The Incredibles to Cars. His latest poop, "Frying Nemo", tackles the 2003 film Finding Nemo, which I find to be one of the studio's best movies, though according to Lemon's Q&A, it was his least favorite Pixar film. Nevertheless, as soon as I clicked the link to the video, I was amazed on what he did with the footage, a lot of it reminding me of how Geibuchan makes his videos. Lemon manages to squeeze pretty much every single common YouTube Poop effect, including ear rape, visual jokes, and masking (some of the best I've seen overall in my honest opinion) into one, and editing them into something unique and interesting throughout, thus further proving that you can make something original by using the resources you have learned from watching others without pulling a "copypasta". He also makes the poop story-driven by making fun of every event of the original movie in order, from the beginning where Marlin's wife dies to the encounter with the three sharks and the escape through the minefield. While this can be classified as a YouTube Poop, I would personally think of this as a visual riff on the movie itself. Instead of using spoken words a la Mystery Science Theater 3000, Lemon makes fun of the movie by mangling each scene one by one, turning into more of a warped version of what goes through his mind when he views the movie. I can say that he's not alone. A lot of us, especially on this forum, think of something similar when we view movies and TV shows from our childhoods. The kicker with all this is that he's just getting started. He plans to make a part two to this in the near future, and I'm sure it'll probably match this one, if not, be even better. With all that said, this is currently my favorite of EmperorLemon's poops and my choice for Poop of the Month.

ParappaTheRapper's Pick: ytpsuddendeath //『ＹＴＰ』※ ｲんﾉㄎ ﾉㄎ ﾑ ǤԾԾÐ ЏﾉÐ乇Ծ ｱﾚ乇ﾑㄎ乇 Ц刀ㄎЦ乃ㄎζ尺ﾉ乃乇 ﾉ Щﾑ刀ｲ ｲԾ Ðﾉ乇 by Gab H. (October)



I can't claim to know that much about Gab H. They have many videos, the oldest dating back 5 years ago. So it's safe to say they've been around and know what they're doing. Excuse me if this is someone of fame and they changed their name recently (as YouTube has allowed us to do for awhile now). To the point, most of the videos by this YouTube Pooper seem to be, as of late, much more focused on self-awareness. It's almost as if the formulaic nature of the newer videos entail something of a self-satirical twist on YouTube Poop itself. Perhaps I am analyzing far too much into it. I mean the title itself uses Japanese characters that say ｲんﾉㄎ ﾉㄎ ﾑ ǤԾԾÐ ЏﾉÐ乇Ծ ｱﾚ乇ﾑㄎ乇 Ц刀ㄎЦ乃ㄎζ尺ﾉ乃乇 ﾉ Щﾑ刀ｲ ｲԾ Ðﾉ乇 which is obviously "This is a good video please subscribe I want to die." If that isn't some kind of sign of the self awareness then I'm not entirely sure what else it could mean.

This YouTube Poop, as the description tells us, is a project spanning a few months with heavy intermissions. I think that works in it's favor, as each part feels sort of "fresh" in that it doesn't feel like a 2 minute video that really drags. Most of it is a lot of sources that have been quite overused, like CD-i Zelda, the Nostalgia Critic, the Angry Video Game Nerd, Dat Guy From Boston, and others. Then you have things like Karma Police by Radiohead and that interview of Tom Cruise talking about Scientology. It almost seems as if the title makes more sense in that most of the sources are that same old tired stuff we've seen, albeit still entertaining in my opinion. Yet on the brim of those same old tired sources we get a few little touches of more unique clips. It's these small bouts that offset that feeling of death that the title conveys. It's as if the video itself is lost in the common sources, choking to death on them, then getting small gasps of air in the form of unique and fresher sources.

On top of this idea we have such a collage of jokes and effects. It's very visually and audio heavy, being more of a frantic stutter kind of poop than anything else. But, that doesn't stop some sentence mixing, throwing in a few words like "cock" and the ever popular "gay" from Hotel Mario. Then the Nostalgia Critic exclaiming that "all the people are like" *dance track*. This video really has no rules, it drags in so many things that somehow blend and work together. The odd music selections, inserting strange clip art of bees, the use of timing in both visual and sound effects, playing a small piece of music repeatedly which reminds me of what I can only think to call Imaperson's Head Bob Noise, and the list just spans on. It doesn't have everything, but to me it doesn't need to have everything. As with my YouTube Poops I seem to enjoy, it never overstays it's welcome and what we get is very enjoyable. Whether the creator originally had the idea to do something both enjoyable and seemingly self-aware is unknown to me, but my interpretation is that this video is much smarter than your average YouTube Poop even if it doesn't seem so on the surface. It also goes with out saying it has had some hard work put into it and it shows in the amount of effects and tiny details that are too many to count.
 
As always, these are the best YouTube Poops that we've seen throughout these past two months. If you feel like we've missed anything that came out during these past two months, please let us know about it with a comment describing why you feel that way, if possible. With that said, we hope you enjoy this article for what we've got and move on from there.

Hey, the new Call of Duty game came out! I think it's the 3rd this year! Aren't you excited? Are your Dorito™ dust encrusted fingers shaking with excitement at the prospect of playing another BRAND NEW entry in the critically acclaimed, best selling franchise?! Or are you just going through Dew withdrawal?

So, yeah, I've made it clear what I think of the CoD games in many forum posts. To summarize: I don't like 'em. Yet, I've purchased the latest two entries in the series the week they came out. Why? I guess because I have no self respect, and need to be told by large companies what to buy in order to achieve a sense of worth so lacking within me. And also because I keep thinking I can recapture that wonderful joy I felt at playing the original Modern Warfare so long ago. That game was the fucking tits when I was a tween. Now, I am made bitter and cynical by the continual reinforcement of a single fact: these games are really fucking terrible.

I gotta give some credit here, Black Ops 2 didn't offend me all that much. At least, it made sense sometimes, and that's frankly enough for me to not hate it. Ghosts, on the other hand, was a god damn travesty to the FPS genre. I've never felt more dis-empowered as a player. Advanced Warfare has been called a "return to the roots of the series" by some. It's a few steps in the right direction, but it's still not enough. To be clear, I'm strictly talking about the multiplayer here. The campaigns for these games, Advanced Warfare included, are barely worth mentioning. One purchases a CoD game to play against others online, no matter how much money Activion paid Kevin Spacey to convince us otherwise. That said, a play-through of the 5 hour long story mode is valuable in the way that a root canal without happy gas is valuable. You can say that you did it, and then never do it again. Everyone else should watch it for laughs, at the expense of the script, voice acting and "gameplay" consisting largely of other people telling you what to do, getting killed for not walking in the precise path the game expects you to, and pressing a button to advance the plot. Yes, you do actually have to press F to pay your respects at someone’s funerals. It is shockingly not the stupidest thing in the game.

There are two big changes Advanced Warfare brings to the table: movement and graphics. Seriously, the graphics are actually worth noting here. They're really good, and optimized quite well for once. The only reason I point this out is because, since Modern Warfare, the visuals have remained largely unchanged. Even Ghosts looked like it could have been released in '07. So for the series to FINALLY make the leap to next-gen fidelity is a welcome improvement. I mean, they only did it because they had to, not out of any want to push the medium forward, but at least the results are satisfactory. “They only did it because they had to” should be the subtitle of this game.

Clearly scripted, set-up photo courtesy of whoever. Point is, the game looks good.

Aside from the graphics, the truly largest change to the gameplay formula is the addition of Exosuit movement. It’s the main selling point of the game, advertised as a revolutionary new way to traverse the environment, ADDING A WHOLE NEW DIMENSION OF VERTICILITY TO COMBAT, etc. Look, I’m gonna lay it straight for you right here homies: it’s not as good as Titanfall, the thing it's directly and blatantly trying to compete against. It feels clunky, the physics are weird, and it doesn't really change anything at all.

Your new abilities include a double jump, which sends you way too high at way too steep an angle, a dash which can be performed on the air or ground, a kick ass power slide which is completely useless, and...that’s it. The game fails to commit to these new options in any meaningful way. Your double jump is good exclusively for climbing things, it’s too slow and predictable for use in combat or for anything aside from getting higher. The dashes make you go fast for a moment, but you awkwardly lose all momentum once they end, so most of the time you’ll just stick to running around like you always have. And the wicked sick power slide sucks because you can't aim during it, unless you equip a perk, because I guess they though it'd be super unfair. It’s like the developers were scared people would have fun or something. The first time I used the Exo abilities I thought to myself, “that’s it?” The game feels barely changed at all. I guess that’s what they were going for though; it’s the same CoD it’s always been, with a few new shiny “changes” to show off in advertisements. They even have a game mode where the Exo suits get turned off. You know, in case you hate new things, but feel like spending $60 anyway. The Exo abilities even come with a weakness: you show up on the enemies mini-map every time you use them. Why even bother?

I don’t mean to imply I never used the Exo movement. I made frequent use of it, partly because I was bored of just holding the Shift key down, and partly because I had to. Now the maps in the game have shoehorned vertical elements in them. Basically, in lieu of a ladder, you can jump up to high places. Sometimes there’s even still a ladder though, which is frankly baffling and hilarious at the same time. It goes to show how little faith the designers had in their fancy new game mechanics. It made me pine for Titanfall. This fucking game made me pine for fucking Titanfall.

Issues that have plagued this series since Modern Warfare 2 remain, because they aren’t seen as issues. There are no spawn times in the popular game modes (in other words, the only game modes you'll be able to play once this shit is a month old). You die and can spawn immediately. Now, in theory, this is fun because there’s no waiting. In practice, this eliminates any form of momentum from the game. There’s no push and pull for position and space. Everyone is everywhere, all the time, and dying is not punishing. In the short time I’ve had this game, I’ve spawned behind enemies multiple times every single match. I’ve had enemies spawn behind me multiple times a match. This is exacerbated by still-awful map design. Long ago, CoD developers decided that camping was a really terrible thing for some reason, as if choke points aren't a healthy part of the natural ebb and flow in an FPS, and that demanding a team work together to push through to an enemy’s position is a bad thing. There’s no rhythm, it’s just constant butt-fuckery. To get rid of camping, they eliminated sight-lines and added a great many ways to traverse the map, to an excessive degree. Essentially, you’re never safe anywhere. You have to be constantly moving or else someone is going to be behind you soon, either due to the awful spawns or the nature of the maps.

There's a genuinely comprehensive customization feature in the game, for some reason. You'll never see any of your items, and most of them need to be unlocked through random drops the game occasionally hands out. This is where you'd put on your Dewrito gear.

To even the negativity, I have to say that I had fun for a little bit. The weapons are more balanced than they've been in awhile. SMG's can't do literally everything anymore, basically, even if they are still largely more powerful than other weapon types simply because you don't have to aim with them. Maps aren't quite so awful as they were in Ghosts, so at least there's some symmetry that forces conflict to the center, even if there are too many ways to get there. Kill streaks, or score streaks, or whatever the fuck they are, have been better balanced as well, or at least the stupider ones are much harder to get.

I should mention that this is the first CoD game developed by Sledgehammer studios. They apparently made a whole new engine for it, though who knows if that's just marketing talk. It doesn't feel like a new engine, it feels like a less refined version of the engine the game has always been made on. Mainly, the physics are clearly not up to snuff, with weird interactions between surfaces and projectiles and strange momentum cancelling which removes almost all control of your character from you once you're in the air and makes going fast pretty much impossible.

Look, the whole CoD system is fundamentally broken. Having to level up to get equipment over time is stupid. Perks are stupid. Score streaks are stupid. But maybe they can be fun, because things can be stupid and fun at the same time. The core gunplay isn’t bad, in theory. Headshots could be rewarded a bit more strongly, with body shots made weaker, but overall it’s easy to have fun killing people. It’s too bad the game can’t get out of its own way. I miss having to check for campers in the popular hiding spots. I miss having clearly demarcated spawn zones and areas of engagement, with simple maps and long sight lines. I miss having skill and
smarts placed above mindless, repetitive, grueling, non-stop, emotionless action. I want to feel fun within my brain. Release me from this hell. I’m re-installingTitanfall now, this is the 7th circle.

Yep, Titanfall is a better game than Advanced Warfare could ever hope to be. It privileges player skill above anything else, even as it hides beneath of a guise of being friendly to any skill-level with its AI enemies. Maps are extremely large but players can traverse them at great speed with the movement system. This same movement system balances out the fighting of the game by giving players the ability to actually out-maneuver their opponents aim, something lost to almost every other shooter. Combat feels great, with minimal bullet spread and a heavy emphasis on landing headshots. Weapon selection is parsed down to only what is necessary, making each option feel different and useful, contrasted with the bloated and samey-feeling armory of Advanced Warfare. The game embraces every element it introduces, rather than being ashamed of anything remotely deviating from the same old modern shooter formula.

Maybe with some refinement Advanced Warfare could be a fun game. With the inevitable sequels soon to come, perhaps we'll see that. As of now, it's not even close to being worth $60.

THE GOOD:
Appreciably improved, well optimized visuals
New movement options break up the monotony of getting around
Better weapon balance than expected

THE BAD:
Worthless campaign mode
Poor map design
Guns still feel too similar to each other
Baffling design decisions and poor spawn points result in a frustrating, dis-empowering multiplayer experience
Leveling up to get equipment remains a poor, tedious, skinner-box method of keeping players in the game
Score streaks are once again dumb, albeit in a less intrusive way
Complete failure to commit to its new gameplay elements
Nearly 50 GB install size, holy shit
It's CoD with the freshest coat of paint Activision could be bothered to give it, but it's still CoD
The community for these games is the worst I've ever seen and I don't think it's ever going to change
Titanfall is better and I think it costs less too, go get that instead if you want a good CoD game

A Look At…: The Tom & Jerry Shorts

As some of you may know, in college, I major in animation, and I’ve had a passion for cartoons since I was a wee boy. You may say to me “Who didn’t?”, and I’d emphasize myself. I didn’t just watch a lot of cartoons as a kid, I LIVED OFF THEM, and to this day, I still do. Hell, I’ve managed to rip pretty much all of the animated cartoon shorts from the 30s to the 60s onto my external hard drive from my own personal DVD collection (don’t ask, I’m not telling how). I primarily watched Cartoon Network most of the time, but I had my fair share of Nickelodeon and old-school Disney Channel for my cartoon fix as well. However, on Cartoon Network, the shows I mostly would look forward to watching, aside from some of their best programming like Johnny Bravo and The Powerpuff Girls, are the 30 minute to 1 hour blocks of classic theatrical cartoons such as Acme Hour and Bugs and Daffy. Of course, this was how I, as well as pretty much everyone on this site, was first exposed to the likes of the Looney Tunes, and in the case of Acme Hour, some rare oddities that almost no one remembers anymore. My personal favorite cartoon block that appeared on the channel in the daytime also introduced me to one of the most iconic cartoon duos in the history of both television and cinema: Tom & Jerry.

Cartoon Network’s intro that accompanied the Tom & Jerry blocks until 2004.

To begin with, I don’t really have that big of an explanation on how I got hooked on the Tom & Jerry shorts. Being a kid who watched Cartoon Network religiously like a conservative Christian who watched every episode of The 700 Club that aired (did I really just type that?), I just sat, laughed my ass off, and was entertained at whatever I was watching. Pretty much any kid who watched Cartoon Network has been introduced to the franchise through this method. Later in life, I managed to get all three of the Spotlight Collections and the Chuck Jones Collection on DVD, so that I can watch them, not just without the commercial breaks, but also in their uncut form. As for the cartoons themselves, the titular cat-and-mouse duo defined and became synonymous with the cartoon chase, even before the creation of Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner. To say that these shorts are amongst the classics like the Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies shorts is a complete understatement. The slapstick is some of the best I’ve seen in any cartoon and the characters almost never spoke to each other, making the films more like silent slapstick pictures a la Charles Chaplin’s “Little Tramp” as opposed to its competition like the Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies, Popeye, or the numerous Disney cartoons featuring Mickey Mouse and friends.

This is what made these cartoons both fun and interesting to watch amongst animation and film enthusiasts, as there aren’t a whole lot of series that can get away with this method flawlessly without people turning a blind eye. Nowadays, a lot of what you see in these films are common. In fact, many have taken note of what these films have contributed to the art of animation and the film world. Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons, was inspired to create a cartoon within a cartoon called Itchy and Scratchy as a satire and tribute to the franchise. Without this franchise, not only would the animation industry not be the same, but neither would creators William Hanna and Joseph Barbera’s legacy. In fact, that probably wouldn’t last long, even though they would also produce other MGM cartoon shorts like most of Tex Avery’s work (i.e. Droopy, Screwy Squirrel).

The Hanna-Barbera Films

The Cat Concerto (HB/1943)

When I watched these cartoons as a kid, the ones that popped up the most on Cartoon Network are the ones directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, not only because they are the creators of the titular characters, but these are by far the best out of all the ones that were made for theatrical release, starting with the first ever cartoon in the series, the 1940 film Puss Gets the Boot, and ending the era with the 1958 film Tot Watchers. Those who worked on the films have admitted in interviews that they have become just as memorable for Metro Goldwyn Mayer Studios (henceforth MGM) as one of their movie musicals like The Wizard of Oz, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, or Anchors’ Aweigh in terms of craft, memorability, and their contribution to both film and animation as a whole, thus making the duo a valuable asset to the studio and leveling the playing field against the competing studios like Disney or Warner Brothers. In fact, the cat and mouse have made two appearances in two MGM musicals. The first was the 1945 film Anchors Aweigh starring Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra, where Jerry is a ruler of a fantasy land who created a law where no one is allowed to be happy simply because he isn't happy. Kelly turns it around by singing a song to him and teaching him how to dance. The other was in a 1953 film called Dangerous When Wet, where both Tom and Jerry swam with actress Esther Williams in a dream sequence.

As for the shorts, perfecting the art of cartoon violence has never been an easy task, especially back when these films were being made. The Hays Production Code, which was known for being strict on what is and what isn’t allowed in film (i.e. heavy acts of violence, references to drugs, language, etc.), was in effect around this time, so filmmakers in the United States were cautious as to what material they were allowed to put onto film. This was somewhat of a precursor to the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) rating system. However, this didn’t stop Hanna-Barbera or any of their animators from churning out material. In fact, during the making of the films, the animators (including directors Hanna-Barbera) would pull pranks on each other, and this lead to the inspiration of the gags that we see in the shorts. As a result, 7 of their cartoons received the Oscar for Best Cartoon Short Subject, while 6 others were only nominated, thus a total of 13 shorts caught the eye of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

The uniqueness of these cartoons, as opposed to the ones made by Warner Brothers, Disney, and Paramount, came from the animation. The directors decided against overusing the most important animation principle discovered by Disney animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, the “squash and stretch”, and instead keep the structure of the characters intact throughout most, if not, all of the film. The only time the characters broke structure is when there’s an emphasis on impact, such as being flattened or squeezed like an accordion. You could say that this is more of a realistic approach…well…as realistic as a cartoon cat-and-mouse duo can get, without all the body bending and making it as if the characters were made from silly putty. MGM would use this technique on some of their other series as well, with a prime example being 1939's Peace on Earth. Not only that, but the designs of the characters have changed over time since their debut in 1940’s Puss Gets the Boot, primarily in Tom’s case. In that film, and the two others that have followed (The Midnight Snack and The Night Before Christmas), Tom looks like an ordinary, scruffy housecat, but as the years went by with future shorts, the character would evolve to the design we all recognize today. Jerry, on the other hand, didn’t really change too much in design over the years.

From left-to-right: Puss Gets the Boot, The Night Before Christmas, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Mouse, Salt Water Tabby, and Johann Mouse

Most of my favorite Tom & Jerry shorts are from this era of the franchise, for example, The Cat Concerto, Tom & Jerry in the Hollywood Bowl, Mucho Mouse, and The Two Mouseketeers, but the one that makes me laugh the most (and my absolute favorite of the entire series) is the 1955 short Pecos Pest, where Jerry’s uncle, a musician, decides to go to Jerry’s home and play the song he’s going to perform on television, but every time he plays, one of his guitar strings snaps. So what does he do? Yank the whiskers off of Tom to replace the strings, proving that he is basically much more of a sadist than Jerry ever could be. Even when he’s at the premiere on TV, when his guitar string snaps, he still finds a way to get Tom’s whisker by just literally reaching out of the screen near the end of the picture. Now THAT is how you end a cartoon. Unfortunately, my least favorite Tom & Jerry short is from this era as well. Neapolitan Mouse was the name of it, and it involved both Tom and Jerry meeting a mouse that shows them around the city of Naples, Italy whilst being stalked by three dogs, and it was not that interesting (artwork and animation was nice, though). There was also one that was just downright depressing, which was called Blue Cat Blues. In that one, Tom is sitting on a railroad track heartbroken, whilst a sympathizing Jerry observes him and (through the power of inner monologue by Paul Frees) tells the story of how he once had a true love, an unnamed feline, who eventually fell in love with Tom's rival, a black cat named Butch (who has appeared time to time throughout the series) and got married, thus leading to his current situation. In the end, however, Jerry becomes the victim of said scenario when his own girlfriend got married to another, and he joins Tom on the track, and then ending with a train whistle getting louder as it irises out, implicating that they committed suicide. This one rarely aired on TV, obviously because of this implication, and has been recognized by many to be the most depressing short film in the series.

To this day, the Hanna-Barbera films are cherished by many animation enthusiasts (myself included), film buffs, and young children who are still able to watch them on television, despite some of them being edited for specific reasons (i.e. racial stereotyping). Out of the 162 pictures made featuring the cat and mouse (one of which was made for TV), 114 of them were directed by Hanna-Barbera, with only a few of them being remakes (because they were shot in Cinemascope). These are also the ones that are mostly played on the Cartoon Network blocks. However, this was not the end of the duo’s theatrical run.

The Gene Deitch/Chuck Jones Films

High Steaks (Deitch/1962)

Aside from the Hanna-Barbera films, CN would also show the Tom & Jerry films produced and/or directed by Chuck Jones, and sometimes the ones animated in Czechoslovakia directed by Gene Deitch, who was once an animator for United Productions of America (UPA). Anyone who knows their animation history can tell you that these films are not as good as the original Hanna-Barbera directed films, but as a kid, I couldn’t tell the difference. It was still the same old Tom & Jerry to me. As an adult, however, I can sort of agree why they aren’t as good, but I can also understand the history behind them.

