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Voltage’s Favorite: Let's Plays
Low hanging fruit.
You know how in "A Christmas Story", Ralphie gets really excited to listen to his favorite radio program after coming home from school? Or how you (or maybe your parents if you happen to be younger than me), happened to watch the new episode of their favorite TV show every night? The serialized media from my youth came in the form of YouTube Let's Plays. I have watched a a lotof Let's Plays of all shapes and sizes. I even tried my hand at a few different kinds of Let's Plays. I understand the effort that goes into making a Let's Play, and just how different these things can be. I understand that these adaptive pieces of the YouTube canon can be as informative as a documentary, or as trashy as a teenage summer flick. There is no limit to what a Let's Play can be. So long as the piece of media has someone playing the game, and understands that there will be an audience watching the gameplay, we can define this as a Let's Play. Maybe tihs definition is too broad... this would make Professional Sports a Let's Play, wouldn't it? Maybe I'll refine this definition more later.
A Let's Play can take on a variety of forms. It can be written on a forum, it can be hosted in a discord server channel, or it can be a YouTube video series. This list is not exhaustive and I look forward to the first taste-based Let's Play in the not-so-distant future. What I consider a Let's Play may not align with your specific definitions, but that's fine. This is my webpage after all. I intend to include some unfathomably stupid bullshit on this page because, well, sometimes I like unfathomably stupid bullshit. Not everything has to be high-cinema. Honestly, if I'm making the argument that Let's Plays are works to be taken seriously in the canon of cinema, I've gotta watch a lot more movies.
Unrelated: consider reading Ella Guro's Let's Play Life. It's a good read.
Quick Jump
SUPER MARIO WORLD - Oneyplays
Oneyplays SUPER MARIO WORLD is one of the most insane 2.5 hours of YouTube gaming content you can find made in the 2020s. You can hear the ensemble devolve into swelteringly dense and mind-meltingly ridiculous bullshit over the course of this one-hundred-and-fifty-minute sojourn across Dinosaur Land. Our protagonist, Cory "Cory De La Minguez" "SpazKid" Beck sets the scene for what to expect for this entire series within the first ten seconds of the video: through his characteristic slurred speech he asks, "Do we want two player or one player?", before breaking into an off-pitch karaoke recreation of the the opening jingle. From there, two voices join in with Cory, further distorting the tune. From the cacophony, a fourth member of the ensemble Joshua "Tomar" Tomar, provides the lead: "I heard your Super Mario World skills are legendary." It is here where the titular Chris "Oney" O'Niell explains just why "Oneyplays" is covering Super Mario World, "We are playing this because Cory is adamant he can beat it in forty minutes.". "Or less" chimes in Zachary "Zach" "Psychicpebbles" Hadel. Our four-man band has made themselves known before thirty seconds have ticked on the timer. From checking this timer, we can also see the truth plain: Cory will not beat this game in under forty minutes so strap in, it's only going to go downhill from here.
In reality, there are seven primary characters in this Let's Play: Chris, Cory, Zach, Tomar, Mario, the Editor (Dex), and us the audience. The first four are obvious enough. Cory is playing the game and Chris, Zach and Tomar are sitting and providing color commentary. The dynamic between this ensemble has existed for well more than a decade at the time of this video's production. All of them got their starts on Newgrounds, with Chris, Zach and Cory being regular contributors to the Sleepycabin podcast series, a similarly frantic and inebriated affair, between 2014 and 2019. Chris and Zach pitched an unsuccessful Adult Swim show Hellbenders, Zach later created the hit TV Show Smiling Friends which features voice cameos from Chris and Tomar. This list of connections is hardly exhaustive; the four guys are friends first and creative partners second.
Then there's the videogame itself, Super Mario World released on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in the United States in 1991, as personified by Cory's rabid ranting (it's as if Cory is grappling with some impossible force otherwise controlling Mario). Super Mario World in the context of this Let's Play is being played on an emulator (SNES9x if I'm not mistaken), which in theory opens the door for potential undisclosed game modifications. However, given that within the first five minutes of this Let's Play the crew opens up the button remapping menu in the emulator without any concern of maintaining the illusory veil of "playing the the game on official hardware", we can assume that they're not hiding much else. As disclosed by everyone who isn't Cory, Cory claims that he can beat Super Mario World in under forty minutes. This is possible because in Super Mario World there exists a path from the start of the game to the final level which spans eleven total levels. If each level takes Cory less than 200 seconds to clear, and Cory navigates the menus perfectly, then Cory can easily clear Super Mario World in this self-imposed time limit. For reference, at time of writing the current 11 exit speed run world record for Super Mario World is 10m 39s, the time it takes for Cory to clear the first world. We, the audience, are decidedly not watching a Speed Run when we are watching SUPER MARIO WORLD - Oneyplays, a fact lampshaded by Chris, Zach, and Tomar.
"Yeah done, fifteen minutes."
"You said you would beat the game in fifteen minutes."
"Yeah, Cory..."