You see, in 1957, MGM closed down their animation studio due to budget cuts, even though they did release a few more films a year later, but MGM was still convinced that the property is still a valuable asset, so at first, they went to Czech animator Gene Deitch to make the films overseas, as it was the cheaper way to go. The result was just mediocre or dull slapstick, with odd-paced animation and somewhat weird design choices. The only two Gene Deitch films I enjoyed were Carmen Get It, Switchin’ Kitten, and The Tom and Jerry Cartoon Kit, but that’s it. Every other film he made in the series didn’t really make me chuckle that much. Not that he’s a bad cartoonist, however. After all, he directed some cartoons I saw as a kid based on Maurice Sendak’s works in the 1970s such as Where the Wild Things Are. But the Tom & Jerry series was clearly not his calling. In fact, he did say prior to directing in 1960 that the characters were not his favorites, because he didn’t like the violence. That part I do question, seeing as how some of his films feature Tom’s owner as an abusive, consistently pissed off jerk-ass whom Jerry uses to his advantage without the owner knowing it. Overall, I think I'm not alone when I say that these films aren't that good, nor did they age that well, if at all. Only 15 of these were made, and after Deitch's departure, MGM had to think about either having a local and experienced animation director take over or end the series all together.

The Cat Above and the Mouse Below (Jones/1964)

Then Chuck Jones came into the picture in 1963 after being fired from Warner Brothers for breaking his contract. In 1962, United Productions of America (UPA), an animation studio that closely worked with Columbia Pictures, was working on a feature-length animated musical entitled Gay Purr-ee, which featured the voices of Judy Garland, Robert Goulet, Red Buttons, and Paul Frees. One of Chuck's lead animators, Abe Levitow, was directing the film, and Jones wrote the story of the film, which the folks at Warner Brothers eventually found out and frowned upon, thus leading to his termination from the studio. This was before Warner Brothers decided to make a deal with UPA to distribute the picture. Back at MGM, after much discussion, they decided to go back to having the animation done in Hollywood again, so another animation studio was opened to make more Tom & Jerry shorts, and Jones was brought on and given the task to revive the franchise. Altogether, his shorts were able bring back some of the spirit of the HB originals, unlike Deitch, however, there were some differences. The designs of the main characters have drastically changed to that Chuck Jones style, with the facial expressions and how they’re structured. The executions of the gags were a lot slower than in the HB shorts, which were timed to be quick and on the spot. This is because there’s a lot more focus on the build-up leading to the actions. Let’s not forget the larger emphasis on story here as well on some of the shorts. Unfortunately, this method did not last long, as the formula was starting to age more like milk than wine. There are also times when other animators, including Levitow, would take over as director for some of the shorts, mostly to mixed reaction.

There aren’t really a whole lot of favorites I could pick from the Chuck Jones shorts, but there are some that garner my attention. After all, only 36 shorts were made under his supervision, which more than doubles the amount of shorts that Gene Deitch directed. Some of these include Snow-body Loves Me, The Mouse from H.U.N.G.E.R., Love Me, Love My Mouse, Rockin' Rodent, and Cat and Dupli-Cat (my friend’s late grandfather did a voice for that one). However, my favorite out of all these is The Cat Above and the Mouse Below, simply because this one gave me more laughs, and out of all the shorts in the franchise’s history, it had the best payoff of Jerry getting the last laugh, at least in my opinion.

Aftermath and Conclusion

Sadly, all things must come to an end, and with the exception of that godawful 1992 feature, the popular cat and mouse would perform their last chase on the big screen in 1967, with the final film being Purr-Chance to Dream, directed by Ben Washam. A few years after this, MGM would close the animation studio yet again and would no longer make any more animated shorts. The studio's last works included a Chuck Jones directed short film entitled The Bear That Wasn't and the studio's only feature film, The Phantom Tollbooth, directed by both Chuck Jones and Abe Levitow. Nevertheless, they still found a way to make a profit from the franchise, however, as the Hanna-Barbera studio decided to make a Saturday morning TV series that would be released by their television division in the 1970s. That, I haven’t seen a whole lot of, but from what I’ve seen from various videos on YouTube and RetroJunk, it’s…well…crap. Filmation, the company responsible for He-Man and Masters of the Universe would take over for a couple of years in the early 1980s, and then Hanna-Barbera would make a spin-off series in the ‘90s called Tom and Jerry Kids, which was made during the craze where classic characters become babies or children (a trend made famous by Muppet Babies). You might know the rest after this point: a godawful movie in 1992, as I mentioned before, a slew of direct-to-video/DVD, releases and a revival series that would air both on cable and in syndication for some time by Warner Bros’ current animation division so that newer generations can get an idea of what the older cartoons were like.

While I can’t say all of it was good (because some of it is actually dogshit), I can commend most of it for attempting to re-create what made the duo famous to begin with, but there’s really no substitute. The original theatrical shorts easily showcase some of the best moments the franchise has been known for over the years, and many in the film and television business see them as comedy gold, and as you can tell, so do I. The creators knew how to do slapstick, and they've learned from then popular acts like Charles Chaplin and Buster Keaton, whom are considered legends in the motion picture industry today. Chaplin, especially, sees a lot of these films, as well as much of the Looney Tunes and Disney shorts as influential and genius as his own silent films, if not more so. Today, Tom & Jerry are the quintessential example of animated insanity that continues to get many audiences laughing, and hopefully, many more so in the future.

Hello ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to another rendition of Hall Of Frame, where we admire the greatest stills that animation has to offer. In this installment we've dedicated to go with the heroes in a half-shell way before they were mangled by the hands of the Bay machine. The original TMNT cartoon was probably one of the most important parts of the Saturday morning for tons of children back in the 80s. It certainly was unique, having amphibians who fight crime while scarfing down pizza and talking like surfer dudes being mentored by a giant rat. They would often face themselves against an enemy from Ninja Gaiden with the voice of a portly lawyer who doesn't take any shit, a gangster rhinocerous and warthog, and a brain inside of a wrestler. And to boot, they would also find themselves crossing paths often with a yellow-coat wearing spunky news reporter with a tremendous...career. It was cheesy, sure, but it was imaginative and marketable. It also has managed to be delightfully amusing due to its dated nature, and no more is this noticeable than through the cels that contain these turtles. Without further ado, here are our picks.

HerrVarden's Pick: An Honorable Offering



To the common eye, this frame is nothing more than another representation of the what the turtles are about. They enjoy themselves some of the best Italian cuisine that their sewer ways could afford. But upon further inspection, one can tell that Michelangelo is not simply giving you a piece of pizza. Look into his eyes, he sees you in despair. You are facing some sort of deep troubles. They may be financial, social, work-related or personal, but whatever it is, he can see that it is affecting you down to the very core of your soul. This mutant does not let you continue to wallow in your anguish, he tries to help you in your time of need. Just like a good Samaritan does to a homeless man, his saintly gaze catches your attention as you see his offering held in a manner that almost indicates that he will feed you the slice. He just bought the pizza as it is still whole and the box is still relatively intact, and despite him having to give it to his other brothers, he goes along and offers you a piece. You can tell that if that's not enough, he will give you more. It is a frame that tells the viewer that they should not worry. They should not be afraid. For this ninja is incredibly charitable and will stay by your side. He will assist you as if you were an infant, assuring that each and every qualm you have will be washed away.


TheOneManBoxOffice's Pick: WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE!!?

The earlier seasons of the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon had their fair share of hilarious and quirky moments, and in many cases, frames that make us want to bust a gut laughing at when we press the pause button. This is really one of those interesting moments rather than a funny one, at least to me. Now I'm sure you've heard the phrase "broke the fourth wall" at some point. If you don't know, it's an idea when a character (or, in this case, characters) is well aware that they are in a cartoon/TV show/movie and they have the ability to directly communicate with the audience. If you look at this frame on its own, to me, its like they are directly looking at us for the first time and having an on-the-spot reaction as to what they think of their audience. Since some of us watch this show for nostalgia reasons today, I can assume Leonardo and Donatello are somewhat surprised, whilst Michelangelo and Raphael are like "This is who we're entertaining!? Eeeewww!" as if they're looking at a past-and-present photo comparison. However, looking at it on the comedic side of things, we can also assume that something awkward happened on the other side of the screen and the turtles are reacting to said action like they were watching a nutshot compilation on AFV. Personally, it can work either way, but I like to look at it more on the comedic end. In any case, no matter what this particular frame means to you, this is one that can have a mixed reaction from the general consensus, mostly a hilarious reaction.


Crazy Luigi's Pick: Leonardo: Lord of the Ice Cream?


Usually, when looking for frames that I find worthwhile for the Hall of Frame, I look for the ones that provide some of the more hilarious, out of context frames that make people wonder how the fuck it even happened in the first place. I remember with the first one that I took a simple frame from Super Mario Bros. 3 (thanks to one of Vinesauce's dubbed videos), and asked myself if it was the first time I ever saw that frame without the actual context, would I still laugh all the same? It turned out the answer was yes, so I decided to put that frame in our first ever article there. When I saw that frame from the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog with Scratch and Grounder being squashed by Dr. Robotnik's gigantic ass thinking the duo was somehow transforming into Dr. Robotnik himself (or something like that), that was also something where I decided I had no chance but to choose that frame as my frame. With this third time, however, it was more of a challenge on what I wanted to choose since some of the better frames were already covered in one of James Rolfe's videos displaying the fuck ups the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon from the 1980's had.

In the end, I felt that to me, this picture would have been the one that did it for me. If it was already covered by that same person's video I mentioned earlier, then I apologize for that mishap. With that said, I say "fuck it" and consider it an underrated gold mine that makes for more interesting questions upon itself. One thing that easily makes this stick out is that Leonardo is holding a chocolate and strawberry ice cream cone instead of his usual weapons, but that's only the tip of the iceberg of what's to come here. A noticeable feature that the strawberry ice cream apparently has is that it showcases perfectly sharp blades that look like they're protruding out of them if you aren't looking carefully enough. It almost makes you want to ask "why's the strawberry code so damn special to have that in the first place?! What do you have against chocolate, huh?" In fact, a lot of what this picture portrays will leave you asking quite a lot of questions there once you look at it clearly.

Another noticeable aspect here include the reactions that each turtle have involving Leonardo's ice cream. Instead of everyone being in shock, only Leonardo is understandably shocked beyond all belief about this scenario, while every other turtle has reactions ranging from somewhat surprised to concerned to even not giving a shit one bit. You would think that everyone would be in surprise like that, but it really isn't the case at all. In fact, you start questioning things like 'why are they each reacting the way they are (aside from Leonardo for obvious reasons)' and 'why only chocolate and strawberry instead of chocolate and vanilla?' The funny thing is that there might have been an actual device somewhere that actually made the TMNT's weapons get turned into ice cream, but it only hit Leonardo's weapons instead of everyone's, which might have lead to something like that in the first place. Whatever the case may be, and even if the ice cream was the more common combination of chocolate and vanilla, it still provides enough head-scratching hilarity to make it's place in the Hall of Frame.

Nozdordomu's pick: "Even Splinter Looks Confused"



For a series with so much exposure and popularity, the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon is pretty obviously flawed. Most of the time, its animation is hardly better than that of the infamous Mario cartoons, and dozens of layering mistakes, duplicate turtles in frames, and mismatched voices will attest to that. This frame has none of those, but for sheer awkwardness, it can't be beat. Everybody looks like they're made of wax and propped up in the stiffest, most baffling poses an an animator can imagine. I found the picture in James Rolfe's video on Turtle flubs, and he pointed out that Michelangelo's bandanna strangely looked like a scarf. Alright, but what about that weird, pursed-lips expression Mikey's wearing? Or the arched-eyebrow, Retard Luigi-esque gaze on Splinter's face? From what I remember, they weren't in a particularly confusing situation at the time of this scene, so unless Splinter's pointing at death from above, this frame makes no sense at all. (Also, it almost looks like Mikey's flipping the bird.)

Honorable mention: for innappropriate expressions, this frame can't be beat. Why is Splinter so pissed off? Nobody knows. And you gotta love those buttock-esque turtle mouths.

In my life as a gamer, I have never had to rid myself of any console I had owned. That is until 21 November 2014, in which I traded in my old Nintendo 3DS which had been with me for the past three and a half years to save some money towards a purchase of a “New Nintendo 3DS”. It had gone through quite a lot with me, with the many places it had gone alongside me, usually taking a ride in my right-side pants pocket. Its Aqua Blue appearance with Homura from Senran Kagura placed on the top to define it as my own unique 3DS still leaves me with fond memories of all the games I had played on it, ranging from Kid Icarus: Uprising to Luigi’s Mansion 2, and finally to Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS.

And so a new chapter in my portable gaming life starts with the “New Nintendo 3DS” continuing the legacy of the 3DS family. This new member boasts a number of new features and improvements, including “super-stable 3D”, a new C-Stick and additional ZL and ZR buttons, an improved Internet Browser, NFC (Near Field Communication) amiibo support, and a much more powerful processor, among other things. These new 3DS models also mark the first time Australia and New Zealand had gotten new consoles released before anyone else outside of Japan, so it makes me feel quite privileged to be able to get my hands on them so soon. They may not be coming to the US or Europe until sometime in 2015, but this analysis between the old and New 3DS models should hopefully help you decide whether or not it’ll be worth your while to get either a New Nintendo 3DS or a New Nintendo 3DS XL.

Please note that this analysis will only cover the differences between the original Nintendo 3DS and the regular New Nintendo 3DS, and any additional features that come with the New 3DS. Comparisons with their XL counterparts will be mentioned if necessary, and any features that are not discussed are the same as they were with past 3DS models.

“Super Stable” 3D
The first main feature of the New 3DS is the enhanced stereoscopic 3D effect. The Nintendo 3DS was originally promoted with the promise of glasses-free stereoscopic 3D, which meant you didn’t need to wear any kind of special glasses just to get the 3D effect. The depth of the 3D could also be adjusted via a slider to the right of the top screen, and can even be turned off completely by sliding it all the way down.

Over the years though, this gimmick has seen a decline among many 3DS users, who often turned the 3D slider down to the bottom whenever their 3DS was in use. Even some developers for 3DS games paid less attention to providing 3D imagery in their games. This is due to how difficult it would be to maintain the 3D effect thanks to the narrow viewing range needed to achieve the effect, as you would need to keep the handheld and your head steady to do so. If you couldn’t achieve that, the effect would be broken.

The New 3DS fixes this by having the inner-facing camera of the handheld track the head of the user, effectively expanding the viewing range. I tested this through regular play of the New 3DS,with the 3D slider turned all the way up, and the 3D effect held itself particularly well. The viewing range is much larger than that of any other 3DS model before it, so the 3D effect is much easier to maintain in comparison.

New Controls
The next feature we will take a look at is the new inputs it offers in the form of a C Stick and two new shoulder buttons, ZL and ZR. In other words, it’s Nintendo’s answer to having a built-in Circle Pad Pro which also featured a C Stick (except in the form of another Circle Pad) and the ZL and ZR shoulder buttons.

The C Stick is located next to the upper-right corner of the bottom screen, has full analogue control, and is fairly comfortable to use. Its feel is akin to that of the small nubs that were used on old laptops to control the mouse, but I found myself quite at home with using the C Stick after a while. The only issue with the C Stick is that it lacks the same kind of precision that the Circle Pad has. While using it for simpler, quicker inputs in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS works fine, for a game that requires more frequent use of it such as Kid Icarus: Uprising’s left-handed control scheme, it can be marginally harder to work with than with the Circle Pad.

The ZL and ZR buttons are located around the same area as the L and R buttons, but are placed a bit closer to the centre of the handheld. My fingers could just reach out to them by the fingertips while holding the handheld, but the L and R buttons can get in the way whenever I try to press ZL or ZR, making it a bit tedious to use either of these new shoulder buttons.

The C Stick as well as the ZL and ZR buttons are compatible with any games that use the Circle Pad Pro (Such as Resident Evil: Revelations), and additionally for Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS which does not support the Circle Pad Pro due to technical limitations. They will also be utilised in future 3DS games, including (But not limited to) Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate.

Updated Internet Browser
The Internet Browser for the New 3DS has seen an upgrade too with HTML5 support, and is now able to view videos on the majority of video streaming sites. I have tried this with YouTube, Dailymotion, and Vimeo, and each had given similar results, with the picture and audio giving an acceptable quality viewing experience, and all sites buffer videos at a reasonable pace, though this may vary depending on your Internet connection. All videos viewed on these sites are shown on a video player unique to the New 3DS. This video player allows you to loop a video, change the speed from x1.0, x1.3, x2.0, and x0.8 (Which also hilariously effects the audio pitch as well), enable subtitles (Though subtitles provided through Google Translate are not available), chose to have the video fill or fit the top screen, and even provides 3D correction settings for 3D-capable videos.

While there exists a filter for the Internet Browser which block off particular sites that may contain inappropriate content (Which can be disabled by paying a small fee via credit card), I can confirm that this filter only applies for the Japanese New 3DS models, as the Australian model I have can access any site without problems and without the need of paying a fee. Whether or not this filter will be present in the European and US New 3DS models still remains yet to be confirmed.

NFC amiibo Support
Another new feature of the New 3DS is the inclusion of NFC amiibo support. Basically, this means that any amiibo figures you have can be scanned by placing them on the bottom screen. Older 3DS models will also have amiibo support; however they will require a peripheral device in order to do so.

Unfortunately, while the first and second waves of amiibo figures are currently available, there are still no 3DS games that support amiibo figures as of present, so I am unable to test this feature. Thankfully though, there is an update for Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS that will be coming in 2015 which will enable amiibo support for the game. No other 3DS games have been confirmed to support amiibo figures as of yet.

More Processing Power
Arguably the biggest feature and possibly the main reason that most people will buy the New 3DS is the new and improved processor. This not only means faster loading times with software, but also faster downloads too.

I tested the speed of both the original and New 3DS by using Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS to perform the following tests. I first tested how long it takes to get from booting up the game from the Home Menu to the game’s title screen. This process takes up to 38 seconds on the original 3DS, whereas on the New 3DS, it only takes 14 seconds. That’s a whole 24 seconds quicker! Even going to the Home Menu from the game is a bit quicker, and if you close the game, it doesn’t need to restart the handheld afterward. The New 3DS even allows you to access and post on the Miiverse while the game is still running too.

I also tested the download speed with my own Internet connection by timing how long it takes to download a 3DS game, Liberation Maiden, which takes up 1585 blocks, approximately 200 MB in size. On the original 3DS, it took 10:33 to fully download the game onto the handheld. The New 3DS on the other hand took only 4:29 to finish the download. The difference is that the New 3DS finished 6:04 earlier than the original 3DS. Now while game itself may be of a relatively small size, you can already imagine how much of a difference there would be when downloading larger games onto the handheld.

There will also be games that will only play exclusively on New Nintendo 3DS and New Nintendo 3DS XL handhelds, such as a port of the 2011/2012 Nintendo Wii cult hit, Xenoblade Chronicles, and the upcoming Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D will have some small additions that will only be available to New 3DS and New 3DS XL users.

Larger Size
Now that we have covered the main new features of the New Nintendo 3DS, let us take a look at some of the other features relating to its structure, starting with its difference in size.

The size of the New 3DS is also slightly larger than that of the original 3DS. When closed, the original and New 3DS models measure in at 134x74x21mm and 142x80.6x21.6mm respectively, weighing in at 235g and 253g respectively. As for the original 3DS XL and New 3DS XL, they measure in at 156x93x22mm and 160x93.5x21.5mm respectively, weighing in at 336g and 329g respectively, so the New 3DS XL is overall bigger, but also lighter than the original 3DS XL. I have done a comparison with a Bluray case and both regular 3DS models stacked on top of one another, and have provided photos below to better illustrate how much bigger the New 3DS really is.

Revised Physical Features
A few of the physical features from the original 3DS are present, although a number of them have been moved. The Start and Select buttons have been placed next to the bottom left corner of the bottom screen (akin to the Nintendo DS Lite, DSi, and DSi XL). This is a rather welcome change as on the original 3DS, these buttons in particular were particularly stiff and hard to press.

The game card slot, stylus, and Power Button have all been relocated to the bottom ridge of the handheld, around the headphone jack. This change I found myself taking a little bit of time to get used to, but overall it felt more comfortable to work with now that many of the physical components of the 3DS are located in the same general area. The only issue I had is that the Power button being smaller can be somewhat hard to press. You can always use the stylus to press it, but using your finger to press the button can prove to be difficult for those with larger fingers.

The Volume slider has been moved to be to the left of the top screen, the AC adapter port has been moved to the centre as opposed to being next to the R button, and the Wireless switch on the left side of the handheld has been removed entirely in favour of an option to enable and disable Wireless through the Home Menu Settings. Both sliders also lock into their Off position now, so they can stay slid down more easily without being accidentally slid back up.

The SD Card slot from past 3DS models is now no more, and has been replaced with a microSD Card slot, which can be accessed by unscrewing and removing the back plate of the handheld. The same can be done with the 3DS XL. It’s a bit cumbersome to have to unscrew part of the system in order to insert or replace a microSD Card, but it’s unlikely you’ll need to do it that much, so it isn’t a big deal. However, it is possible to access the microSD Card wirelessly through a PC that has Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 installed, so don’t worry about having to remove the microSD Card from the New 3DS or New 3DS XL if you need to put any of its contents onto your PC.

Better Screens
The New 3DS also has a larger screen than the original 3DS. The top and bottom screen of the original 3DS measure in at 3.23 inches and 2.78 inches respectively. The New 3DS sizes its top and bottom screens to 3.88 inches and 3.33 inches respectively, making both screens approximately 1.2 times bigger than those of the original 3DS. The New 3DS XL still has the same screen size as the original 3DS XL, both measuring up to 4.88 for the top screen, and 4.18 inches for the bottom screen.
The picture while appearing somewhat more vivid and less washed out, unfortunately suffers the same issue the 3DS XL has in which the screen resolution is still the same as the original 3DS, and so the picture may seem a bit less crisp.

Improved Camera
The camera as also seen an improvement, with images that would otherwise appear dim when taken on older 3DS models, now appear a bit brighter when taken on the New 3DS and New 3DS XL. This is illustrated by the photos below which were taken with on the original 3DS on the left, and the New 3DS on the right.

While an improvement over the original 3DS camera, it still is rather poor in quality compared to cameras on other handheld devices such as smartphones, and is only being capable of taking photos with a resolution size of 640x480 much like other 3DS models.

Battery and Battery-Saving Options
The battery has been upgraded from their original counterparts too. The original 3DS has a battery life of 3 to 6 hours, whereas the New 3DS has a battery life of 3.5 to 6 hours. The 3DS XL on the other hand has a battery life of 3 to 7 hours, and the New 3DS XL lasting from 3.5 to 7 hours.

The New 3DS and New 3DS XL also have automatic brightness adjustment which adjusts the brightness of the screens based on the amount of lighting it’s exposed to. Dimmer areas make the screen appear darker, while brighter areas make the screen brighter. This can help make the battery life of the handheld last even longer than if the handheld’s brightness didn’t change unless the user changes it manually. I find that this works best when the lighting conditions in your environment are consistent, and that if they aren’t the New 3DS will change brightness a bit erratically. This can also be disabled via the Home Menu Settings for those who which to not have their screen brightness changed during use.

It’s important to note that AC adapters for both the New 3DS and New 3DS XL are not included with the handheld (At least with the Japanese and Australian releases of the handhelds), and will need to be either bought separately, or taken from a DSi, DSi XL, 3DS, 3DS XL, or 2DS handheld if you own one.

Cover Plates (New 3DS Only)
A feature exclusive to the New 3DS is the Cover Plates. Please note that Cover Plates will not work with the New 3DS XL, which instead opts to have a “luxury look” akin to the original 3DS, so if you got your eyes set on the New 3DS XL, please ignore the rest of this section.

These can be used to personalise the appearance of your New 3DS to your liking. Swapping out cover plates is simple. For the front cover plate, you use the non-pointed end of the stylus to gently pry out the front plate from both sides of the handheld, and then lift it out from its place. You can then fit in a different front plate in its place, press down on it, and it’ll snap in nicely. The back plate is a bit more complicated though. For the back plate, you’ll need to use a small screwdriver to undo the screws, so you can then take it off. You can then place another back plate in its place, put the screws back on tightly, and you’re done.

There are already 20 different cover plates that have been released here at launch, but not all of them have the same feel or texture. The cover plate I got was a white cover plate with Mario characters engraved on it, in which the outlines have a rather slick feel, and overall has a different texture from the default cover plates the New 3DS comes with.

Available Colours and Price
At launch, the New 3DS comes in only one colour, White, with the Black New 3DS currently being exclusive to Japan, but both sport Super Famicom (or PAL region Super Nintendo) colour-coded ABXY buttons. The New 3DS XL instead has two available colours, Metallic Black, and Metallic Blue, with the Super Famicom colours being visible on the imprinting of the letters.

The New 3DS will set you back $219.00 AUD, while a New 3DS XL will set you back $249.00 AUD. However, if you trade in an old 3DS or 3DS XL when you buy either New 3DS model, you’ll be able to cut off some of the price. Trading in a regular 3DS for a New 3DS will reduce the price to $149.00 AUD, whereas trading one for its XL variant will reduce it to $179.00 AUD. The trade off with a 3DS XL for a New 3DS will take it down to $119.00 AUD, while for a New 3DS XL will end up being $149.00 AUD.

Both the New 3DS and New 3DS XL come with a 4GB microSD Card, but does not include an AC adapter, which will need to be either bought separately for about $14.95 AUD, or reused from a past Nintendo handheld starting from the Nintendo DSi and up to the Nintendo 2DS. Whether or not the European or US releases will come with an AC adapter has not been confirmed.

Charging Cradles are available for both the New 3DS and New 3DS XL, and will cost you $14.95 AUD. The cradles themselves have the New 3DS or New 3DS XL placed vertically with the bottom ridge of the handheld facing upwards, as opposed to having the handheld’s outer top half facing upwards, so you won’t be able to open the handheld unless you remove it from its cradle. It does however have a small gap visible for the LED on the bottom half of the handheld’s upper right corner, so you can still check for incoming notifications if you have it on while still resting in the cradle.

Cover Plates normally go for around $17.95 AUD, however the wooden cover plate has a genuine wooden texture which raises it up to $39.95 AUD. The packaging is easy to open, and the plastic casing for the cover plate can even be used for storing any other cover plates you may have lying around. Club Nintendo codes are also absent from the New 3DS and New 3DS XL, so don’t expect to be able to rack up some Stars for use with the Stars Catalogue if you buy either New 3DS model.

Conclusion
And so ends my analysis of the New Nintendo 3DS. When put up against the original 3DS, the New 3DS surpasses it in about every way conceivable. With integrated features from the Circle Pad Pro, a faster and more powerful processor, enhanced stereoscopic 3D, NFC amiibo support, and video support for the Internet Browser, it is hard to ignore that the New 3DS models are a significant improvement over any other member of the 3DS family thus far.

But the biggest question at the end of the day is this: “Would I recommend getting a New Nintendo 3DS or New Nintendo 3DS XL?” Well, if you’re a heavy user of any of the already released 3DS models, or if you don’t have a 3DS and would like to buy one, then I say go ahead and get one right away. But if you don’t get much use out of your current 3DS, or if you have plans to buy a 2DS for a younger person under the age of 6, then there’s no shame in not getting either of these New 3DS models.

If you have any questions regarding the New Nintendo 3DS or New Nintendo 3DS XL, feel free to post a comment below and I’ll respond in kind. Thank you for your time, and I hope that you can get your hands on a New Nintendo 3DS or New Nintendo 3DS XL sometime in 2015.

"I'D SAY HE'S HOT ON OUR TAIL"

December 22nd, 2004

The Background
by Nozdordomu

Youtube Poop started with “I’d Say He’s Hot on our Tail.” It might have started sooner or later, had anyone else on the internet gotten the idea to splice clips together with crazy edits (and some of them had), but SuperYoshi’s video still stands as both the first uploaded poop and the basic definition of “poop.” He couldn’t foresee the movement it would spawn, and he didn’t even think it would influence other videos, but this community – our Youtube Poop forum – practically speaks to its legacy.

For such a legacy, though, “I’d Say He’s Hot on our Tail” doesn’t really have a definite history. If you go on Wikipedia or even our own Chewiki, you can glean the basic facts: Matt Mulligan aka SuperYoshi tested his Windows Movie Maker program by editing the SMB3 episode “Recycled Koopa,” and then uploaded the product to sheezyart. That doesn’t give a good picture of how and why the video ended up being what it is.

To shed some light on the first poop ever, I’ve interviewed SuperYoshi and included his answers below. Here, the veteran pooper discusses his inspiration, his poop’s immediate and long-term influence, and the Youtube Poop movement as a whole.

How did you go about conceiving and creating “I’d Say He’s Hot on our Tail”?

The story has been sporadically told for the last several years but I'm usually not as concise with it so I'll try to get every little detail down. Basically, in 2004 I was in an electronic tech class that mostly dealt with computer hardware, and once my teacher let me borrow a bootleg Windows XP disc. I was still running Windows 98SE at the time so it was nice finally having XP at home. I was getting a new computer for Christmas that year and couldn't wait for it so I guess I jumped at the opportunity to have at least something new to hold me over for the next few days. I believe this was December 21st, if I remember right.

Anyway, on the night of the 22nd I went around looking at whatever new features I could find in XP, and lo and behold, it's Windows Movie Maker. I was easily amused by programs like Sound Recorder so this seemed like the perfect tool to make something incredibly stupid. And so I did. At the time I had a few assorted episodes of the Mario cartoons on my computer, because I was super into it at the time and legitimately thought they were great cartoons. I don't know why. Basically of course the big joke of “I'd Say He's Hot on Our Tail” is Luigi's "Whoa!", but I'm honestly not sure if that joke came before or after I imported “Recycled Koopa” into WMM. If I had to guess, it came after, but it's been so long that I honestly don't remember.

Why did you choose the source and "pooping methods" you did?

I've spoken on this before, but the version of Windows XP I got in that December 21st-25th week had a very old version of WMM on it. It had no effects whatsoever besides being able to splice clips. There was no slow down, no speed up; nothing -- not even the rainbow effect! This is why Hot on our Tail is just unedited clips. It was not a stylistic choice, but something that was forced on me. If I had access to the updated version of WMM at the time, the video absolutely would have had the effects seen in later videos (And, as such, when I got my computer for Christmas with the new WMM with the effects, they immediately became abused). And I do mean immediately. Shortly after discovering the effects feature of the new WMM I made a slowed down clip of the "I'd say he's hot on our tail!" scream my Sheezyart ID at the tail end of 2004.

Actually, before I get too ahead of myself, I should probably explain the deal with the Sheezyart version. I had an incomplete build that I was so excited to share at around 6PM on the 22nd and that's what I submitted to Sheezyart. Unfortunately I can't get onto my 2000-2004 hard drive with the original files on it, nor is Sheezyart up to show you, but this is virtually the same thing, anyway.

Basically right before the mid-point of the video, the last clip of Mario and Luigi falling down the pipe screaming is what got put on Sheezyart. I labeled it as [Incomplete] and finished it later that night. Unfortunately, the file had become so large when I imported the completed WMV into Flash (A little over 30 megs; huge at the time) and because I was still running dial-up in 2004, I was unable to ever update it on Sheezyart and it remained in its incomplete state for good on the website.

What's your favorite and least favorite thing about it?

I still love the video. It holds a very special place in my heart as one of the few things I made in my teenage years that I'm not totally embarrassed about. I still think all the emphasis on the amount of screaming in the cartoon is funny, but I really do wish I had access to the effects at the time I made it. I doubt it'd be all that much different, but “Hot on our Tail” always seemed barebones without it, even in 2004. In hindsight I'm a little disappointed I never decided to redo or at least update the original video in 2004 as soon as I got the new computer with the new WMM. I would have liked for 15 year old me to see what the original video would have been like at the time with the effects I had access to in 2005-2006. I'm surprised I never re-edited it right after discovering the effects (which was long before me and Joe made the Mega Man video in March of 2005), but I definitely had no wishes to redo it as the years went by, particularly when I finally uploaded it to Youtube in late 2006. That's how it is, and the original will always be the original.

What was the initial reaction on sheezyart and (later) Youtube?

As far as the initial 2004 reaction goes, there really wasn't a whole lot. My friends, of course, saw it and enjoyed it, and I think Wonchop made a remark like "You really like Luigi screaming, don't you?" It was pretty quiet besides that. It was very much kept to myself for a long time, until Mr. Simon found it in mid-2006 and made this as a response.

(Remember that this is a new upload of a video that is pre-"Youtube Poop", so if you ignore the video intro and outro, this is exactly what the Sheezyart upload looked and sounded like.)

The interesting thing to note, though, is that, at the time, me, Retrojape, Yamino, etc. had already begun uploading the videos to Youtube, but this was still purely a Sheezyart thing to Mr. Simon. It wasn't until later on that the "Youtube Poop" name caught on (the name I'm still unsure if Mr. Simon or Duke came up with) that it really became something big on Youtube.

How do you think it's influenced poop since then?

I don't know if that video (or anything I've done in general) is very influential to anybody at all. I mean, sure, in the grand scheme of things I'm responsible for starting the chain reaction that began with me, spread to Retrojape, spread to Yamino, spread to Mr. Simon, who in their own way influenced others, and those others influenced more, and so on and so forth. That's something I've always been proud of. Even inadvertently and without anybody else really knowing or caring, the fact that without "The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 Remixed [Incomplete]," these videos may not have spread like wildfire and created this wonderful community, makes me feel very happy.

I've always wondered how things would have turned out without me. You've got Kajetokun and his Over 9000 video that was made with absolutely no influence from me or anybody involved with YTP at the time, and I can only imagine he inspired a bunch and could have potentially kickstarted this whole trend without me, but things would certainly be very different. There'd be a hell of a lot less emphasis on video game cartoons, especially Robotnik – another thing I'm proud of. While these videos were meant to ridicule and emphasize the cheesiness of these cartoons, I legitimately love AoStH and I'm so happy that YTP basically allowed the show to get the respect it deserves in a time when, before we started making Robotnik videos, the show was pretty much unanimously hated in favor of the ABC series – and I've always been curious how things would have gone down had I not had any part in it.

The Video
by thebluespectre

SuperYoshi says that he wishes he could re-edit his creation and add effects, but I don't think that he needs to. "I'D SAY HE'S HOT ON OUR TAIL" is funny because of its simplicity of form, repeating itself just sparingly enough to be surprising every time. We have ten or twenty seconds of some random point in the episode's plot, and then BOOM, Luigi gets hit in the butt by a bomb. The more ridiculous that any given segment is, the more it is repeated. Mario and Luigi fall down a trash chute with banana peels and cans on their heads while stock "splat" sound effects play two, three, four, more times, each cycle making their frightened "Whoa!" less nerve-wracking and more like a fourth-wall-breaking acknowledgment of how stupid the predicament is. Paragoombas scramble from Bowser's airship to attack Luigi's butt yet again, making good on their master's order to "run rings around those raccoons"; there is barely a second of the mushroom men's disorganized rabbling noises as they take off, managing to sound both nothing like and exactly like what one thinks a mob of angry fungi sounds like, and it repeats until the watcher is on the very brink of annoyance.

Other clips only play once, yet make their presence puzzling and memorable. Princess Toadstool, not the blonde and helium-voiced Princess Peach of later Nintendo games, follows the Mario Brothers (and a Toad) as they make their escape, immediately taking charge of the crisis. "Try to find a Super Leaf", she intones in a nearly emotionless iambic pentameter. Toadstool has no time for good acting, she is tired of being kidnapped by dragons and monsters and Chargin' Chucks Koopa Football Players. All she wants is to fly away, and she earns her Super Leaf for her forward thinking. In a way, Toadstool is responsible for this video in the first place; if it were not for her search for a raccoon tail, how would Luigi ever have his singed by a bomb in the first place? The princess brought forth a strange new art movement, and she didn't even have to speak like a human being while doing it.

Most of all, I am pleased by how self-contained the first YouTube Poop is. YTPs have a long standing tendency to be self-referential, diving deeper into their own relatively short past for scavenged audio and video. Sometimes the effect can be charming- there is no way to make Hank Hill being surprised by "Boggle?" not funny- other times it only serves to harm the creation. Older YouTube Poopers have a term for videos overly dependent on references, the so-called "spadinner" poop. "I hope she made lots of SPAGHETTI", they repeat in an emotionless stream of consciousness. "I wonder what's for dinner?", they parrot from the Phillips Cd-i King in a totally unrelated context. It's not that the context is missing, of course. Luigi was only talking about spaghetti because the writers needed a cheap Italian joke and pasta was the first thing that came to mind; the King was trying to be badass by nonchalantly dismissing his daughter's warnings of danger with a blithe topic change. A lack of context makes material from these outside sources funny because the hamminess of their acting is unexpected in an unrelated situation. The issue with "spadinner" poops is that the references cannot be outside of context, because they are used so often that they ARE the context, and the video itself is only a faint background, a cake made entirely of icing.

But "I'D SAY HE'S HOT ON OUR TAIL" has nothing to call back to, no evolutionary ancestors. All it has is itself, so all it can splice into the video is more of itself. Some might say that this reveals one of YouTube Poops' weaknesses, that it is chained to whatever pop culture the authors know and can grow no more, that it cannot do more than be an imperfect mirror of what already exists. But this is also the strength of YTP; as that imperfect mirror, it can both celebrate and mock almost anything in the same sentence, the speed and surreal nature of the video's editing tearing through mental defenses like a plate of mom's spaghetti. SuperYoshi's creation is that fast-paced mashup that manages to impart life lessons in a storm of gibberish, a tag of digital graffiti for an audience of pedestrians to shake their heads at and secretly wish they could make for themselves.

The original YouTube Poop ends in a way that perfectly describes everything about Youtube Poop. For the second time in the short video clip, an environmentally unfriendly Bowser has his own garbage dumped onto his face. One of the Koopa Kids walks up to the half-buried king and comments that they used to have a lot of neat stuff like that, but they got rid of it.

"It's not 'neat stuff', you nincomkoop," the justifiably irate king shouts, "it's the same trash we had before!"

The Poop
by TheOneManBoxOffice

The very first YouTube Poop (henceforth YTP), which was originally called “The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 REMIXED!!!”, was primarily intended as an inside joke, as well as an experiment with the XP version of Windows Movie Maker (those were the days) created by SuperYoshi in 2004, using various clips from an episode of The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3, entitled "Recycled Koopa". At first glance, it can be seen as a series of re-arranged clips of said episode complete with repeats. No visual jokes, no masking, no ear rape, none of the stuff we use today. This was understandable, because the idea of YTP did not come to anyone's mind whatsoever. YouTube was basically just a site where you just recorded yourself doing either everyday shit, vlogging about doing said shit, or re-enacting stunts from MTV's Jackass (the ones who did the latter were really desperate). It was then SuperYoshi made a video out of "Recycled Koopa", primarily as an inside joke with a group of buddies and first uploaded it to Sheezyart, to mixed reaction. It was then when he uploaded it to YouTube two years after its creation that YTP was born.

As the video starts, it starts like a normal episode of The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3, but then, bam! We see a shot of Luigi getting hit in the ass by a Ba-bomb and saying a quote we'll be hearing time and time again throughout, "WOAH! I'D SAY HE'S HOT ON OUR TAIL!". It is followed by various re-edits of the episode, with a lot of memorable moments including heaps of garbage dumped on King Koopa (a.k.a. Bowser), which in the show itself, is so cardboard cut-out, it's hilarious, and my personal favorite moment in the poop where Mario goes "There's only one real solution to this mess...a stray Christmas tree?" In the end, it's to the point where it doesn't matter whether people think it is visual garbage or simply genius. It is the prime definition of the word "random", and a result of what you can do when suffering from utter boredom, and quite frankly, only a few of us got the general idea from the get-go. It was not long until other videos of its kind started to pop up on YouTube and with several worthy sources at our disposal that were going around the internet, primarily the soon-to-be-discovered Phillips CD-i games featuring Mario and Zelda characters, and, of course, the DiC cartoon Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. Oh, what have we brought upon the world...

I see this video not only as the very first YTP, but as a time capsule for how far we have come over the past 10 years since its original creation. What started as one little experiment on YouTube became an on-going series of mindfuckery created by those who devote their spare time warping various TV shows, movies, and cartoons into something that would make the late Andy Warhol question our overall sanity (or for some of us, what little of it there is). We've actually come a long way since then, when we found other software we could use to make YTPs (Vegas, Premiere, etc.) and what effects and sources we had in our disposal. It kind of reminds me of how a lot of us first got started making YTPs with Windows Movie Maker as our only video-editing software, and with very few effects on hand. This was before we got our hands on Sony Vegas and Adobe Premiere/After Effects and showed the community the definition of what I like to call “visualized brainfucking”.

Overall, this is a video worth seeing to look back on how this little (and I use that term loosely) cult following came to be a decade after its inception. Today, the video might not look like much, as it can be seen as bare bones editing and nothing more, but in 2004, it was something interesting, and without it, YTP wouldn't exist, and unfortunately, neither would this site. SuperYoshi, we have you to thank.

The Concept
by SkyBlueFox

There's a saying that goes around often when it comes to making Youtube Poop, one I heard long ago and one that's stuck with me to this day, though I've forgotten who actually coined it: that the aim of making YTP is – or was – always more to confuse and befuddle the viewer(s) rather than to amuse or entertain them.

It's a simple idea in words, and I think most people would agree with the idea, but soon after the whole genre of videos got started, the idea became somewhat lost along the way, which is why the saying exists in the first place. Admittedly, a lot of people probably would be confused if you showed them a YTP, but once the initial shock wears off, it starts to become more interesting or engaging rather than weird. Many people on the forums have been directly or indirectly involved with YTP for years, so I imagine it is, for lack of a better term, more thought of as a culture shock rather than truly confusing.

The reason I'm getting at all this is because I think the contrast between the two ideas of confusion is actually well-illustrated by "I'd Say He's Hot On Our Tail," not just compared to recent videos but even compared to ones people made all the way back in 2008 and 2009. Obviously there's differences between the original YTP and others, since the original will always be the very first, unrefined, raw, whatever you want to describe it as, but there's a lot more to it than that.

What shines about "Hot On Our Tail" is how dis-coherent it is. Many poops, even at the turn of the year from '07 to '08, were often more about flowing from one thing to the next; repeating certain clips for too long or too little would be odd, choppy sentence mixing was frowned upon (SPA-dinner can attest to that), so on and so forth. Videos like Deepercutt's highlight this quite clearly, since his videos often followed a source from beginning to end. For example, "Racism in the Mushroom Kingdom" went from pooping the start of the episode all the way to the end of the episode, and sentence mixed, repeated, and inserted clips as it went along, rather than tossing in anything and everything anywhere and everywhere.

This particular aspect of the videos is one of the best examples of the difference between the confusion that "Hot On Our Tail" does and the confusion any other poop would make. If you sat a random pedestrian down and showed him "Racism in the Mushroom Kingdom," he'd probably be quite baffled, somewhat disgusted, definitely shocked, and maybe a little bit amused, simply because of how unrestrained Youtube Poop is in the first place. If you're sentence mixing beloved and/or well-known characters into making sex jokes and having buckets of semen dumped on their heads or things like that, there's no denying that it's tremendously weird. But if you kept showing that random pedestrian more and more videos, he would eventually be less and less taken aback, and would probably get used to the weirder touches about the medium. Desensitization, to put it one way.

Every medium has something to do with flow in order to be entertaining. When writing fiction, authors need to make sure that scenes transition well, that characters develop naturally, and so on. When making movies, scenes and filming often need to be steady and smooth, unless choppiness is used for dramatic effect, of course. Videogames need to polish their game mechanics and are often at their best when everything works and synergizes fluidly with the core gameplay. And poops, through the years, gained a sort of flow when it came to making them; making sure repetition wasn't used too much or too little, making sure sentence mixing and that sort of thing didn't have blips or cut off improperly, and many other things like that.