The Editor, Dex the Swede, exists to fulfill the whims of the four-man band to entertain the audience with silly visual and audio gags. The Editor is only a role filled by Dex in the process of compiling the video. During the recording session, the ensemble has no idea who actually will be putting together the final, finished product, and hence refer to this person not by their name, but by the general title "Editor". While their introduction comes before all others in the video as a small icon in the bottom corner of the opening jingle, the Editor is a subtle presence, called upon only when the ensemble thinks of something funny to add to the video. Hence, the editor's presence is otherwise absent until called upon to "do something funny", like a dancing monkey in a travelling circus. Thank goodness they pay their editors based on quantity of requested edits. It is, of course, the editing that brings this Let's Play to mind-numbingly manic heights with subtle flourishes here and there. The best example of this kind editing gag comes twenty-four minutes into the video. Chris, undoubtedly bored by Cory's miserable attempt at a speed run, begins to chuckle to himself. We soon learn exactly what has got the Irishman's proverbial goat.
"Editor, put- put the weird picture of Cory on screen"
This unflattering distortion of Cory (colloquially known as "Armenian Cory"), post hike, sits in the upper right corner of the video for the remainder of its runtime. It sits there, subtly expanding and shrinking, as if breathing to throw off the view. Its visage changes to reflect Cory's mood through the entire trek. If Cory is huffing and puffing and "absolutely losing [his] f***ing gourd" because "the D-Pad on the XBOX Controller sucks diiiiiiiick", so too is this portrait. I need to repeat, this is not a live recording of Cory, this is the Editor adjusting this additional video track simply to characterize Cory's mood throughout the video. Whereas with modern Let's Plays, the person playing the game may record footage of their own visage either through direct capture means or through a digital persona (like a VTuber), here, the Editor seems to parody this whole notion simply through this ridiculous image. Never mind that they also include a video of the image doing an AI-synchronized lip flap to Chris's nonsensical babbling, done live in the recording session itself. The Editor does the heavy lifting in this whole video to ensure that we, the audience, are able to laugh along to all the minutia of the things not seen on the TV screen. By including these bits and pieces the editor allows the audience to immerse themselves into the stuffy, likely past-midnight video recording session room, in the way that brings forth the "Let's" in "Let's Play".
As we sit and watch Cory bumble around Vanilla Dome and Cheese Bridge and Choco Island, we can feel our minds slowly begin to waver as we listen to what Zach eventually calls "Teletubbies for adults". A half hour into the session, Chris loses all interest in watching Cory playing the game and has moved onto making funny little videos to show Zach and Tomar. Forty-five minutes into the video, Cory mistaking Tomar's "Goomba", for "Coomba", to which Chris interjects "Kumbayaaaa, my lord", which is then cut off by Cory's aforementioned gourd-loss. An hour in, Cory is ranting about Coke Coffee only to be distracted by Chris and Zach employing a bit to distract him: pretending to be recognizable cartoon characters (which somehow works here, even after initially being conceptualized and executed to near-perfection in the nine-hour long fever dream playthrough of Sonic Heroes). One-hundred minutes in, the gang begins a common improv bit involving making a sentence two words at a time and none of them know how to count (delightfully the editor includes these sentences in the panel opposite Armenian Cory). Just before the two-hour mark the group assumes the roles of various adult animation characters to improvise a scene where Homer Simpson doesn't want to get circumcised, which is interupted by Cory shrieking in a fashion which can only be described as "banshee-like". At 2:25:20 Cory puts it plain: "I feel like our skulls are rotting". It's here we realize that we've sat here with them, listening to this abject bullshit. These men are losing their mind and we are not far behind them. This Let's Play is the gaming Zoomer's equivalent of hanging out with your buddies, watching Dude Where's My Car? and Kung Pow back-to-back after smoking a horse cart carriage full of weed, washing it down with bottle after bottle of Blue Moon, and then smashing fluorescent lights over each other's heads. It's so stupid. I feel dumber after watching it. But I can't look away either.
I'm stuck here, watching this stupid playthrough once every summer. It's insane, but it's my insanity. It speaks to me obnoxious, terminally online sensibilities in the way no other piece of media has. Sure, other Oneyplays playthroughs capture my heart and tickle my brain in ways more complex and meaningful. But it's this one-hundred and fifty minutes of chaos that speaks to me most. In its plainest terms, this Let's Play is two hours and thirty minutes of just four guys hanging out and playing a game, joking with each other and having a good time. It's a multi-decade friendship presented plain as can be. While I personally wouldn't call an XBOX Controller (or anything/one for that matter) a "sl*t bitch", I cannot deny that the shock that it presents, and the resulting stunned chuckles from Tomar, Chris and Zach, is stupendously funny. This Let's Play is a guilty pleasure of mine, I have it saved to my hard drive for when, as a stinky old fart, I want to have my summer shitpost session, I can boot this bad boy up and give it a watch. It doesn't replace the Clerks or the Dude Where's My Car?, but can be added alongside them for the annoying shitposters that grew up on an anonymous internet, unfouled by the continued advancement towards regulation we see today. At the risk of sounding parasocial, I see myself in that room, with my own friends, having moments just like that.