"Hot On Our Tail" has almost no flow to it, unlike other poops then and now. It's almost entirely disjointed and haphazard, as if SuperYoshi took the various clips, chopped them into pieces, and then copy and pasted some pieces into other places seemingly without rhyme or reason. It's still clearly recognizable as the Super Mario 3 cartoon, but without that flow to it, it comes off as confusing, even to me, someone who's watched poops for a long time. Why does the scene where Mario and Luigi discover Mario's koopa tail immediately move into Luigi's buttocks getting Bullet Bill'd? Why does the scene where King Koopa and the kids spot the heroes have a short bit missing in the middle of it?

Watching the video nowadays can be a bit of an experience for people because of this key difference. It's not really that entertaining in the way I think most expect poops to be, but that's also part of the point. "Hot On Our Tail" was never made with the intent to entertain people, mainly because at the time, well, who was going to watch it? It was the product of one young man who sat down with a new OS, found and booted up Movie Maker, and decided to goof around and see what he could do with it.

There are other poops that have the same sort of universal confusion, but the ones that do this – that I can remember – are difficult for me to really consider poops at all. A lot of the time they're barely even recognizable as anything, period; just a mess of visual and audio effects that garble the source so much that you can't tell what the source even is at that point. It becomes less of a YTP and more of an experiment to see how much a video can be distorted, like taking a JPG image and bringing in more and more JPG artifacts until the image is unrecognizable. It's confusing, sure, but without knowing what the source is, it's still quite different.

"Hot On Our Tail" feels rough around the edges, but I mean that in a completely and unambiguously positive way. You can tell it's a Mario cartoon, but have no idea what exactly is going on or why clips and things were chosen, placed, used where and how they were. It's just somebody taking a virtual machete to an episode of a cartoon for no reason other than kicks and giggles, and it's the reason why it ends up embodying the spirit of YTP so well. Every time I watch it, I'm never able to fully grasp why this happened here or why this was repeated two and four times there, but in the end, that's what makes "Hot On Our Tail" great.

Crazy Luigi's Pick: "5 nights with Mike Tyson will cost you Loadsamoney" by Stuart K. Reilly (November 2014)


In a world where we sometimes have video makers that are as predictable with their source materials as they come, it’s nice to have some people that end up breaking that mold and do something interesting with their videos. One of these people that do it under a consistent basis is Stuart K. Reilly, who’s usually best known for taking people usual expectations and subverting them to various degrees. Usually when creating a video, you usually try your best to have a ton of ideas to implement, and you want to do them as best as you can. Unfortunately, there are times where you might not have everything create a full-blown video from your source(s) at hand, much like this video. However, if you have enough good ideas in store, you could even make what can be perceived by yourself as incomplete as something that looks practically perfect to other viewers.

With the way things started out with having the usual Super Mario World dialogue dubbed into footage of the original Silent Hill video game, however funny that might be, you might get the first impression that the video might not do much to impress you. However, once the intro ends, the video starts getting on a roll in quite a hurry! Most of the parts in the first half pull off the idea of black comedy quite nicely in various different ways. From the idea of the protagonist of Silent Hill running over his daughter with a truck to Wizardheimer summoning a Bomb-omb to destroy all of Silent Hill itself to one of the antagonists that were living shooting the protagonist and doing it because of terrorism, each one of these jokes do their job perfectly. Once again, the way the video tells its jokes help provide their actual comedy, even when coming to ideas that might otherwise be considered dated to certain people, such as the dangerous to go alone dialogue from the original Legend of Zelda and especially the appearance of the “All Your Base Are Belong To Us” guy being shot by the Nostalgia Critic. Still, it doesn’t stop itself for having other ideas involved with music.

At a certain point, we get to see YTPMVs of songs like the Gyromite song from Super Smash Bros. Brawl and “What’s This?” from The Nightmare Before Christmas with them being more like improvisations than things we might expect from these types of videos. Later on, we also get to have a jazz ditty from Mike Tyson about bird sex that also provides some good laughs in a manner almost similar to the parody of “What’s This?” mentioned earlier. While I will admit that some of the second half of the video that, at least to me, wasn’t as well executed as the first half, there were still some moments that had me laughing quite a lot beyond the bird sex song, such as when a guy tells the money guy to shut his mouth and Mike Tyson asking why Marquess has to be Jesus and then blaspheming a second later. Even with that said, the surprise ending that was put in here really did not only make up for what some of the second half provided, but also felt like a quality candidate for my overall favorite video of the year here.


TheOneManBoxOffice's Pick: "The Hobbit: An Incomprehensible Journey" by TheMarklar01 (November)


So the trilogy of The Hobbit has finally come to an end with the release of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, so what other way to uniquely celebrate the end of the trilogy with a good ol' YouTube Poop based on the first Hobbit movie? After all, each of the three movies runs at around 3 hours long, allowing for plenty of opportunities. Well, TheMarklar01 made that possible, and it's one of the funniest things I've seen, period. Why? Well, it's because it managed to make me laugh so hard that I practically fell out of my chair with tears coming out of my eyes, serving as a reminder that visual brain-rape and an overhaul of visual warping and distortion aren't the only things that make a YouTube Poop hilarious nowadays. Whatever your preference may be when it comes to YTP, sometimes the basic editing techniques are the best way to go. Look at some of Nineroe's poops or MountainDewMann's poops of How the Grinch Stole Christmas (the Ron Howard one) for example.

The title itself shows that what you are about to see is completely nonsensical, to the point where J.R.R. Tolkien (the author of the book), if he were alive, would go "What in the holy mother of Christ have you done to my story?" I myself wonder what goes on in this guy's mind as he's making this. Whatever it may be, it pays off. The dialogue spoken by the characters in the movie is sentence-mixed in a way where it varies from references to other media ("You must be Bobafett") to Gandalf explaining Bilbo's sexual preferences to dragons and dwarfs. There's even a moment where the Orc chase scene is set to the title music from Mario Kart, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. The video really shines especially with the addition of three short YTPMV-like musical numbers (plus a 15-second rendition of La Cucaracha saved for last), as this is where his pitch-shifting skills are put to the test, Whether Marklar01 has a musical background or not, I dunno, but judging from what I've seen here, he can make a damn good remix out of anything if he wanted to. The third song in the poop where the dwarfs sing a random song in Rivendell was where i just lost it, with one of the dwarfs walking onto the table and doing the "Reveille" call just as the song begins. Overall, to conclude, what we have here is a whole 3-hour movie summed up hilariously in under 12 minutes. After seeing this, I can't help but imagine what else he can do with other popular action/adventure movies of this caliber, including pretty much any movie that has the name "Michael Bay" attached to it.


thebluespectre's Pick: "Doug Is Mistaken For Tex Avery" by FunkyMonkey1318 (December 2014)


Is it possible to use tired references in a way that feels fresh? I believe this video does that. The classic "Tien blowing up Cell" ground explosion from Dragon Ball Z is only used twice, the second time as a surprise (it WAS a surprise before I told you it was there). PINGAS is used exactly as it should be; a substitute for some word that creates a disturbing mental image. The ol' Diploma Dope is so fast you might not even notice it if you're not focusing on the video. And of course, that overly long gag with Chef Grounder was just overly long enough to be funny, without being overly long enough to be annoying. The lonely, solitary SPAGHETTI in the video is acceptable due to being used only once. And of course, the YouTube Poop label is always welcome. Splat.

The editing itself was excellently disorienting as well. The stuttering loops are the perfect length, the freeze frames are exactly where they should be, the filter after filter after filter is varied enough to not be annoying… the decision to take clips from several episodes of the show instead of one helped the YTP, if only to get a title card labelled "Chubby Buddy" for juvenile humor value. Also, the giant watermark of some YouTuber's username present on parts of the footage adds an almost punk, junk-sculpture feel to the video (as opposed to just being disruptive, though it's that too).

And this is the first time I have ever seen a Doug YouTube Poop. Doug is an interesting source for footage, since the cartoon has a combination of mundane conflicts and utterly surreal, "it's-animation-so-there's-unlimited-props-budget" imagination interludes. Doug reminds me of the sitcoms of the late 80's and early 90's especially stuff like the later seasons of Family Matters where the writers were clearly running out of down-to-earth ideas for problems a family could face. In those shows, an evil ventriloquist dummy could be a recurring villain, or the comic relief could build a robot duplicate of himself, or there could be a whole episode parody of the Keanu Reeves movie Speed but with a treadmill instead of a bus. Those shows were extremely unfit for that kind of fantastical slapstick, not just because that was not the original premise for the show, but because live-action footage with no-budget, primitive special effects made the attempt look cheap and stupid (re: bomb on a treadmill). Doug Funnie's imagination means that the same show can offer footage of both a teenager being awkward at a diner AND a teenager dressed as a knight, fencing an evil platter of liver and onions with a soup spoon, and they are both legit. In the end, Doug was not the best show, but it was certainly bizarre enough to create mashups from.


TheOneManBoxOffice's Pick: "Roodog's Electrical Nasal Device" by cartoonlover98 (December)


December is the month of everything holiday related, whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa, along with any other holiday I might’ve missed. That means pulling out the holiday movies, holiday music, and, for us here on YouChew, holiday-themed YouTube Poops. Around this time of the year, a good majority of Christmas specials air on television, most notably the ones made by Rankin/Bass (henceforth R/B), but in the world of YouTube Poop, we don’t see a whole lot of poops that use R/B specials as a source. Normally, we’d see a majority of Christmas poops that use mostly A Charlie Brown Christmas or the live-action/animated incarnations of Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas as a primary source most of the time. Cartoonlover98 changed that when he used the 1964 Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer television special from R/B as a source, and this wasn't the first time. The year before, he made a poop entitled Raydink’s Creepy-Ass Holiday Special, which used 1976’s Rudolph’s Shiny New Year, also made by Rankin/Bass. You can say that this is a sequel (or prequel) to that poop, but I can say that Roodog's Electrical Nasal Device tops it by far.

As it begins, the poop doesn’t build up to anything at first. It just jumps straight to the insanity from the get-go. The way cartoonlover edits his poops shows that he puts a lot of effort into distorting whatever images that is thrown at him, and he does it quickly, resulting in non-stop hilarity using a variety of poopisms (ear rape, reverses, stutters) at the right moments, whilst adding his own taste of sick and twisted humor to “destroy” (and I use that term loosely) what most people consider to be a holiday classic. In other words, when you watch poops like this, you’ll probably not look at the original source the same way again. However, at the very end of the poop, cartoonlover pays a little tribute to a certain exploitable little kid (SammyClassicSonicFan) who managed to pop-up on YouTube in early 2014 ranting about Mario and Sonic games whilst using the word "freakin'" every two words and screaming randomly, thus unexpectedly becoming YTP fodder. In the end, Roodog's Electrical Nasal Device is one of my favorite holiday-themed poops, as well as one of my favorite poops in general.

Crazy Luigi's Pick: "AVGN hates the game so much he gets seasonal affective disorder and shits on the tree" by KlausTheWizard (December)


When the Angry Video Game Nerd did his Twleve Days of Shitsmas series that went on throughout December 2014, it was going to be inevitable that people would make YouTube Poops from this mini-series. As expected, there would be plenty of users (myself included) that decided to make videos involving various videos from his series, beginning with Tagin’ Dragon and ending with LJN’s Video Art console. However, if I had to pick one guy’s video involving these sources that utilizes them quite nicely, I’d say that KlausTheWizard probably did them the most memorably of them all. While his name is more synonymous in the YouTube Poop for the veteran users, he’s also been known to make videos off of many various sources, not just the AVGN. However, since I’ve been in a kind of festive mood here, I figured looking into an old-fashioned, yet rather new source would make for some good material here.

Much like the actual videos from the AVGN, some of the humor that comes from this video is done from the actual things that are said from the guy. Of course, that’s not to say all of it is considered pure sentence mixing; while there are some aspects that are done through it, others came from the actual way they are done. Some audio cues that come up, such as “12 Days!?”, the way the game “Tagin’ Dragon” is put into certain sentences, and the way the Select button pauses the game really do help make the video feel a bit more special in the way it’s done. Other sentences that were done by mixing some words around also help itself out quite a bit, such as how the next time you want to play Super Smash Bros., you need to get up on, smash, and fuck their ass, as well as play Tagin’ Dragon the next time you want some ass. While some of the sentences help make it stand out, the repetition of one particular clip really helps make the video in a way you don’t expect it to (at least not in the first viewing).

During the 8th video of Shitsmas, there was a clip where the AVGN was shaking his head while finding out what his present was. That clip gets played throughout the video after the first minute of the video and on initial viewing; one might think it’s a bit annoying. However, with the way it was put into certain aspects combined with the thought of a partridge in a pear tree from the music really does provide an existential thought about the entire thing here. From the guy thinking that a game’s going to be good to being stuck pausing the game to finding out it’s lethal, the clip provides a sense of unintentional despair in moments that normally wouldn’t cause such thinking in the first place. Of course, I found that the last minute of the video provided some of the best material that made it turn into complete insanity. With one last head shake against Bullwinkle being a piece of shit moose in his game with Rocky, it really encapsulates how fitting the entire journey was to going from 0 to 180 in just a few minutes time.

When you're going to music class, there's always two choices. Either you go to the choir, or you go to band class. At my school, it seemed like an easy choice to go with the latter. Not that I wasn't a singer but I just didn't like the way it was conducted. Plus, I wanted to try something new. At first it wasn't anything special, but once we started getting more into the nitty-gritty and I moved to jazz band/ensemble, I started to get more of an interest in playing. I started to listen attentively and appreciatively at musicians like Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, Glenn Miller, Wynton Marsellis, Benny Goodman, Gerry Mulligan, Art Pepper, John Coltrane, Oscar Peterson, and of course, Miles Davis. I managed to pull of some good solos and I always loved it when the sound had the rich flow of melted butter. I suppose that had a lot to do with my teacher, who played the trumpet (which coincidentally was my instrument of choice). He made the class fun for us while still keeping us focused. He was as much of a jokester as he was a professional, since he turned an apathetic group of middle/high school kids into competent players. There's always that cliche of the parent attending their kid's band performance only to patronize the group, but I never seem to have gotten that being with my band teacher. Faculty, parents and students know how much effort and dedication he puts and we do our best to show it.

Unfortunately, I had to abandon it in senior year because I had other courses that I needed to be on top of for university. I had to return my rented trumpet back to the music store but I would have liked to have one of my own and continue to mess around with the sound and play a few pieces too. Even if I wouldn't become great at it, at the very least I could say that I can play one instrument with some level of competence. Christmas managed to grant me that wish and New Year's Day gave me the bonus of watching Whiplash, a movie that combined jazz, J.K Simmons and drama into Oscar buzz. I went to see it with my family and we had a very interesting conversation afterwards about it. We also managed to look up a few things here and there in regards to the movie, and one that struck to me was this negative review by Richard Brody. At first, I felt like this was just another pompous New Yorker piece (Buddy Rich clearly must be a good drummer if Wikipedia says so, you old jerk!), but then I gave it a less biased read and realized that he was looking at from the eye of a jazz music aficionado. His gripes didn't have the vibe of Armond White's contrarianism, more like Neil DeGrasse Tyson's points of scientific accuracy but with less kindness. Perhaps I don't agree completely with Mr. Brody, but I certainly respect his angle and I figure I'd try to mix in my amateurish jazz performance history with my affinity for film and drama in looking over the film.

Whiplash was made by Damien Chazelle, a French-American who enjoyed music but knew he wasn't going to be the next big thing, which made him go for filmmaking instead. He wrote the script for Grand Piano, another music-related drama film and would go about writing this story about a jazz drummer with an intense teacher, which was a very personal piece for him. That piece would then go evolve into a short film that then the feature film became. As stated before, the film has become such a hot topic that it is said that J.K Simmons is considered for an Academy Award. He plays as Terrence Fletcher, the maltempered maestro who shapes up Andrew Neiman (Miles Teller) into becoming a better jazz drummer...that is until their relationship gets more maddening. Now, you might think that to be a bit redundant of me to say that but the film revolves heavily around these two characters. There are other characters that work themselves into the story but they are incredibly overshadowed, which, to be fair, doesn't really hurt the movie.

It's worth pointing out that the whole conflict being centered between a drummer and the conductor was a clever choice. The drummer can sometimes become the de facto leader of a jazz band if they're good enough at it because they keep the rhythm for everyone else. Drummers usually start the performance if the conductor leaves and if you ever need a cue, you can depend on the drummer to give you a hint. And much like a conductor, if they're terrible, it will show. There have been times where I've seen bands where the rest of the group is alright but the drummer is completely lost and it sounds as bad as hearing My Funny Valentine played as a military march. I'm not all too sure if people will be aware of it when they see it or are aware of that sort of effect, but to put it in a simpler way, just imagine someone singing an operetta while someone beatboxes in the background.

The conductor aspect of the film is also spot on. My teacher wasn't a madman, but he would pick out certain people and be harsher on them for the sake of improvement. He's not as cruel as Fletcher, but the underlying philosophy of "Good job" being a marker of complacency does resonate with musicians. It does have to do with timing and pitch, because subtleties are something that the conductor will pick up and call you out on. They can build up and screw up the performance, especially if it comes from rhythm section, hence why Fletcher chews out the drummers more than the others. Thankfully, my teacher never mentally scarred anyone but he wasn't above taking a few personal shots at others or throwing his baton at people who got on his nerves. Though saying that the person getting the baton thrown at them didn't have it coming is about as false as saying that Parker got a cymbal thrown to the head by Jo Jones.

Now I won't necessarily fault the movie for that stretch of reality. Much like I don't roll my eyes every time the teacher does something that would clearly get his ass fired or how Andrew is capable of tackling Fletcher. That's a matter of suspension of disbelief. What I will say is that I do take issue to Andrew's attitude to some level. For the most part, I understand his ambitions and I think the dining room scene was great to show how serious he is about drumming and how the world just doesn't seem to be at his favor. There is sympathy towards this character considering the abuse he gets from the teacher. But Brody brought up this good point about how his distance and the environment itself doesn't accurate represent jazz ensembles, considering that there's a lot more teamwork and less hostility. Vouching for that claim doesn't necessarily mean that in a professional environment that people are as friendly, even if it is for a group effort. Still, that isn't much of an issue to the story more than how selfish Andrew is. It may be a reaction to his father's condescending attitude towards his passion or it might just be the obsession taking its toll, but the smugness made me feel like punching him, even if he kicked ass at drumming.

Then again, it does make him more interesting. If I met Andrew, I'd probably want to punch him if he talked down to me, but if I met Miles Teller, I'd shake his hand and congratulate him for his performance. Same for Nate Lang and his character. Andrew may have his moments of being a jerk, but it does work in the context of the story and he has a reason to be cocky. He is also anti-social and by god does that show. The drumming really is a feat of work and the cinematography did well to hide when it was Lang hitting the drums. Though that's not to say that Miles didn't put in the effort to be good enough so that we could be fooled. The other musicians are fine as far as I can tell. For all I know, the trumpeters could have just been randomly pressing down keys, I'd have to watch it again to be sure. There was a trombonist who really didn't have a clue how the instrument worked, the slide was going all over the place. It might not act like a proper jazz ensemble, but at least it sounds like it.

Probably one of the greatest things about Whiplash is that the name is able to take on various meanings throughout the film. One of the most obvious ones is that there's a piece called Whiplash, which sounds like a tune that might drive many high-school jazz band instructors insane to get it sounding tolerable, let alone this professional group. Then, we have it by the way Fletcher keeps persisting, to the point of exhaustion, madness and bloodshed, which leads to some of the most intense moments in the film as well as some of the greatest shots. The most important definition of course has to be the relationship between Andrew and Terrence and the two of them. I already explained how Andrew tends to have moments of shifting, but Terrence is far more manipulative. It is fascinating to see how two-faced this man is and it makes you wonder if he's a tough-love guy who gets tougher with the things he loves, or a monster with musical expertise. It can be shocking to see how fast he changes and it works so well to make their connection all the more tangled and intense, delivering one hell of a punch for the end.

My years of playing the horn might not mean a damn thing when held up to other critics of this film, but I can certainly side with those who don't side favorably to it. For one, playing until you go mad doesn't make you play any better, so much as get worse. There's also the matter of there being very little conversation involving music theory. Granted, I'm no expert at it, but my teacher did more than just tell us when we're wrong. Plus, there is a lot more unity when it comes to bands, especially jazz since it's about sharing your perspectives, your path. It's a open forum to experiment and to let your mind run wild. Jazz is all about unfiltered thought, which this film actually is capable of embodying. It certainly might have it's bumps, but it doesn't stop and apologize, it carries on, much like a good jazz solo does. Still, it's goal isn't so much to perfectly mirror a jazz band environment. It's instead taking a different spin on the "prodigy" story-line. Andrew is as much of a immensely-skilled underdog as any, but instead of turning people around into lauding his wonderful skill or having his rise and fall be immense leaps, it's being under the boot of a mentor who will use his weakness against him and not care how hard he tried if it didn't amount to a good performance. Terrence does see something different in Andrew (as any other mentor character does), but he doesn't see it coming out by simply giving him a smile and a pat on the back. Rather, he sees it coming out by full-time dedication.

It's not that hard to detach yourself from whatever liberties this movie has in terms of getting the mood of the band environment, because we have all at least met one person who beats down on you hard but expects you to become better because of it (or makes you question their true motives). Part of the reason I didn't want to go with choir was because one of teachers was especially harsh on others. If not, we know someone who has been a victim of being pushed too hard but yet is capable of some incredible work. I at least know this because I went to a private school where if you did well enough in a strand, you got a pin on your lapel. Some of the folks had so many pins, they were practically generals. Their parents would get on them and they barely had time for anything else. Sometimes seeing Andrew talking to others reminds me a little of how others were. And in art, that's no different. The most relevant example is Lang Lang, who can play the piano incredibly fast but had an incredibly overbearing father. Hell, artists tend to be pretty hard on themselves and do some crazy things as they try to seek their best. Ultimately, the movie asks a very typical question: We all want to be great, but what is the cost of that greatness? To which I'm sure many who have seen it would response with not getting a chair thrown at them.

Role-playing games rely very heavily on maps, to the point where they're such a core concept that they can seem quite simple to work with on the surface. They're oftentimes overlooked as well – it's easy to find a tileset, make a quick map, add in some details, and call it a day, you might think. In a lot of cases, particularly with older games, this can actually ring true, at least somewhat: the original Final Fantasy had very simplistic dungeon layouts, varied in terms of layout (such as the Flying Fortress having lots of long, one-tile wide catwalks, or caves being more sprawling and open), but not in terms of design or gameplay otherwise.

Maps serve a much more significant role beyond the initial impressions, however. Being such a core aspect of an entire genre, map design is extremely important, be it world maps, dungeons, towns, or even games that make every place a detailed map rather than separating detailed areas and a more vague world map. Badly-crafted areas can hamper a game immensely, while sometimes maps can be designed in such a smart way that the subtleties might go unnoticed without a closer look. An RPG's difficulty doesn't just come from the increasing stats of the monsters, but also from the world itself, and what sort of challenges it can offer to a player. Japanese RPGs in particular are more linear than other RPGs, and the map design can benefit as a result, since players will always follow a more-or-less set path.

A great example, and one a lot of people might not think of, are the very first Pokemon games: Red and Blue Versions.

The first generation of Pokemon games are quite old, and their age, alongside being the first games in the series that Gamefreak produced, is the reason for their flaws as much as their good aspects, but the way the areas in the game progress in difficulty is one of the best examples of smartly-designed maps to explain. Starting from Pallet Town and progressing in a linear circle around Kanto, the situations the player ends up in get less and less lenient, and eventually culminate in Victory Road, which pits the player in every situation it can use.


Aside from a scant few detours, the entire game is very linear - it's not a stretch to call the league a clean, single circuit around the region.

The first spike in difficulty is perhaps Viridian Forest, even before the first badge. The early routes in the game are short and simple affairs, and the patches of grass that wild Pokemon can be encountered in a small as well; unless you actively dawdle in the grass, you'll probably only have one or two random encounters between Pallet Town and Viridian City; the player can't encounter any trainers aside from their rival, and the single patch of tall grass outside of the forest can be walked around.

The forest, on the other hand, is designed to offer the player a few choices: the patches of grass near the start of the woods are large, and they're also separate from the bug catchers that will challenge you to battles. The player can either choose to walk through the long stretches of grass, risking random encounters, or they can choose to take a safer path and fight a trainer instead. Then, near the end of the forest, the player is forced through big bunches of grass that also contain an unavoidable trainer near the end, combining the elements that were introduced earlier into a more difficult whole.


These long patches of grass also afford ample opportunity for catching new Pokemon. Joy!

The next spike in difficulty is Mt. Moon, which forces the player to wander through the equivalent of a permanent patch of tall grass. Encounters can happen at any time in the mountain, and there's also trainers that can challenge the player too – the mountain is also somewhat less straightforward than Viridian Forest was, meaning that the player might get a little lost. This is the end of Viridian Forest, except on a much larger scale.

Rock Tunnel, after a couple more badges, adds in a second quirk on top of these: the need to use Flash to illuminate the cave. This is a very small change, and Flash only needs to be used once to mitigate the darkness, but what this does is force some exploration and Pokemon-catching on the player: they can either catch some Pokemon to fill the Pokedex, then collect the Flash HM from Oak's assistant, or they can try and wander through the tunnel without Flash (an annoying task that sounds too tedious to do outside of a self-imposed challenge, but still entirely possible).

The game eases off at this point, and the Team Rocket sections in both Celadon and Saffron City are more like the Pokemon equivalent of a dungeon: they don't have random encounters, but they do have lots of trainers, and the conveyer belt puzzles and the teleport tile puzzles they contain are much more specialized than just wandering around caverns. They also have many more floors than Mt. Moon or Rock Tunnel, making them bigger in terms of height, even if the floors can seem a bit more manageable. The Safari Zone falls into this concept as well – it doesn't have a puzzling element like the Rocket areas do, but having limited steps to explore, along with having to find the warden's teeth and get the Surf HM, feel similar in execution.

Surfing from Fuschia to the Seafoam Islands, and the Seafoam Islands themselves, are the next step up: surfing is another point where random encounters are possible at any time, along with other swimming trainers to fight. It's more linear than Rock Tunnel, but the water is only half of the point: Seafoam Island itself is the other half, an icy underground area that has a number of boulder puzzles that require usage of Strength. This combines the puzzles from the Rocket sections with the ability to encounter wild Pokemon that the other caves had.


Thankfully, if the player messes up a puzzle, or wishes to get back to the surface, the islands aren't covered in darkness, nor are they large enough to get very lost in.

Victory Road is the final trial, and for good reason – it combines the random encounters of the underground areas, has more Strength puzzles for the player to solve... but unlike the Seafoam Islands, which are completely empty of other people, Victory Road also has trainers for the player to battle as well. The lead-up to the Elite Four is easily the most difficult section of the entire game because it takes all of the previous situations and throws them all at the player at once, and it makes Victory Road not just a hard area to get through, but also serves as a great capstone to the rest of the game. It's Red and Blue's final dungeon, and, quite appropriately, puts the player through the hardest situation that it can.

The reason that Red and Blue had such a polished curve of design is, admittedly, partly because the games were designed for 8-bit hardware. The Gameboy wasn't nearly as powerful as later handhelds, and the games that were built for it were much more constrained as a result. Again, this is also to blame for Kanto's faults, particularly the lack of visual variety and severe lack of optional content (that these flaws weren't fixed in later games or remakes is another matter entirely), but even some of the later games didn't recreate this sort of design curve as well as they could have. They might have improved in other areas or other aspects of design, like more interesting settings or more places to explore on your own time – and they might be better overall than Kanto anyway because of those improvements – but Red and Blue still serve well to show how smart map design can be used to help a game's difficulty.

With all this said, here are some things to think about in regards to map design:

• What sort of challenges do you want to include in your game? If you want to have a lot of elements going on at once, would it be better to strip some of these away at the start and stir them in later, or do you want to drop players in and add more and more as it goes along?
• If your game is going to be more open-ended rather than linear, how will you design your maps to take this into account? Will you use level-scaling on the enemies as discussed in a previous Game Design 101? Will you make each area include its own puzzles or quirks and only combine them once you're sure a player knows about all of them?
• How will you work with the enemies in your areas as you design them? If an area is a confusing, puzzling place that the player will spend a lot of time in, fighting enemies and gaining levels in the meantime, will you make later areas jump a bit in levels to match the map design curve, or will you keep the level curve and map curve separate?

Nozdordomu's List

St. Vincent – St. Vincent

St. Vincent is my favorite album of 2014. It’s St. Vincent’s most accessible album and her first without any obvious weak patches. As much as I love her music, her prior albums all seem to peter out before the end, but not this one. It’s well written as always, with extra helpings of humor and feeling in the lyrics. It’s full of welcome surprises and nifty touches, like that awesome crunchy riff on “Huey Newton,” the jerky video-gamey bass on “Rattlesnake,” the wonderfully textured chorus in “Regret,” the synths on “I Prefer Your Love” that remind me of Madonna (in a good way), etc. Her guitar playing remains as confident and creative as ever, and although I miss the bass on the record, it’s not a huge loss. The album’s also got her best ever closing track, “Severed Crossed Fingers,” featuring one of her most emotional vocals and a brilliant harpsichord arrangement to go with it. Of all the records that came out this year, this one had the most replay value for me. At first I thought the line “I prefer your love to Jesus” was clunky, but now all I hear is the lushness in her voice when she sings it, so it must be true. This is a record that should be heard more than once, and it doesn’t hurt that most of the songs are pretty catchy. A great experience all around and one of my favorite indie rock records in recent memory.

Spoon – They Want My Soul

I’ve been a Spoon fan for most of my life, since they released Gimme Fiction, and they haven’t let me down yet. Sure, Transference was kind of slight, but you can still count on Spoon to make a flat-out good record, even a great record, like they did this year. They Want My Soul might not be my favorite Spoon album, but it does display some of their strongest songwriting and arranging, from the chill-wavy synths and harp glissandos in “Inside Out” to the unstable variety of “Knock Knock Knock” to the mad piano on “I Just Don’t Understand.” “Do You” proves that Spoon can still write a great pop song if they want to, and “Outlier” seems to do everything that Reflektor failed to do. Spoon’s (often-underrated) inventiveness has saved them time and time again from being a “generic indie band,” although, with Britt Daniel’s distinctive husky voice and odd lyrical gift, they were never in real danger of slipping into one. You can count on Spoon.

D’Angelo and the Vanguard – Black Messiah

Let’s face it: 2014 wasn’t a great year for rap. No new Kanye release, nothing much from Kendrick, so-so (and overrated) albums by Schoolboy Q and J. Cole, Run the Jewels 2 something of a letdown, whatever. I did get to see Danny Brown live, which was awesome, but I couldn’t find a great rap album. Still, it was a great year for R&B and neo soul, even if only because D’Angelo put out an album.

A long overdue album at that – Black Messiah is D’Angelo’s first album in 14 years, and thankfully, it’s more than worth the wait. There’s just as much sexy balladeering as you’d expect, with standout cuts like the jitter-funk opener “Ain’t That Easy,” the sweepingly romantic “Really Love,” the ear-pleasing “Prayer,” and “Sugah Daddy,” which has such a great groove that it feels too short. This time around, though, D’Angelo ups his game with some biting social commentary in “1000 Deaths” and “The Charade” (“all we wanted was to talk/instead we got outlined in chalk”), and a great use of live instrumentation, including horns, vintage keys, and guitar (which he just learned how to play). Even with its good moments, Black Messiah – and it’s about time somebody used that title – still plays like a smooth, seamless whole. Smoothness has always been a forte of D’Angelo’s, and it’s fitting for a guy with such a smooth, silky voice, although it’s still hard to tell what he’s saying sometimes. Whatever, we’ll forgive him that, because he (and the Vanguard) brought us Black Messiah.

Aphex Twin – Syro

Speaking of long, long overdue comebacks, didn’t Aphex Twin put out a new album this year? He did – and a Top 20 album at that! You can definitely count on our Cornish friend to make grade-A electronic dance music, of the “intelligent” variety or not, although he’s always been intelligent. Some people might complain that Syro doesn’t sound too different from Aphex Twin’s older work, and while it doesn’t, I’d never complain about that. Where D’Angelo took his neo-soul in a funkier direction, Aphex Twin keeps the same basic musical style but makes it more “personal.” You can hear vocal samples of his family here and there, and you might also hear a palpable sense of nostalgia for old-style electronica. It’s that feeling that keeps Syro – and most of Aphex Twin’s music, for that matter – from devolving into solely cerebral, analytical work. This is real music, and aside from that, it’s just a good listening experience. The glitchy, mind-bendy techno really gets under your skin, and the closer “aisatsana [102]” is very pretty. Hopefully we won’t have to wait so long to hear something that pretty again. I’m talking to you too, D’Angelo.

The War on Drugs – Lost in the Dream

Real Estate – Atlas

This one’s a toss-up, because both albums have greatness in them, but don’t quite stand up as whole great records. In a way, they’re both the same kind of a record: an ear-pleasing, mellow-sounding album steeped in nostalgic sounds but also full of personal torment. You can hear more of the personal on Lost in the Dream, but Atlas is more compact and contained. Both albums have standout songs: the FM-esque “The Bend” and the dreamily catchy “Primitive” on Atlas, along with the 80s-style radio anthem “Burning” and the grooving rock-cum-ambient “Under the Pressure” on Lost in the Dream. Both benefit from clean, uncluttered production, far from their lo-fi roots but all the stronger for it. Both suffer from a number of slight songs (“filler” is too strong a word), but not as much as weaker albums would. I would personally redo the track listing on each album, but as they stand, they’ve still got lots of strengths to recommend them. If you like mellow music but don’t like to be bored, you’ll definitely enjoy these.

Honorable mentions: You’re Dead! by Flying Lotus, Pinata by Freddie Gibbs and Madlib, and Salad Days by Mac Demarco.

Most overrated album of 2014: 1989 by Taylor Swift. Why do people like this?

Crazy Luigi's List

Clipping. – CLPPNG

If there was one album that I had listened to more than any other from this past year, it would have to be this one. Just for background on this one, like another artist that I had mentioned in the past few years that will make its way back onto my own list, Clipping is a rap group trio from California where only one guy’s rapping (Daveed Diggs), while the other two (William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes) end up creating the instrumentation to help Daveed and his guests rap under them as best as they can. However, unlike this other group where having a loud, sometimes unintelligible rapper can invoke power with the instrumentation, Clipping has a more natural rapper spitting out rhymes while the instruments provide a mood that naturally works within what Daveed (and guests) have to say in them. With this group, there tells two important sides that really makes this album in particular work as a whole: the rapping and the instrumentals that accompany it. To me, both areas really do make this album shine under a greater light because of it.

When listening to what Daveed says when rapping about them, you can tell that he has the rapping prowess that only a select few people actually have in terms of skills. In fact, the introduction song alone should be a telltale sign of what you can expect from Daveed, and let’s just say if you don’t like what he has there, you’re probably not going to like this album at all. Many of the songs that are structured within the entire album does revolve around violence and some of the gangsta lifestyles that most rap artists like talking about, but unlike most of those said artists, Daveed doesn’t really glamorize them as much as challenge some of the standards that can be found with those types of songs, such as with "Summertime," "Get Got," and "Inside Out." Speaking of those first two songs, most of the guests that come here are actually veteran rappers like Cocc Pistol Cree, King Tee, and even Gangsta Boo of Three 6 Mafia fame, and most of these guests actually provide their own twists to the songs they’re on that actually makes them sound nice on whatever they’re doing there. Even with that in mind, some of the stories that get told in these tracks like "Body & Blood," "Story 2," "Dominoes," and "Ends" also provide some hidden depth that you normally don’t get in certain rap tracks. However, there are times where the instrumentation of these songs is just as important as the actual rapping, if not more so; luckily the other members of Clipping know that just fine.

You’ve probably noticed that I hadn’t talked much about the other guys involved with Clipping here in William and Jonathan. Well here’s something you should know about them: they’ve both been involved with actual projects of their own as well with Jonathan doing electronic music under Captain Ahab and William providing noise music under Rale. One would think that having a mixture of electronic music with music revolving around noise would create some jarring sounds for you to listen to, and admittedly the first time listening to it, you might be right. However, once the initial stigma goes away, you realize that they handle the mixture pretty effectively with them knowing when to provide noisier music ("Body & Blood," "Get Up," "Or Die"), when to have the music get softer and more atmospheric ("Work Work," "Taking Off," "Tonight," "Dream," "Dominoes"), and even when to do both ("Summertime," "Inside Out," "Story 2," "Ends") under an effective manner. In fact, even though one of the songs does revolve around alarm clocks as being the music and can easily be a love it or hate it track because of it, the clocks do provide unique melodies that you wouldn’t expect from something so simplistic in the first place. Really, with the way Clipping provides rapping and a unique sense of making beats for the rapping, I can see this group create quite a following for years to come. In fact, in some cases, I can easily understand how they can be easier to attract than the following group below in spite of the fact that they provide somewhat similar types of music here.

Death Grips & Björk – Niggas On the Moon

As a fair warning for you guys, this album is technically considered an album that’s kind of cheating the rules here. What I mean by that is this album is actually a part of a double album that won’t be released until sometime this year (perhaps it’s actually out already by the time this article’s published), yet it was released earlier on last year. As such, this album can’t truly be graded as a whole until it’s second half counterpart, known as Jenny Death within The Powers That B double album, gets released since it can either expand or degrade the first half’s quality in various ways. With that said, I can judge the first half on the songs that were released for it already, and if this is anything to go by, I think some of us can’t wait for Jenny Death to come out and complete the saga this group left behind in its wait. It probably helps that it’s also one of their more easily accessible albums for newcomers to date.

With every fan of the Death Grips that’s already heard of at least one of their albums with vocals beforehand (as in not Government Plates and especially Fashion Week), the songs that you’re going to hear from them will likely be nothing too surprising from them. However, if you’re a newcomer to the group and you think you might be interested in them, this album actually a pretty good starting point for you, especially if you looked into Clipping’s album and liked what they provided for you. Songs like "Billy Not Really," "Black Quarterback," and "Big Dipper" help showcase where even if you aren't too fond of MC Ride’s vocals, they do provide solid melodies and easily catches lines that you don’t mind having in your head at times. Of course, there are also songs like "Up My Sleeves," "Say Hey Kid," and "Fuck Me Out" that hold darker overtones that I personally really enjoy as much, if not more than those catchy melodic songs mentioned earlier that are also present here. Even if you have noticed the likes of Flatlander and drummer Zach Hill doing what they do best with providing electronic-like music and hardcore drumming before, the group holds a unique new element for “instrumentation” that I hadn't really heard of using up until now.

When you think of humans and music, more often than not, you think of them as either vocalists or players of instruments like guitars, drums, or even keyboards. However, in this album, you have the stylistic vocals of Icelandic singer Björk show up on practically every single track… as a vocal instrument of sorts. Seriously, in just about every track on this album, she ends up having vocal cues that are either really subtle or are really obvious when you listen long enough that end up blending within the instrumentation that’s normally done by Flatlander and Zach Hill. Normally in situations like that, I’d end up being rather irritated at some point with vocals being instruments (unless it’s supposed to be like acapella music) since it kind of feels like it’s cheap and cheats the listener(s) out of potentially awesome music in the process, and in all honesty, Björk really isn't an artist I find myself listening to so often in the first place. However, by some stroke of genius or luck, the group managed to make her vocals work rather well as instruments to the point where I wouldn't mind hearing more artists having vocals act like background instruments as well. With the things that make the Death Grips surprisingly work combined with Björk providing a unique way of implementing herself onto this album, it’s no wonder why this was my second-most listened album of 2014. Let’s hope that their (potential) final album helps showcase the overall picture that this album tried to portray all those months ago so that their sad cum break up announcement doesn't sound so sad after all.

"Weird Al" Yankovic – Mandatory Fun

Alright, show hands, who hasn’t during at least their teenaged years heard of at least one song (parody or otherwise) or even album from what could very well be the king (jester?) of parody music? Really, I won’t blame you if you did since he’s been one of the longest lasting (living) artists our generation has ever known of and the fact that he continues providing some good laughs to people for nearly 40 years now showcases a legacy that both old and new fans can legitimately respect now. The fact that this album proved to be the first (and only) album of his that turned out to be a #1 selling album on Billboard’s Top 100 albums listing (even if it was only for one week) further illustrates the legacy he’s left upon our world. Of course, I can’t deny that his albums since the new millennium started have had lesser quality than some of his older albums that were released since the 1980’s and 1990’s, but they still had their own fun qualities in their own ways. However, this album I think I say almost competes with those other albums and is not only the best album of his during this new millennium, but it also sends off what’s potentially his last album in a rather satisfying manner.

With “Weird Al” Yankovic, the most important thing we usually like hearing more than anything else for him would be the songs he’s straight up parodying from the people that wanted to be parodied by him. For me, most of the songs that he decided to parody not only had good structures to them, but also sounded rather good as actual parodies when compared to what the songs he was going with like Iggy Azalea & Charli XCX’s "Fancy," Pharrell Williams’ "Happy," Imagine Dragons’ "Radioactive," and even Lorde’s "Royals." Really, the only song that got parodied that I disliked back then that I don’t really care for even as a parody was Robin Thicke, Pharrell Williams, and T.I.’s Blurred Line, and even then it’s not for the idea that he didn’t try at all; in fact, I could probably say that he provided the best attempt to sound great as possible, but the instrumentation that goes on for too long still kills me even to this day no matter who performs this shit. With that said, every parody (especially those with music videos) really do hit the nail on the mark there on what they want to say and how insane some of these places can go sometimes like "Handy," "Foil," and "Inactive." As for the polka song that mashes up a good chuck of popular songs into one whole song, this turned to be one of the best polka mash-ups I’ve heard from “Weird Al”, and considering some of the songs he used for it ("Wrecking Ball" by Miley Cyrus, "Best Song Ever" by One Direction, "Call Me Maybe" by Carly Rae Jepson, "Scream & Shout" by Will.I.Am and Britney Spears, and "Sexy & I Know It" by LMFAO), that’s actually quite an accomplishment in and of itself!

As for the songs that are more original for him that still revolve around using certain styles to make them effective… I think most of them work with it being a bit of a mixed bag sometimes. Don’t get me wrong, songs like "My Own Eyes," "Mission Statement," and especially the "Sports Song" really do provide me with a sense of joy and satisfaction whenever I listen to them. However, both the songs "First World Problems" and "Lame Claim To Fame" end up giving me some feelings that even though I think they’re alright as it is, I think they could have been a bit better. Furthermore, the ending song ("Jackson Park Express") is a nine minute song where even though I’m aware of the sense of how it can be enjoyable and even very fascinating to the listener on where it’s going to go, I kind of think went on a bit too long for my tastes and became one of the weaker parts of the album because of it. Still, in spite of my feelings for those types of songs being more of a mixed bag, they still not only remained a positive, but provided “Weird Al” a true sense of success with not only mastering the parody song in his own way, but also gaining further worldwide recognition in ways not even songs like "Eat It," "Fat," "Amish Paradise," and even "White & Nerdy" could do for him beforehand. As a result, I have to list it as a favorite album of mine this past year for giving me some much needed laughs in a year that also introduced things like ISIS and the War in Ukraine to the national public.

Sun Kil Moon – Benji

One thing that I had noticed within my best albums ranking last year was that I hadn’t really held any diversity with my albums at all. I mean think about it, most of my favorite albums were rap albums and the one that wasn’t really was more of an obvious album to give praise to over anything else. Even if I did find my choices justified, it wouldn’t hurt to actually provide a bit more variety with my choices this year; that’s why I decided ever since the middle of 2014 that I would find a way to diversify my list of favorite albums this year. With this album, I think it might have helped succeed in my goal since this album’s from a (mostly single) folk rock artist who’s usual work involves acoustic guitars, which is usually an area where I’m less excited to listen to when compared to most other genres. However, with the way Mark Kozelek (the main artist that’s credited in Sun Kil Moon) presented the types of subjects that were found in this album, it really made the album really stand out in ways you normally wouldn’t expect it to.

The way many of the songs are presented to the listener here is done under a kind of autobiographical standpoint that Mark had remembered throughout his life of around 46 or so years. This album in particular starts out with an event that starts out rather recent with the death of a second cousin of his that he wants to pay his respects towards and continues to revolve around various humans or events that helped move his life to the path it’s at right now, from his parents, other family members, and even neighbors of sorts like a guy named Jim Wise to events like watching a film he saw in his childhood involving Led Zeppelin, the murders caused by the Satanic worshipping Richard Ramirez, and even one of the more recent school shootings (at the time) at the Sandy Hook Elementary School. Yeah, if you haven’t figured it out by now, one of the more prominent themes that revolves around this album is death and how there can and will be plenty of different reactions involved with either people dying, are (potentially) about to die soon, or are already dead. Normally there would be points of hyperbole or other types of symbolism to offset the types of subject matter related to death like in death metal or horrorcore rap, but Mark ends up providing some brutal truths within life and very specific details about they can affect him or have affected his life as a whole, such as how a funeral near the end of Truck Driver had some Kentucky Fried Chicken served to the funeral goers. Yet in spite of focusing on such a difficult, even brutal at times subject to cover throughout most of the album, it didn’t feel uncomfortable to listen to at all; in fact, the songs actually come off as emotional in all the right places.

Songs like "Carissa," "I Can’t Live Without My Mother’s Love," and "Jim Wise" provide specific moments of sadness that revolve around caring for the subject matters in question. On the other hand, I Love My Dad holds special moments of happiness on how well Mark’s dad taught him in spite of his failings. Many of the other songs also provide different emotional results where you’d feel alright one minute and then you feel like you have a tear or two in your eye(s) or even feel something more complex than that (like in "Pray For Newtown") the next. In the end, it all relates to Mark’s life as it is today with how it’s more mundane these days and how he wants to live it with a bit more passion and oomph that can be understood if you ever lived with monotonous details throughout at least a few moments of life. If there was one negative I could say when listening to this album (aside from the fact that the album has some really long tracks with one track over ten minutes long), it’s that some of the vocals in certain tracks have background vocals as loud as the actual lyrics, which can easily distract some listeners. Other than that, it’s a really enjoyable album and if you either want to listen to some songs from some white guy with acoustic guitars or want an introduction to Sun Kil Moon, this album would be it for me.

Skyharbor – Guiding Lights

Finally, to conclude this list of favorite albums of mine, I have a metal band from the land of India that in all honesty slipped past my mind throughout most of last year that really had quite a grip on me. For everyone that doesn’t know about this group, Skyharbor is a metal group that provides a special use of ambiance to provide a sense of atmosphere that you normally don’t get with most metal albums (or at least not when compared to something like Metallica or AC/DC). The type of metal music they present is called “Djent,” which revolves around providing heavy music that follows a specific sound, and that normally gets a love/hate relationship of sorts with certain types of people (or rather metalheads) that enjoy varied music. However, considering the fact that this group that initially started as a project by one Indian guitarist had Mark Friedman, a (former) Megadeth member collaborate with them and toured with the Lamb of God earlier on in their careers, it’s pretty safe to say that they hold a sense of legitimacy within the metal community even when not all of their songs rely on being heavy. In a way, it’d be kind of fitting for them to bring something light (in multiple senses of the word) and new for a genre that had relied on being a dark and heavy with its tone of subjects and sound for decades now.

If I’m being honest, this is probably the only album from my list that’s a bit better off when being listened to as a whole than as separate songs. Oh sure, I can certainly say a few albums here a sense of adventure with themselves from beginning to end, but they don’t really elicit a journey that has me feeling like I became better with myself after listening to it all. That’s not to say none of the songs can be enjoyed separately off the album either; Evolution provides a sense of rebirth and being free from life’s shackles, while Patience tells a surprisingly emotional story of trying to keep a perfect memory while trying to not be influenced by a town that’s full of deceitful people around you. However, in terms of providing the listener with a whole picture based off the songs given to you from beginning to end, this album’s a great contender to give you an idea of a whole story out of its songs in making sure you end up being a better person while not falling for society’s temptations since we only have one life to live. With that sense, it’s quite a message to follow if you’ve ever felt like you’ve had doubts against yourself for whatever reason (which I’ll admit I have had a few times myself).

When it comes to the vocals, let’s just say that if you aren’t a fan of TesseracT, you’re probably not going to like this group at all. However, I can say that the lyrics here are very introspective and do provide a sense of what’s going on in the vocalist’s mind, and they do come out rather fittingly. Speaking of fitting in properly, the instrumentation that goes on throughout the album does find a sense of when to go hard hitting with itself and when to go lighter on itself, especially in some of the more complex songs on the album. In fact, some of the sounds that come out here have nice little hints of other groups with nice melodies and compositions like the Deftones and Daft Punk from their Random Access Memories days that actually provide a more original light to them. Even some of the guest work by Mark Holcomb of Periphery, Plini, and Valentina Reptile provide some nice, interesting styles to add onto Skyharbor’s work. If there’s one thing that I don’t like about this album, it’s the fact that this album really loves having longer than usual tracks with the shortest song being around 4:30 minutes long and having at least two songs over nine minutes long. Even I admit that it might take a few listens to understand everything within the album, but once you do, it’s sure to be a journey that you’ll never forget (or at least leave you in a better mood than when you were initially under beforehand).

In 2014, we've seen some interesting motion pictures come out, both the good and the bad, and unfortunately, for some of us, we saw the downright ugly. However, we're only going to focus on the good, because there have been some impressive new pieces of cinematic goodness last year, and with the Oscars coming up, there are a lot of movies that show great promise, and there's a chance that one of our choices is going to nab the Oscar for Best Motion Picture of the Year. As we progress through 2015, we can only hope that we can get much more great pieces of cinema put into theatres for the public to see, but for now, with that said, here's some of the best movies of 2014 that we, of the YouChew Writing Staff, have enjoyed.

TheOneManBoxOffice's Pick: The Grand Budapest Hotel



Wes Anderson, better known as the director of such films as Fantastic Mr. Fox, Moonrise Kingdom, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Rushmore, and The Royal Tenenbaums, is a filmmaker with a very quirky and precise vision. In other words, his movies are unique in terms of how they are filmed. This movie, The Grand Budapest Hotel, is no exception. It's probably Anderson's most visually pleasing picture to date since Fantastic Mr. Fox, and it's also one of his smartest comedies. The movie focuses on a legendary concierge M. Gustave, who was supposed to inherit a priceless Renaissance painting called "Boy With Apple" from a woman he slept with at his hotel before she died a month later. Unfortunately, the woman's son, Dimitri, is not pleased, so Gustave, along with his lobby boy Zero (whom he later makes a pact with), steals the painting and returns it to the hotel, storing it in a safe. Shortly after, Gustave is arrested and charged with the murder of the woman he loved...and I will stop right there, because I'd give away the whole movie if I go on. Oh, and it is told in flashback through the perspective of a fully-grown Zero after encountering an author who is interested in how he inherited the Grand Budapest Hotel.

If you've seen Anderson's previous films, you should know that the best filmmaking techniques that he used in them are used here and in top form. For example, a lot of shots are filmed symmetrically (meaning both sides of the shots are even instead of at an angle or specific position), and there are some of which that look like the editors superimposed the actors onto a professionally-made diorama (like what you see on the movie poster, shown above). I seriously love how this movie looks, artistically and photography-wise. The movie also has a lot of smart and hilarious moments, particularly with the relationship between Gustave and Zero and all the hi-jinks they get themselves into, because...well...they asked for it. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the hell out of this movie. I unfortunately didn't get the chance to see it in the theatre, but a friend of mine did get the DVD when it came out and lent it to me, and let me just say that it's on my list of movies that deserve a place on my shelf. Thus, it's my choice for my favorite movie of 2014.


HerrVarden's Pick: Gone Girl



It's hard for me to choose which one is the better film, Whiplash or Gone Girl. I mean I could add Book Of Life in there too. Hell, I'd go so far to put in Hari Ng Tondo as my pick. That at least seems better than how I fared last year in which I couldn't really pick from much of a pool of films I'd seen. The first three movies were all ones that I wanted to see and felt good coming out of the theatre. I'll omit Book Of Life from this though why might require a little soul searching. Certainly a part of me very much resonated with Whiplash if I was compelled enough to write a whole article about it. If I was more competent though, I would probably have written something for Gone Girl. And perhaps that's the only reason I make my post right now, to make up for my sins of not writing anything about it before.

Though don't let that fool you into thinking that this doesn't deserve to be considered one of the best films of the year simply because of my compromise. I want to talk about this film. This film got in my head and didn't let go. It made me squirm at times that didn't need squirming and made the internal screams grow louder as the ride went faster to it's inevitable crash of horror. It's probably the first time I've looked at a Fincher film and been taken completely aback at how downright insane it is. Granted, that's a loaded statement for anyone who's seen Se7en, Zodiac and Fight Club but I do not recall having my stomach churn over anything in the movies, and Gone Girl did that with something more mundane. It's atmosphere is impeccable with the beautifully orchestrated cinematography. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have done a tremendous job to evoke the droning, dead and disturbing vibe that the situation brings. The whole cast, ranging from Pike's bitter spite, Affleck's charming ways, Perry's wiseass remarks and Dickens's small-town suspicion, brought me in further into the web of lies that slowly began to be spun. While the movie might suffer from the lack of unreliableness that the narrators in the book brought forth, it more than makes up for it in the emotionally-stripped and coldness that lingered throughout the plot's unfurling. It seemed to not only be challenging the strength of marriage in troubled times and mocking the media's gung-ho nature, but also showing the twisted results of what those two produce in tandem with a self-aware, post-modernist, and nearly desensitized culture.


Robotic's Pick: Whiplash



Birdman was my favorite movie of the year, and Inherent Vice could supersede it when I get a chance to watch it a few more times, but Whiplash was the most fulfilling. Unlike the former two films, Whiplash isn't difficult or complex, and it is vitally flawed in a big way. I'm happy it was nominated for an Oscar, but I can't tell you I was expecting it to be. The film undermines its own message by keeping too close to reality. Without getting into spoilers, I left the theater actually saying "wow" out loud, while knowing that the primary themes of entire thing fell flat. It's somehow still inspiring and motivational without truly being a successful film. Everyone wants to talk about the performances in Whiplash. Really, they want to talk about J.K. Simmons, which isn't fair to the awesome Miles Teller. The thing that wowed me about Whiplash, the thing that really saved the film, was the editing.

It's interesting this year to see two films, Birdman and Whiplash, utilizing completely different editing philosophies and achieving a similar feelings of hyperactivity. The reason why editing was the savior of Whiplash is because it allowed me to completely buy into the film in spite of its flaws. When I'm having so much fun, and getting so invested, I don't care about the big picture anymore. It becomes about catharsis. You don't watch a James Bond movie wondering if 007 will save the day, but when he does it's still a great feeling. Get ready for music puns, because the editing in Whiplash sets the emotional tempo so well that the moment the movie really starts, on a black screen, tension is already being created. It begins with a drum solo and ends with a drum solo, with that tension finally released. We open on black and transition to a slow moving shot upon our protagonist, and close on a cacophony of closeups, match cuts, and split second images that build up like a roll on the snare. We're finally given what we really wanted from the start. It's just a guy playing the drums, but it's more action packed than your yearly Taken sequel. Does our protagonist beat the bad guy in the end? Not really. He doesn't save the world either, nor does he really change it. But for awhile, living up to the standards of Mr.Fletcher became the only thing that mattered. It's good that a movie can get you on its side so well.


Nozdordomu's pick: Boyhood



An impressive achievement. An overblown productional gimmick. A sprawling tragicomedy. A slice-of-life drama with more slices of life than your usual drama. A personal history of Texas from 2002 to 2013. A period piece, intentionally or not. A reminder that Richard Linklater, despite his stoner-friendly image, might still be one of the most humanistic directors working today. All of these and more, Boyhood may not "deserve" your praise, even your appreciation, but it definitely deserves your attention. It demands to be seen, not just for its novel conceit, but for the way it embraces and transcends that conceit. Criticisms may be brought against it, but for all of them, I still see it as the least outwardly flawed movie of 2014.

The best thing about Boyhood is that it's a very true movie. Nothing seems unrealistic, and most of the experiences, emotional and otherwise, couldn't be limited to a white boy in Texas. The naturalistic dialogue only really stumbles in one breakup scene near the end, but otherwise, it carries the movie, as we see Mason Jr. (Ellar Coltrane) through his formative years, moving around Texas with his mother and sister and intermittently visiting his father. I'll admit there's a huge nostalgic factor to the movie's enjoyment. The scene where the mother reads Harry Potter to Mason and his sister brought me right back to my own boyhood; my mom did the exact same thing for me and my siblings! A friend of mine said he had the same Dragonball Z bedsheets that Mason has when he was a child. However, while the film is full of nice details, it doesn't skimp on either the dark, unpleasant aspects of childhood – divorce, alcoholism, awkward friendships and romances, rednecks, bad haircuts – or the weaknesses of its central character, who sometimes comes off as overly proud. Mason is clearly a product of his environment; for instance, all his "fathers" are alcoholic to varying extents, and he starts drinking at a fairly young age. However, he's far from a blank slate. (That actually became a problem for another friend, who felt like the film was "too specific" in its depiction of aging. It wasn't a problem for me.)

Richard Linklater has always been good with actors, and he gets top-notch performances from the ensemble cast, which includes his own daughter Lorelei, frequent collaborator Ethan Hawke, and other members of his acting "troupe" (the abusive stepfather Bill and Mason's boss at the diner stand out). Some people might question if Boyhood really had to be filmed over 12 years, but if there's any area where the conceit really, really helps the film, it's the acting. Rather than pretending to "act" older, these actors actually are getting older, and their performances are just so fitting for their characters. Mason believeably changes from submissive and sulky to self-sufficient and cocksure to a fault, but every member of the family has an arc, either tragic (Mason's mother realizing the impact of her decisions and falling into despair) or otherwise (Mason's dad finding his way, connecting with his children, and making amends with the mother). Even minor characters, like Mason's second stepfather, undergo arcs due to the passing of time. This is a very dynamic, humanistic movie. Rather than simply providing the novelty of seeing a boy age right before our eyes, Boyhood makes that gimmick essential to the movie's impact.

Maybe I'm a little bit biased; I might have been in a special state of mind to enjoy Boyhood. I was just about to start college, like Mason at the end of the film, and I felt like I could identify with him, not just in that way but in many ways. Still, you don't have to be a boy, or man, in between stages of life to identify. If the film lacks a definite, point A to point B plot, that's only fitting to the main character and the movie's message. Mason doesn't know where he's going, and he has to live in the moment because life isn't defined by "big moments" or single events. Likewise, Boyhood isn't defined by its individual scenes, its novel filmmaking style, or even its central character. It's truly more than the sum of its parts and all the better for it.

Other favorites of 2014: Birdman (awesome movie), Whiplash, Wild, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Gone Girl.

Before we begin this series once again, I must apologize in advance for having another one of these articles revolving around two months again instead of just one like I initially thought we were going to do. This time, we actually did have enough videos to properly represent the month of January and we were just about ready to go for that month. However, you already know about our server situation with the blackout that caused some data (but nothing revolving around YouChew's data, thankfully), as well as the fact that it took quite some time to properly get everything back on track. Well, let's just say that because of that situation, we had to delay our initial article back to a whole different month altogether because of that complication. We don't normally condone such actions on completed articles in our favor, but considering this unique scenario that's likely happened only one other time (i.e., the {Oz} situation), it was just something we had to accept and move on from there.

With that said, we do hope you enjoy these videos that were released celebrating the beginning of this new year in 2015! We hope everyone has been enjoying this wild ride so far; I know I'm enjoying it as well considering I just recently graduated from college myself! If you aren't, though, we still have a good 10 months remaining to make you change your mind here. Who knows, maybe these videos could be just what you needed to get yourself back on a positive note this year? Personally, I'm just glad to have a new year to make amends for our problems we've had so far. Either way, just sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.
 
Crazy Luigi's Pick: "YTP: MarMar Destroys Joel's PC" by Bee Thompson (January)


I must admit that this video wasn't my initial choice when first deciding my favorite YouTube Poop for January this year; in fact, I initially thought that filler from NPCarlsson called "Give Me The YTP" was going to be my choice for the month because I thought it provided the best quality for that month. However, as I was looking for a video that I would look for a favorite on February, I found this video that really impressed me that I almost thought would be perfect for February. Of course, it would be moments later where I would realize that it was released later on January back when we had this temporary shutdown due to a power outage that ruined some old data drivers in the process. I had thought at the time that it ruined a potential idea to talk about it earlier on in February, but the more I watched it, the more I realized I actually enjoyed it a lot more than I did for my initial choice. Because of that, though, I figure it's more fair to discuss this video instead while admitting I still like the other video even though it is only filler.

In order for me to properly talk about this video as a whole, I need to talk about the two sides that revolve around the video itself, which is the Normal Boots' side with PeanutButterGamer and JonTron and the Vinesauce side with Joel (better known as exinthevatican on YouTube) and Windows 7. With the Normal Boots area (especially in regards with material involving PeanutButterGamer), I had noticed that plenty of the aspects there revolved around using special effects to make the comedic aspects come to life there. Two notable scenes in particular that showcases how its effects helped add to the comedic aspects of the video were the introduction to videos with the more modernized Normal Boots logo gets multiplied and then expanded within the intro until its brutal end and the part with PeanutButterGamer karate chopping SpongeBob SquarePants into the depths of Hell itself (which was partially done thanks to his own YouTube Poop-like segment in his Zelda CD-i video game review). I should probably warn that a good majority of the video involves segments from his reviews (with a bit of his PBGGameplay channel videos put in as well), so if you don't really like the guy, you might not like this video in particular. However, I personally enjoy the guy (although not as much as most other video game reviewers/players), and some of the stuff here proves that the guy is rather underrated in the YouTube Poop world. As for JonTron, he's mostly stuck in YouTube Poop Music Video format with him doing his shtick with a few songs here (and some sound clips like the German Santa Claus) with various clips taking parts as the sounds for said songs. Even then, each of the clips that were used for his segments actually work really well with what the guy was going for here.

As for the second half, I'd almost say that the second half with Joel of Vinesauce fame was actually better representing what the video is all about over anything else. With Joel's part of the video here, it's almost best represented by how the actual content rolls out to the viewer. I admit that I am quite a major fan of Vinesauce's videos, and I also think the videos there would be great new materials to use for YouTube Poops, but I mainly thought that for Vinny (the actual Vinesauce YouTube user) would have been the most likeliest user there to get into one of these videos (or at least more prominent user). However, I can say that the content with Joel's part here (which consists of 99% footage from his Windows 7 destruction video) really works just as well and as impressively here as any corruption video with Vinny would have. The material that came up in terms of what the video provided left me with what I think was the funniest kind of material I had seen throughout the entire month! Seriously, between the little piece where an opening song from the video turned into the Thomas the Tank Engine theme song and the ensuing insanity that came throughout his portion of the video, it was probably the best usage of Joel I'd seen from a video yet. In fact, it wouldn't be much of a stretch to say that this part was the main reason that I decided to go for this video on January after all.

thebluespectre's Pick: "SHINJI RETURNS WITH A VOYEUR" by TehShadzify


I have to be honest when I say the following words: I hate ear rape. Almost every time, ear rape YouTube Poops are somehow lazy despite the extreme amounts of editing needed to blend a video clip into noisy rainbow insanity. The thing is, no matter what source an ear rape video uses, whether it be cartoon or live action, they almost always end up looking exactly the same. Spinning, mirrored fractal images, randomized color changes, single tenths of seconds of voice clips stuttered into a sort of buzzing dial tone. Make sure to crank up the volume as far as it goes, it's not called Ear Gently Caress. Ear Rape has different objectives than a normal YouTube Poop. It's not meant to make anyone laugh, and it's not meant to cause seizures (though it might happen). The goal of an ear rape video is confusion, plain and simple. It's a classic objective for YouTube Poops; getting in the way of normal YouTube recommended searches and mystifying internet pedestrians. I simply think YouTube Poops can do more than that, and need to grow past the old trolling attitude.

So why do I love this video so much? One part is the fact that it's short. Mercifully short, slightly more than 30 seconds long. The worst ear rapes drag on for minutes, long past their welcome. The worst of the lot even use the same filter for minutes at a time, until it becomes just another video with a slight alteration. When a YouTube Poop begins to feel normal, it's failed. They need to keep on moving, always surprise you along the way. TehShadzify's creation is not stale in the least; any given 5 seconds is different from the rest. He even crams a short YouTube Poop Music Video in there, which is always impressive given how difficult it is to co-ordinate.

And let's be honest, Evangelion is the perfect subject for an ear rape, since psychological violation is the name of the game in Neon Genesis Evangelion. Distorted screaming and familiar scenes chopped into madness are common as dirt in the second half of the show; this is just actually aiding the source material. Of course, the more pretentious bits get taken down a peg by the very nature of YouTube Poop, and that's not a bad thing. When the world is going insane, all you can do is laugh. Also the last three seconds are perfect.

HerrVarden's Pick: "Anime Was A Fucking Mistake" by TheChutley (January)



YouTube Poop tends to be a very varied medium when it comes to style, but there tends to be two branches. One is the straight-forward way which embarks on stutters, sentence mixing and other editing techniques loosely and freely. These tend to be rooted into a story or possess a rhythm to them, and aim to be really funny. Then there's the surrealist approach, which banks on visual mind-fuckery and seeks to provide an experience of sorts. And then they're the videos which run down the middle like this one by TheChutley. I like to call them "Speakonia Poops" because there's always the usage of text-to-speech in these half-surreal, half-silly productions and that software usually is Speakonia. Anime Was a Fucking Mistake shows the elements of what makes the Speakonia Poop so great. It plays off like a person frantically and aimlessly messing around with Photoshop with various images being put together with no discernible cohesion and stuffed to the brim with filters. Along with it, various psychedelic or quirky choices of music are mixed in with ambient and bizarre sounds. The scenes in the video are very short, giving a feeling of the video having perfectly placed errors that break away from the line that would otherwise make it a more normal YouTube Poop. What I like the most about the video is the sensation it gives. There's this sensation of being sick and meandering through various bits of online content only to find them blending in together and kick-starting a fever dream. It's dizzying in a good way, since you want to see it again and try to see if you can make sense of it a bit more. And maybe you don't, but you understand more of the artistry that it constructs.

Crazy Luigi's Pick: "|YTP| You're In Jaller's World Now, Baby" by Jallerbo (February)


Let's face facts here, predictability will always find its way to make something that may look like best thing you've ever seen look just plain decent at best. I've seen it happen to me plenty of times beforehand with certain things, such as how I thought the first two Shrek films were absolutely fantastic before further viewings made them feel only alright instead (even though I still do like them). At the same time, it can also make things that you initially thought were good the first few times you watched them (like the Christmas film adaptation of Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer) feel like they were complete shit after all this time because you've watched them long enough to notice every little detail that gets put into them, for better or for worse. The point is that even videos that aspire to be the very best they can be can end up getting stale due to repetition, which can come out into predictability soon afterwards. With that said, the things that Jallerbo does with this video helps make even the most predictable and boring ideas of jokes become something new, fresh, and exciting to look at.

As someone that doesn't mind the ponies whenever they show up, I will admit this video does start out with them and they do show up every now and then, so that might be a deal breaker to some viewers. However, that should not be the case if you really are a fan of YouTube Poops since the video still provides you with some good comedy and some defining ear rape (and visuals) to boot. Of course, if you know me well enough, you'd know quite well that sometimes that alone isn't enough for me to recommend a video over someone else's video; sometimes a video needs a bit of extra finesse to make itself shine forth over anyone else's videos in mind. Thankfully, there are two different types of things that help make this video really stand out on its own accord, aside from the actual content it provides. These two things are making jokes that are considerably stale feel a bit fresh and the ending scene of the video.

When I say that there's jokes that get upgraded a notch, I'm mainly talking about that one scene where an Asian guy goes and says "ha, gaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy" in a classroom for some reason that I don't know out of context, but probably makes sense when it's in context with the actual show it's under. It's really one of those types of memes that, at least to me, overstayed their welcome as soon as it first started spreading online. However, with the way Jallerbo implemented it within his video, it really did make for one of the more surprisingly best methods of using that clip I'd ever seen yet! With that said, I hold much more affection for the ending involving Dane Cook, better known as that comedian you had heard about in high school (maybe junior high as well) that you thought was relatively funny then but isn't very funny nowadays. Without spoiling anything, let's just say that even after seeing the video multiple times, I still get a very good, genuine laugh out of how its ending was set up and how it worked into the video in question. For not only getting a clip that I still find to be very hilarious time and time again after multiple viewings, as well as having it involve someone as polarizing as Dane Cook of all people, this video is very worthy of being my favorite YouTube Poop released in February this year.

TheOneManBoxOffice's Pick: "Minty Gingham's Flying Telecosbies" by FishTitan64 (February Pick)


FishTitan64 gives us a great example of transitioning from one source to another, showing that he has a full arsenal of source material at his disposal each time he makes a YouTube Poop. His latest jump into the fray, known as Minty Gingham’s Flying Telecosbies combines three sources: the raunchy standup performances of Bill Cosby, sketches from Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and Teletubbies into an epic mess of epic proportions, as if he came up with this shit as he went along without breaking a sweat. As soon as the poop begins, I’m already in for a treat. It begins with a YTPMV segment using a bald guy making sheep noises (I think?) mixed with a CG Tigger attempting to break it down with “dose sik beets, yo!”, then moving right along to Bill Cosby telling a story about his asshole. After this, we see the cast of Monty Python’s Flying Circus doing poetry readings about wandering into things and yelling for no reason, and finally, we see what happens when the writers of Teletubbies come up with when they do drugs other than just pure dope, particularly large doses cocaine.

This is what I consider to be the YouTube Poop equivalent of a three course meal. The breakfast is Cosby with a side of Tigger rap, the lunch is full-fledged Python, and finally, the dinner is Teletubbies, all in six minutes. Both the Monty Python and Teletubbies segments of the video had me crying with laughter. No other poop this month has gotten me to laugh this much personally. That's not to say that all the other great poops in February weren't good either. There were, but this happens to be the one that hit me the most in terms of craft and overall hilarity. I fucking love it, and I look forward to seeing more poops from this guy in the coming months.
 
So these are our recommended YouTube Poops from January and February of this year. We apologize for not having a favorite YouTube Poops of the past year article ready for you as well, but you know how our situation with the blackout more-or-less ruined our plans for that. If you see any of your favorites from these past two months this year not on our list this year, please tell us about them and why they're your favorites. As always, we appreciate having the userbase speak out on their favorites as well. Other than that, we hope you've enjoyed our first article on YouTube Poops this year and hope you enjoy some more coming out real soon as well.

Hey, YouChew!

It's that time of year again. The Writing Staff is encouraging you to apply! We need a few new members, and we'd like to have some new writing talent on the staff. Like before, we're including all of YouChew in the selection process. If you really like to write, or if you just write in your spare time, you'd be great for our staff!

The applying process is simple. All you need to do is write an article and send it to the staff for consideration. The article can be about anything you want – movies, video games, current events, etc. – as long as it's a reasonable length.

Bear in mind, you should write articles for your applications; we want to see how well you can create something that would be published on this site. We'd prefer not to see fiction or blog posts in the applications.

When you have a completed piece, send/PM it to one of the four editors – Crazy Luigi, HerrVarden, SkyBlueFox, and me – and the whole staff will review it. We'll ask for a revision or an interview depending on the quality of the piece, and then we'll decide from there whether or not to make you a staff member.

Please apply and good luck with your pieces!

I've often asked people the question "what limits can an actor play with race?" receiving very little in response. It frustrates me because it's something that I'm genuinely curious about. As an aspiring actor, I'd like to feel as there are no limits to what I can do if I put enough effort, but nowadays it's becoming more apparent that maybe some limits should be set to actors. Specifically, don't play races or sexual orientations you're not. It's becoming more of a no-brainer to not paint your face any other color unless you're trying to be an alien, mutant or fantasy character, but there's still the matter of white straight men dominating the world of entertainment. The heroes, be them super, spy or regular are all the same dudes and the villains or supporting characters are always left to the more diverse selection of actors. Sometimes it's a matter of white-washing, other times it's a matter of centering it around the white guy and then there's the matter of "the inspirational story". It frustrates those who are of that race or sexuality that they can't get the main role that seems more geared to their appearance. Though acting is about becoming someone else, it does come to the detriment of someone else not being able to play their part. It's not only acting that's the problem, it's the representation of races, gender, disabled persons and sexuality in the media. Diversity is an issue has tons of angles to tackle from that it wouldn't be fair that what I have to say will cover all of it or even to it's fullest detail. My aim is more to get a general overview of the topic.

Now, you may notice I said Western media rather than just media in general. Well that's because the Western media is the one that has the largest challenge of multiculturalism. Other countries have their own issues with representing their population no doubt. Former Yugoslavian countries probably don't treat whoever their minority group is too fairly in their media, but we can somewhat agree that their population is more homogeneous than the US, Canada or the UK. Western media has to factor in that there's a lot of minority groups on their hands and that all of them together are more than their standard demographic. To an extent they're getting there, but not enough for people to stop complaining. See, there's always been sort of this complicated relationship between social progress and the media. For the most part, there's a party that always benefits and one that gets a nightstick shoved up their ass. When the latter pulls it out and starts chanting for change, a lot of art, entertainment and activism breaks out from it to be in support of the movement. Naturally there's tension but figures do seep through to the mainstream and make a bit of a change to improve the environment. When those do, the benefiting party then calls out "Alright, racism's over! Sexism is not a thing anymore!" whilst simultaneously telling the old joke about the Arab, the nigger and the spic who walked into a bar and "accidentally" knocking things down to get a peek at the secretary's panties. It's not that progress is an illusion, it's just that the amount made is. I thought racism was at the very least a lot less fucked up in the 21st century and then Ferguson happened. Things still aren't fairly leveled.



Though that's not to say that social structures haven't changed. Progress is still progress and in the current age of technology, everyone has a voice. As such, there's bound to be a lot of people who are creating and sharing their own stories which come from very diverse backgrounds. There's cultural diversity a plenty if we dig around the net long enough. So we can't really say that people aren't making an effort to tell these stories. Neither can we say that people aren't hearing those voices when there's enough of them. Works such as Orange Is The New Black or Book of Life are opening the doors for other perspectives in media to seep through. As well, we are getting actors, writers and directors exploring more roles than their race, sex or sexual preference would generally limit them to. Culture is being explored, sexuality is becoming a subject to talk about rather than suppress, important issues are being addressed in some ways. It's allowing people to become represented in some way, and representation can inspire others to make further advances. When you see someone like you in the media, you feel that you too can reach that level if you put in the effort, rather than be discouraged that the game is rigged against you.

Think about it in the context of an action movie. Everyone likes seeing action movies, they have people who are tough who do their best to fight evil and better themselves from the internal faults that stand in their way. Some of us look up to what those protagonists represent to us. There are tons of action movies that we watch and enjoy and respect. Now, if you add on top of it a multicultural cast and have the enemy be aliens, you are allowing more people to enjoy the product and be part of it positively. You'd have Pacific Rim, basically. That movie works so well not only because it gives way to various other characters of different cultures, but it treats them fairly. Action movies, as great as they are, will tend to have other nationalities as the enemy and the white badass man taking those bastards down a peg. Sometimes it's relatively harmless because we know it's not intentionally racist and that they connect it to a political issue. Other times, it gives off a bad taste because when it's seen so often and there's no other perspectives to even it out it feels more like an attack. Instead of that, we accentuate the better aspects of an action movie and include others on the good side to inspire more people. Having more of those stories and perspectives allows for this to happen. And sure they might be still have some issues with centering it around the white, straight and/or male (like Girls, Transparent and to a slight extent Orange Is The New Black), but we can't say that there isn't some progress being made, and large leaps at that. Certain circles are recognizing some of the efforts made by these people, others are not. That's not so much a problem as it is that there isn't enough chances being taken. People are still sort of leaning on the safe side of things.



Case in point, the superhero issue. It's becoming more of a routine to win easy diversity points by just changing an established superhero into someone of a different race or sexuality. Mostly you see this in comics, but people tend to not like it. Some complain that the heroes should just stay as they are which makes them sound like racists. Others complain that this is simply a superficial way to seem like they're making progress and really they only end up embarassing themselves either with stereotyping or just painfully progressive writing. It's not entirely crazy to perhaps give other people a try. I'm sure we'd love to see Idris Elba as the first black Bond, but maybe it would be better to see him as his own badass character in a separate production. It gives diversity more of weight if instead of replacing established roles to other groups that you already establish roles so that other groups can jump in. Even with that, there's a tendency to disregard it and simply go for the white straight man.

Look, I have nothing against the white straight man. I have a white straight man for a father and he's an alright guy. A lot of my favorite actors are white straight men. But I can understand when people get pissed off that the white straight man is playing a role designed for someone that's not a white straight man. It happens all the time when we have the Americanization of an Eastern movie, which not only shows the ignorance of Hollywood, but also their laziness. Not only there, but stories involving gay or transsexuals also have the issue of white straight men getting all the parts and more people are getting annoyed because of it. I'm sure that even disabled people are annoyed that the only ones that get to play those parts are white straight men (though really it may just be people that aren't disabled, period). These people want a chance too, so why not give it to them?

Well, there's a lot of reasons for it, but perhaps one that I'm interested most in is when an actor wants to push their own limits. The most challenging thing for an actor is if they stray as far from their own selves for a role. Fat actor becomes buff, shy actor becomes outgoing, straight actor becomes gay. They want to see that other side and some of them go to outrageous lengths to do it. This is prominent when an actor wants to play disabled as they look at people who have the condition they play as and spend hours imitating them to the point of exhaustion. We find that awe-inspiring to see an actor go to tremendous lengths to become someone so drastically different. Now, that can't happen with race because we know that blackface was never used as a way for white people to properly imitate a black person's plight so much as to make fun of them. Sexuality and disability though? It may be better since one can be more respectable about it, but we can't act like people are going to be peachy about it.



Again, it's because it's at the expense of someone else getting the chance to play a role that people don't much like it when it's only left to people who are white, straight, male or a combination of the three. Though I understand why some of those actors play those roles. I left out that it's a matter of demographics, possible racism in Hollywood, the matter of "default" and a few others because I know that all actors want the wiggle room to play other roles. Some actors may be fine playing the same role, others want to avoid typecasting and stereotyping. And sometimes they want to play roles that transpire their own skin color and orientation, but those who already have that color and orientation should get the chance to play those roles as well as experiment if they so choose to. It seems prudish to simply say that every actor must play to their own ways, because then we might as well expect them to go through medical school if they're thinking about playing a doctor on screen. Though perhaps it wouldn't hurt if for a while we might have to let everyone just play to their own background and experiment in circumstances, until we even the environment enough so that people can play whatever they want if they're good enough at it. Although we sort of have it with voice acting, we need it more in live-action.

We need more stories to reflect more of the diversity of the world we live in. Those stories have to be big enough so that others can see. Having them in their own communities is fine if they're successful in them, but that success should be able to flourish in others if the product is well-crafted. When those who are not from the typical background make it through, we should not belittle them in their moment of grandeur or halfheartedly appreciate their efforts. We should be proud of them and acknowledge their efforts. I don't necessarily want all of them to be lauded endlessly simply because they're diverse, I just want more of them to have a chance on a larger stage so that more succeed. When more of them succeed, there's more appreciation and recognition for them. It's nice that there are a multitude of unique products that exist out there, but it doesn't seem fair that most of them are left underground rather than given a chance in the larger spectrum.

There is a line of parking meters in front of me. They’re ugly, and they are in my way. Each of them is identical, as videogame objects generally are; whorled and cross-hatched like a dollar bill, a perfectly concrete and clear depiction of what a parking meter “should” be. I would gladly crack each of them open for their points, but their armor is too thick, their file too close to my side of the screen. A much more threatening fleet of easy chairs drifts slothfully towards me, opening fire at their own pace. These “seats of power”, as the in-game manual calls them, are worth less yet pose much more of a threat. They are my target, for this moment. I wish I had some cola right now. We all wish we had more cola, but it never lasts.

The early 19^th century was a time of rapid change. Granted, the modern day is also a time of rapid change, but that was the time in which “rapid” was completely redefined. Planes, trains and automobiles made moving people and cargo magnitudes easier; telephones and radios gave one’s voice presence without your own personal presence. Within a single lifetime, ideas could suddenly spread across continents with the ease of a stiff breeze. Ideas were no longer the property of great men with days made of leisure time, nor were they always shouted from on high by authority figures, Great Persons to be written about in history books. Thus modernism was formed.

Modernism is reactionary. In the 18^th century, art was about creating a perfect vision of reality. Frescoes and oil paintings strove to recreate their subjects in color, tone and detail. Being an artist meant years of studying - not just practicing, but imitating. There was only one true way to realists, namely, reality. Modernism is the opposite of that, all solid blocks of primary color and clean expression through dynamic movement. While it rarely reflects reality perfectly, and might not even depict a specific “thing,” Modernist art creates emotion through very basic designs.

“FLOMM” is an elaborate homage to that attitude which has become rare as of late. Steve Mehallo, the creator of FLOMM, has created a fake art movement in celebration of the attitudes our ancestors shared, back when rebellion meant something. FLOMM is a name with no obvious meaning, thumbing its nose at titles that feel they have to be descriptive; it wouldn’t look out of place next to arcade cabinets with titles like “Xelious” or “Arkanoid”. Its website has an intuitive and friendly design that works equally well on desktops and smartphones, but click on its manifesto and you are bombarded with a wall scroll of beautifully disorganized thoughts. “new generations exist to piss off the previous”, says an askew sound byte. “Observe the world around you,” says a circle, literally forcing you to actively observe by turning the image, “record what you see+experience”. Like many teachers, FLOMM paradoxically encourages the reader to think for themselves.

But the question you’re asking is…regardless of what the game is based on… HOW IS THE FUCKING GAMEPLAY?

It’s pretty much acceptable, but not outstanding.

It’s a side scrolling shooter, like Defender prototyped and Gradius codified. Specifically, it’s a sidescrolling shooter balanced for an iPhone’s touchscreen controls, which is no mean feat. Your left thumb moves the player character (which is anything from an aeroplane to a ® symbol to the word “und”), and your right thumb taps the screen to fire a bullet. There is almost no lag between input and reaction, very important in a hectic genre like this. The in-game instructions merely say “drag to move, tap to shoot”, which is not totally clear and may result in dying repeatedly while tapping on your ship and wondering why it won’t shoot. Then again, the lack of hand-holding tutorials is refreshing and the game is simple enough to pick up by yourself.



FLOMM’s main difference is that your enemies are symbolic concepts of everything Modernism stands against. You fire bullets into the “rotting extravagance” of Rococo flourishes, bash through classical Ionic columns flung at you out of context, break clocks and hourglasses that dare to tell you what time it is. Even banal words themselves are the enemy, from the general (“Junk Mail”, “Bad Air”) to the curiously specific (“Quaint Watercolor”, “Cheese Food Product”), all ripped off of newspaper like a crude ransom note. Every enemy is a monochrome ink print churned out in the same mass-produced style; the manual refers to them as “ThEY”, as in “They won’t understand it”. The player character is brightly colored and simple, abstracted so much that you stand out among the fleet of richly detailed, meaningless junk you shoot at. Even the bullets are coordinated, with ThEY firing literal lead musket balls or rifle bullets and the player’s tapping producing streaks with the word “TAT” engraved on the side. Though the setting is weird, it’s never unclear where your character is or what you should be doing.

But shooting will only prolong your life, not achieve your goals. There is a boss at the end of each randomly generated level-the same boss, an absurd pikelhaube-clad caricature of authority mockingly called a “ThWINGh” in Seussian fashion. Firing a few bullets into his mouth will cause him to explode beautifully while leaving the afterimage of a clock, a silent reminder that he will be back. The solution is to instead feed the ThWINGh your powerups. You have a small assortment of items- soybeans for a spread shot, garlic for a smart bomb (a cheeky literal interpretation of the manifesto’s nutritionist tangent)- but what you want is a small, harmless red circle, the “Neu”. Each one you gather gets flung at the end boss, adding a percent to a meter and visibly corrupting it with color, “painting over it” as it were. Completely subverting The Man results in an actual ending, which this author has personally never seen.

FLOMM is not actually a hard game. Even the highest difficulty rating only increases the intensity of enemy spawns in exchange for more points, an exchange well worth it. When you have a spread shot powerup active, everything in its cone of influence dies for its ten second duration. When you don’t, survival is more a matter of steering around fleets of ridiculous enemies and seeking out the most fragile things to shoot at. When worst comes to worst, coffee power-ups restore your lifebar, and yes, a side scrolling shooter has a lifebar. Enemy patterns are not that hard to interpret, and not even the ThWINGh will surprise you most of the time.

The true enemy is thumb cramps. Note that the instructions say, “Tap to shoot”, as in tap for each individual bullet in a game where there’s no reason to ever stop firing. Taking hits is not so much a matter of blundering into bullets so as it is hurting your hand from repetitive stress and colliding with something you physically cannot shoot. Perhaps this is a metaphor for how painful the life of an artist can be, though an artist’s life is also fruitless; Neu power-ups spawn so infrequently even on the highest difficulty that whole levels are wasted progress. The length of the game is random, and that’s not always a good thing.

One last small gripe, almost petty in scope, is that the file for this game app is HUGE. FLOMM weighs in at over 120 MB, about four times the space of a cheap iPhone game like Angry Birds. Granted, the music and graphics are well worth the extra size, but be prepared to clean out some older apps to make room if you are not playing on an iPad or other meaty device.



Is this game worth the 2.99 US$ price tag? Probably. Even if the gameplay itself is nothing new and a bit janky, the concept is neat and the mechanics are without the burden of modern consumer-driven, social network interactive, lowest common denominator appeal. It’ll make you think, which is more than some games these days can say.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: BLOODBORNE

A primer on what’s new and what to expect with roughly 30 hours of playtime as of March 28th.

Not a comprehensive review.

Written with the expectation that the reader has played a Souls game, or is at least familiar with the mechanics of the series.

COMPLETELY SPOILER FREE

Bloodborne is the latest game from Demon’s Souls/Dark Souls director Hidetaka Miyazaki and developer From Software. A spiritual successor to the Souls series, the easiest way to describe Bloodborne is as an amalgamation of all the horror themed levels of the previous games amplified tenfold, with guns.

GAMEPLAY

If you’ve played a Souls game, you’ll be mostly familiar with combat, but some serious changes alter the feel of fighting significantly. The removal of blocking is far and away my favorite design choice. I was apprehensive at first about the idea of forgoing shields altogether, but in practice it makes for a much faster and more active fight system. Passive and patient fights of the Souls series are still near and dear to my heart, but such gameplay wouldn’t compliment the feel of Bloodborne nearly as well. Being forced to dodge away from monsters is a genius design choice, and the generous invincibility frames while doing so keeps combat fair and almost always in the players control. The feeling of vulnerability is heightened to extremes never felt in previous games.

Offense is the focus of Bloodborne. In place of parries and ranged weapons are guns. Rather than being a viable way to dispatch enemies on their own, guns compliment close range combat more than anything. Shooting an opponent in the middle of their attack causes them to stagger and be opened up to a critical hit. By themselves, guns will only do meager damage. Also absent are backstabs, at least in the traditional sense. Hitting the back of an enemy with a charged heavy attack will give you a free critical hit similar to a backstab, but no longer are you constantly strafing around your target looking for easy damage. Positioning is still important, but it isn’t a free way to get massive damage. This means that straight up attacking is the most optimal path to victory in most situations.

To make things more interesting, basic attacks have undergone a small overhaul. In addition to adding more animations for greater variety, weapons have two forms, and changing forms can be a type of attack on its own, making combat far deeper than it has ever been. This isn’t a Platinum game by any means, but it’s the best fighting system a Miyazaki project has ever had.

Bonfires practically return unmolested in Bloodborne as lamps. However, lamps are on average spaced farther apart than Bonfires have ever been in a Souls game, at least by my estimation. This has much to do with the massive levels and the many shortcuts within them. The verticality and sheer size of every area I’ve been to so far astounds me. There are not many open spaces in Bloodborne, but the cramped streets, sewers, graveyards and castles are stacked mazes waiting to be explored. In this way, Bloodborne feels a lot like Demons Souls, what with the supreme emphasis on unlocking shortcuts.

Health restoration also undergoes a rework. Blood Vials are the Estus Flasks of Bloodborne, being the primary way one regains vitality, but instead of being given a set amount every time you spawn, one must find or buy them. It’s an interesting compromise. I found myself going without any Blood Vials for long stretches at a time, something that would never happen in Dark Souls. To account for situations like this, one can also regain health when they’re hurt by an enemy. Counter-attacking a foe within a short time period will restore most of your lost health, but generally not all of it. Health itself has become a resource of sorts, since you can sacrifice a portion of it to give yourself additional ammo for your guns. It all works in harmony with the rest of the mechanics. Killing enemies is the best way to get Blood Vials, encouraging players low on health to keep fighting rather than run away.

The souls system of the eponymous Souls games also makes a reappearance with a fancy new name. Blood echoes are the primary currency and means of leveling up in the game, no shocker there. Kill enemies, get echoes. Die, and you have to return to your blood stain to retrieve your echoes. Die again before then, and they’re lost forever. This has been done before, but Bloodborne adds a fitting twist in that certain enemies can take your echoes for themselves, forcing you to kill them in order to get what is rightfully yours back. Again, a way to encourage players to fight. Not returning are the death states of the Souls series. Dying only loses you echoes, no further punishment is levied on the player in the form of hollowing, soul form, or what have you. This might disappoint some, but the loss of echoes and the challenging journey to retrieve them is frankly enough this time around. Bloodborne is not easy.

Parrying never felt better.

SETTING AND GRAPHICS

I love Yharnem, the primary setting of Bloodborne. The small details are amazing, but the big picture is awe inspiring in how vast it is. It’s a world exclusively themed around horror, which is something new. The Souls games were dark, no question, but areas like Blighttown, The Tomb of Giants and The Valley of Defilement were meant to be thematically distinct from the rest of the generally high-fantasy based environs that one normally explores. Bloodborne manages to take that horror theme, move it to the Victorian era, and somehow get as much variety as it could possibly want. It never gets boring or repetitive, there’s always some kind of new freaky shit around the corner. This is a genuinely scary game.

One of my most favorite things about the first Dark Souls is the interconnectedness of the world. You could go from old castle to horrible swamp and it made sense. Bloodborne is the same way, and it’s glorious. Because of the strict theming, you know you’re never getting a respite from something horrible and awful. It builds, in fact, and becomes even more oppressive.

The game is beautiful. Souls games have never gotten the graphical treatment they deserve, and Bloodborne changes that. Lighting is superb, as it should be, and is used to great effect to enhance the disturbing enemies, while perfectly walking a fine line and maintaining proper gameplay conditions. Forgoing cheap effects in favor of proper art design, everything from the color palette to the textures of the ground are nearly perfect for every area you visit. The variety of objects, props and well placed tiny details deserves an award or something, because environments are seriously meticulous in how purposefully they’ve been crafted. Animations are of a generally high quality, but are definitely the least polished aspect of the graphics. There are some clunky looking movements and actions, but this could have been a concession towards making things easier for a player to process in the thick of battle. Given From Software’s track record in this department, it’s probably a bit of both.

In the long standing tradition of Souls games, your character will always look like a doofus no matter how much you try. Just find a clothing set with a mask and you’re good to go.

FLAWS AND PROBLEMS

The camera can still get in the way during combat, and is especially noticeable now thanks to the less roomy environments you fight in. It can be especially frustrating if you’re cornered, giving you a nice view of the back of your characters head while a group of were-people eats your dick off.

FPS drops were numerous and unfortunate, but other reviews say they didn’t experience any. I certainly feel them all the time. There are large groups of enemies, many physical objects in the world, lots of great effects, lighting and textures, and it all comes together sometimes and impacts performance in a negative way. MAYBE A PC RELEASE WOULD FIX THAT, EH FROMSOFT????

Loading times are ridiculous. We’re talking nearly Sonic ‘06 here. Dying presents you with a great big load time and you die a lot. It sucks. Apparently this will be patched out, but until then you’re stuck waiting almost a full minute for the game to load whenever your health drops to zero.

Some strange holdovers from previous games remain, and I don't know why. The AI serves its purpose but by all means is simple at best, there are no facial animations on characters, friendly NPC's still don't interact with the environment at all or even move around, silly ragdoll physics remain, and a whole bunch of other stuff that can all be summed up as distinctly "Souls". I'm used to it at this point, but if I were new to the series I'd find it all very dated.

CONCLUSION

In an attempt to preserve the wonder and excitement that comes from experiencing this game with barely any foreknowledge of it, I purposefully omitted sections about the story, specific areas you visit and other gameplay features that the player is expected to discover for themselves.

Bloodborne has been worth the $60 I’ve spent on it. I'm not going to try to give it a rating, or say how it compares to other Souls games, because it's just too soon. I liked Dark Souls 2 a bunch at first, and then it gradually got less and less fun. Even in that case, it was a fun game that I was glad to buy. And I can say the same of Bloodborne.

As always, if you have the mental fortitude to wait for a price drop, do it. However, going into this game unspoiled really enhances the experience. If you’re on the fence, I’d say go ahead and buy it. If you think you’ll like it, you probably will.

Crazy Luigi's Pick: "How to bury my memoirs inside of a mouthful of dreams (5 parts)" by LaVie CestLol


When looking at the past two months of recommended YouTube Poops we did, one thing that stuck out to me was a remark from our own bluespectre about most earrape and brain rape videos. Specifically, there was the notion that no matter how good a video may be with this type of notion, it's going to look the same in terms of quality. After thinking about it long and hard, I do kind of agree with him in a sense that in terms of what we end up doing with them, it usually is pretty much the same things we've come to expect from them at this point. Sure we may have specific names for some settings like Erosion to make them try and sound unique, but even we have to pretty much admit that we're still just raping minds with multiple visual styles in the process. With that said, if I had to select one video that proves to be an exception to that rule, it would have to go to this video right here.

In all actuality, this video is technically considered a five part video, even though normally a video length of 50 or so seconds wouldn't constitute "five part stories" in the first place. However, each part of the video that comes up does bring up some rather interesting ideas in mind that I don't mind talking about each of them as a whole here. The first part, better known in the video as "Blur," gives the viewer a spiral viewpoint under a positive manner before diving into some of the planned chaos of what's to come later on with changed videos and a few fascinating effects to behold in the first place. Our next scene called "Because of my ability to fantasize" brings out a more atmospheric settings where the "ear rape" is considerably calm and nowhere near assaulting to the viewer at all, which is great for people that firmly dislike that kind of thing. Entering our next scene, however, will remind viewers that this isn't your normal, everyday romp through someone's visual stylizations.

For our third scene, which our author titles "I wish i had someone to hug," we start to enter a downward spiral of sorts when sanity starts drifting further away from the creator and the noises in his head start becoming clearer and clearer the longer we go on. This actually continues onward with the next scene called "Soulless, Worthless, and yet again ...," where the insanity climaxes into a very unique visual style that also makes me think he's gotten himself into a prison that he can't get himself out of. Funnily enough, our video ends on a rather simplistic audio dismorphing of that "bleep" sound you've heard when the video started to change scenes through "Indifferent, by Somaticae (Outro)." What I enjoyed throughout the video as a whole was that every part that LaVie CestLol made had something different involved to make what was seen here feel unique, even if it just continued on with something from earlier. Combine that with some ear raping that really isn't as loud as some people might have feared it would have been, and you've got yourself a visual experience you won't want to forget anytime soon!



TheOneManBoxOffice's Pick: "Spyr: the moviE!! DVDRipto 1080p Xvid MPEG" by theadventuretimefan


It begins with Spyro embarking into the world of Avalar (the setting of the second game), and the land is invaded by YouTube Poop, led by the almighty Ripto, who doesn’t know that the real master behind it is the pooper himself. YTP characters are all over the place and explosions galore (Woah! What an explosion!) Ripto’s plan is to obtain a diarrhea instruction book, and the professor is inventing a machine that’ll take Spyro to heaven…where he’ll burn for all eternity (insert MLG sad violin music here). He dies, but instantly comes back to life complaining about the rain and cries about forgetting his umbrella, and then Elora tells Spyro to kill himself. It ends with a credit sequence where Spyro was not voiced by Tom Kenny, but by the god among gods that is Sir Bill O’Reilly, then an image of Spyro pops up with an expression you probably had when watching this video, and with that, you question the littlest bit of sanity you have left.

I've played and beaten all three of the Spyro the Dragon games on the original PlayStation, and I remember when LightningLuigi used the cutscenes from all three of the games, as he was the first to use them as a source. Video game cutscenes, even to this day, in general aren't used that much in YouTube Poop, which is a shame, because there's a lot of them that are exploitative, and I'm not counting any of the CDI games. LightningLuigi, Stuart K. Reilly, and now, theadventuretimefan, have proven the potential of using them in poops. I would love to see more of them like this come to light. Well done, theadventuretimefan. Well done, indeed.

Thebluespectre's choice: "Arale Feeds General Blue Pink Poop" by MrThissucks



I was in college when I played Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 3 for the first time. This was not that long ago; I owned a Nintendo Wii of my own, but if a friend had a giant pile of PS2 games, why wouldn't I go back a generation to check them out? Like many anime fighting games, DBZB3 is hilariously imbalanced on purpose. The developers openly admitted that the main protagonists and antagonists were grossly more powerful than any secondary character, actually offering a point-buy system for assembling teams in multiplayer. Season 1 Goku was 5 out of 10 points; The Super Sayan Goku from season 2 was 7 Points; and you don't want to know what would cost 9 points.

And then there was Arale. Arale is not a Dragon Ball character. She's not even from a particularly violent cartoon. Before Akira Toryama wrote the original Dragon Ball, he was behind a goofy comedy called Doctor Slump, the story of a dweeby professor who built a super-powered robot girl just to prove he could. Arale combines amazing strength with extreme nearsightedness and the mind of a small child to make incredibly weird and silly things happen. And then she became a playable character in a fighting game.

This girl does not follow the same template that other "good" player characters do. For instance, she has no projectile, instead throwing a giant right hook when you press the Ki Blast button. This tiny punch just happens to flinch the opponent and turn them around, opening them up to even more hits. In a series where most conflicts are resolved by laser shove matches, Arale doesn't understand the point and simply hits you in the face before you start. Arale has three special moves, all of which are variants of "Run into your opponent face-first". One of them happens to be a very hard-to-aim but unblockable tackle, a move usually only seen on very slow and/or fragile characters, except that Arale is fast and has a decent life bar. Despite being utterly ridiculous, Arale is rated 5 out of ten points for a team battle and can toss even the straight to DVD villains around with ease.

So when I saw this YouTube Poop with no memory of ever watching Doctor Slump, I was glad to know that the manga got a proper cartoon. Also, The editing is pretty damn clever.

 
We hope you enjoy our recommended videos for this month. If you have any favorites from March that you feel we should have looked into, give us a comment about it and we'll see what we think there. Either way, we hope to see you again next month as we tackle a whole new month of videos for your enjoyment.

Dark Fox: How are you doing today, Captpan?


Captpan6: I'm doing pretty well, yourself?


Very good. So tell us a little bit about yourself.

Well, I am a 24-year-old living in New Jersey, currently in college last year, studying radio and acting, and, as you might have guessed, I also make Youtube Poops on the side.


Where'd the name Captpan6 come from, anyway?

I was watching Peter Pan one time, and I was trying to find a username for a website, and I thought “Captpan” because (it was the) first thing that came to my head. And six is my lucky number, so I attached it there.


So can you describe where you get these ideas for your YTPs, how you edit them into video form, just... where do you get your creative process from?

It requires that I know a lot about popular media. If something is popular, it's easier to integrate into a poop, because more people will know it, more people will understand the joke, and it does the work for me. Other times, I'd have to try and craft the joke myself, and I can do this using all sorts of video editing. I could word splice, sentence mix, I can impose images, cut images... the whole nine yards.

How do you think you've progressed from your older videos? Do you ever go back and rewatch your old work?

Some I do, some I don't. Some work in the past I'm very proud of; other times when I look at a video, I'll see moments that are hard to watch, because I can't believe I used this joke, I can't believe I didn't do this better, I can't believe I didn't leave this out. One of my biggest regrets is that I'll look at a video and wonder why I left this in when it should've been left out, because some of my videos, they're very long, and they'll encroach the ten-minute mark, and I'm okay with a lot of the content, but there are sometimes bits, minutes or so, that I wish I could've adjusted or fine-tuned some more. But overall, I'm very pleased with what I've done in the past, because it's given me an understanding of how to use the tools that I've got, and what sort of humor really works.

What, in your opinion, is your best poop? Tell us about it.

Best poop... it's hard to say, because a lot of my favorites are different styles, it's near impossible to compare. I like The Dexterity of Haruhi Suzumiya because it was the first time... I think I made it immediately after I watched Haruhi, so a lot of the emotions I was feeling after watching Haruhi were with me in creating it. I also love The Worst Sonic Fanfiction Ever, because, it had, in my personal opinion, some of the best punchlines. Best poop, favorite poop... it's very hard to say. Cock Jokes is another one that I love, because it was in my head for such a long time, and to be able to get it out, an entire poop surrounded by one joke... it is very difficult to say, I'd have to say it's one of those three. But if you ask me which one specifically, I can't answer that.



Yeah, it's good when you love the work you've done, and you can't choose a favorite child, y'know? What have been your favorite sources to work with? What can you get the most jokes out of? You're definitely multi-talented with that. What comes to mind when I think of your sources are Volvic commercials, iCarly... what do you think are your best?

I can find jokes in Haruhi, I don't use it often any more because my fanbase doesn't always watch Haruhi, so they're unfamiliar with the show, and it creates this boundary between them and my poop. I love it when I make poops that are with familiar sources. Volvic has been dying over the years, unfortunately, but... favorite sources to use would be, just in general, films that are widely known. Star Wars Episode I was widely known, Sonic 2006 was widely known. I think that my audience is who they are because they have grown up with a lot of this media, so they will know it first hand when I poop it. I think a lot of people went to see the Digimon movie because they were Digimon fans. I think a lot of people who were into Star Wars looked back on Star Wars Episode I, maybe out of curiosity, or because they themselves saw it in theaters as well, and Sonic '06; Sonic is an incredibly popular franchise; it's no doubt been circulated all over the internet.

Are there any sources that you haven't worked with that... you're currently on hiatus, but, if you were to make a poop out of them, you'd say hey, this might have some potential. Are there any sources like that?

I'm waiting on the Powerpuff Girls movie, as well as Metroid: Other M; those are poops I plan to make in the summer. But other works that I've looked at... I know there have been some, they just don't ring off the top of my head... I've been thinking about Ben 10 a lot, because it was a popular franchise that has been dying down, but it might invoke some nostalgia. The only trouble is I have to go out and find which episode works to my best advantage. Additionally, I've been thinking about the Sonic Boom show.

Yeah, I think Sonic Boom has a lot of potential... I mean, definitely not the game, but the show, just so many things in it can be edited, of course. I can't wait to see Captpan's Sonic Boom poop! What are your favorite effects to use in your poops?

I love super-imposing images. I love inverting the colors, and I also love to swirl some things, and when I say swirl, for those of you who are unfamiliar with that technique, it's when I create this whirlpool effect in the picture, so someone's face would look like it would be being wrung out through a towel.


Are there any running gags in your Youtube Poops that you wish more people would catch?

Running gags... I think Haruhi in and of itself is one of my running gags. I think my affinity for the show is well-known amongst Youchew, but my fans see it as more of a popular source than anything else. But I always try to make it a point to include Haruhi in some of my larger projects. There was a little bit of Haruhi in the Digimon poop, there was a little bit of Haruhi in Sonic and Star Wars. Some of the other jokes that I've used, I am more or less trying to contain in videos. Like in the last Digimon poop that I made, I made several Digicide jokes, and that's funny because it was in the Digimon poop, and if I were to remove that from the Digimon poop and insert that into another poop, then someone who never watched the Digimon poop might never get the joke. So oftentimes when I have a recurring joke, it's a recurring joke in the poop, but outside the poop, I'd have to say the use of Haruhi.



Captpan, I have the feeling that you like Haruhi, is this true?

Yes I do.


How long, on average, does it take you to make a video, like, per minute of finished product, how long would that take you in editing?

Per minute, it takes many hours. I'm picky about what I like to put in. I think a lot about how jokes are framed, and what to use and when. If something that I originally thought was going to work, I find out is not going to work, then I have to remove it, and that means I have to spend more time thinking of something to replace it with. So, I'd say about one minute of content will take several hours, and these hours are never all in one day. I'll work on something over a period of days, dedicating maybe a half hour to one hour, working on just that one target minute.

Who are your favorite poopers?

I still get a kick (out) of Deepercutt, as well as WalrusGuy and KroboProductions. Other favorite I have; ChemistryGuy is very surreal in his poops, and I am very inspired by him as well. Another person I like is QuibbyJibby because he can take something that has been long since overused and add freshness to it, and at the same time, he can make fun of that as well... on top of which, I love his running Africans joke for some odd reason. It always gets a kick out of me.

Do you think YTP has any artistic merit?

I think it depends on whether you're aiming for artistic merit. When I make poops, I make them for entertainment purposes, and in some perspective, yes, that can be called art, because it's entertainment, and some cases I see it as art, a brand new form that I can't specifically identify, but when I look at what the Youtube Poop tennis community has done, it is an entirely different level. There are images that I love looking at because they move so well and they are so crisp, and the sounds associated with these images evoke some amazing reactions when I watch them, so I think that if there is some artistry in Youtube Poop, it's to be found in the tennis community because they have created poops that I think are the closest to being portrayed in a gallery or in an art show.




Are there any aspects of Youtube Poop as a whole that you just don't like?

The only time that I'll find something that I don't like in Youtube Poop is when it's shameless. What I mean by that is, if the person who made the poop is making it for purposes other than wanting to make stuff for the heck of it, or maybe pleasing fans. If they're doing it just because they want to spite someone, then it's very difficult for me to respect that. There are some poops that I watch as well that have overused jokes... outdated or used to death, sometimes that's hard for me to respect, but when I see something that is made out of spite, or made with malice in mind, in other words, minus the fun, it's really hard to look at that and say I like this.


Where do you see your Youtube channel in five years?

Hopefully still up. In five years, I expect the channel to be modestly more popular. I don't anticipate a surge of new subscribers, as the type of style that I work with is dying out, technically. A lot of people are gravitating toward what EmperorLemon and guys like cs188 have done. And I could insert flashy effects, I could make a poop that has sentence mixing and just edits, but I like doing things my own way. Occasionally I'll make something in the style that closely resembles another person, but if I want to get popular, I want it to be popular because I did something my own way. And thankfully, a lot of my fans still appreciate the way I make poops. I think that if I am to get popular, it's going to be from having a tennis match with a very popular person.

Hey man, you know the world wants Captpan versus WalrusGuy.

Well, he would outclass me!


It's not about class, it's about having fun, y'know?

Yeah, it is. It's just, he uses a very sophisticated flash program, and he makes jokes in those poops that I could never dream of making because it would require making a lot of very high-precision detail. Like in his Arthur poop, where he has DW punished for cursing, he makes a lot of subtle jokes when DW and the grandmother are walking by the stores. There's one that is labeled Toys and Shit, but you can't see the shit part, because the I-T (is) out of sight, but little things like that, WalrusGuy can spot, and when I look at a source, I don't look for things like that. So, if we would tennis, it would be using his type of humor, he would outclass me.

Well we can only hope he (sees) this interview and considers it. What are your hobbies outside of YTP and video editing?

Baseball, I'm a New York Mets fan. I am an actor, but I also have a strong radio affinity. I'll play video games, I'll read mystery books, especially ones from Agatha Christie. And I'm a chest player that's been rated by the USCF.



How is your acting/voice acting career going?

I'm still in school, I haven't taken off yet. But as of right now, I'm not so certain that I want to focus on voice acting more than I want to focus on radio, because radio is where I feel the most comfortable.


And this is the question I'm sure that everyone wants to know the answer to... how's the novel coming along?

Believe it or not, I am still pre-writing it, because there are a lot of ideas that I had at first, but then as I was creating characters, I found out that they deserve an entire story, so I want to, before I begin on this first novel, construct this entire series behind it. If anything, I intend for there to be five or six books, if I'm successful, but before I do that, I want there to be a real lore and history in my world. I want, when people read it, for it to feel authentic, like this is a place that exists, and these are people that I can understand. So before I even type a word, I want to get all of that done, and with school and work, it provides extra challenges, but I am very committed to getting at least one novel done.

And it's been about five or six months now. Will you still come true on your promise to come back to the business after a year has passed from your Digimon poop?

I fully intend to. I have a lot of ideas in mind for what I want to do next, and I think that this hiatus and focusing on other things has allowed me to refresh my mind. Sometimes I would feel bogged down from over-thinking things. I would look at a source and think okay, I need to get this many jokes out of this much material, and that would create a lot of pressure that I did not need. But as long as I'm finding the fun in something, then I can go anywhere with it.

Do you have any advice for new or aspiring poopers?

My advice would be don't think that you can't start because you don't have high-tech equipment. A lot of my first videos were made with just simple Windows Movie Maker. If you have a computer, you can do whatever you want. Maybe not everything that you want, but you can certainly take something and make a great video out of it. So take what you'd like and get started.

So you're saying poop this interview!

If they so desire, yes.


What do you have to say to everyone (reading)?

Thank you for (reading), more videos on the way, hope you have a nice day.

 

This interview was also put into video form!