Oneyplays SUPER MARIO WORLD is one of the most authentic characterizations of playing games. This sounds antithetical to the notion of a "Let's Play", where the entire format hinges upon the distinct lack of fourth wall, but somehow Oneyplays SUPER MARIO WORLD manages to create a Let's Play that seems to not care that people are watching. In reality, isn't that what they're doing right there in the room? They've just invited us to sit in the audience, perhaps a few rows back so that they can't hear us. They play bits that amuse themselves as much as they amuse us. They seem to walk the contradictory tightrope of knowing that they're the only people in the room, and that hundreds of thousands of people might be watching that exact moment over the course of the indefinite period of time that humanity may still exist. They're just four dudes having a good time with a video game.
And maybe the way they present themselves on camera is an exaggeration of themselves for the sake of a show. Sure, I could buy that. I think it's probably the case with Zach in particular, the person in the cast who seems to be acutely aware of his zany persona and how he can sever this persona from his real-life presence. No, I do not think Zach Hadel goes into work animating Smiling Friends every day with a mind full of Simpsons improv. But what I do expect is that he manages to find a way to tie together many of his different muses into a series of continued bits that take shape as a "story" progresses. Yet, Zach's particular presence creates a powerful dynamic within the group that is often missing in other Oneyplays series: he can bounce between roles with ease. Zach can be a deadpan snarker in one moment, and transform into an off-the-walls maniac in the blink of an eye. He manages to mold Cory's potentially grating fury into an amusing fictional bit that all comes together when Cory's rage burns out. He is the "and" of improv's "yes".
This then makes Chris the "yes" of the duo within this quartet. Chris incites the stupid bits, Zach adds, Cory responds. Within the previously referenced Simpsons circumcision bit, Chris is the first person to invoke any Simpsons character or any kind of medical procedure: "Krusty the clown walks in, 'Circumcised, eeerrrrrrgh'". Never one to let an interesting opportunity for a bit to pass, a delirious Zach then asks, "What does Krusty think about being circumcised?", and so incites various attempts at imitating Krusty's grinding groan from Chris and Tomar. "But what does he think about it?" asks Zach. While Tomar responds he doesn't know, Chris whips out his trusty Homer impression. With fear and urgency in this soft wail, Chris paints the picture of a weeping Homer Simpson when he cries, "Marge, Krusty got circumcised!". The scene only grows from there. Meanwhile, Cory's anger is creeping slowly and steadily upward. There is smoke emanating from his volcanic rim. It is only a matter of time before the combination of rapid-fire cartoon character voices and difficult level design turns the entire scene into a wall of desperate wails, empassioned screams, and gut-busting laughter. It is hands-down the most absurd moment of the whole one-hundred and fifty minute affair, and it exists because Chris decided to pull a Simpsons impression out of nowhere.
If Cory is the heat, Chris and Zach are the kindling, Tomar is the oxygen that sets this inferno ablaze. People more well-versed in comedy that I might call him "the straight-man". Tomar is the George Costanza of the group (the rest are for you to distribute accordingly). Late in the game, Chris turns to Tomar with a request, "Tomar come up with a new scary laugh". "To, like, intimidate people" adds Zach. Tomar, a voice actor who has performed in many different anime and video games, pauses for a moment and then delivers his line. It is a hoarse, raspy laugh that carries the letters "H", "E", and "H" again, with such precision that one might be able to read the letters that make up the noise he has just made. Tomar does not protest, he does not question the ordeal, he simply provides the basis for this little bit. He plays along. He is aware that he is playing along. He is the one who understands that these people are all a little crazy. He allows us, the audience, to understand just how absurd this whole concept of a Let's Play even is when he draws attention to Cory's claimed skill in playing Super Mario World. In making this claim, Tomar knows right from the start that if he doesn't keep everyone on track, they will spiral out into a form of uncontrolled chaos. Tomar sets the boundary conditions to this heat diffusion problem, that ensures that, if nothing else, these bozos will at least remember that this is a video game entertainment show (not that he needs to hammer home the fact). For a point of comparison, consider the previously alluded to Sonic Heroes playthrough: nine hours of Chris, Zach and Cory playing through all four story sections, each taking a little over two hours to complete. While Cory is dead set on 100% completing the game, this does not stop the series with the trio from becoming frantic, unfocused, and worn out by the end of the whole ordeal through repetitive bits that grow shorter and shorter the deeper and deeper into the game they get (maybe this was because they got tired of seeing the game levels over and over again, it's hard to say, I'm not them). By the end of the series, the gang is miserable as they crawl across the finish line out of material. By adding Tomar to this trio, not only is there another brain to compensate for the three that has since melted into a puddle of goo, but now they have a method of dissipating this heat. Tomar is the heat sink. Tomar is the breath of fresh air. Tomar is the oxygen.
Why have I written more than 2,700 words about this Let's Play? Jesus Christ. Don't I have something better I should be doing? Maybe I could just play Super Mario World on my own. that might be fun. Wouldn't be the same, but that's alright. That's the reality of moments in gaming, they're fleeting.
When I watch this Let's Play, I see lightning captured in a bottle. I see some dudes, hanging out, having a good time, delirious from wanting to stay awake to spend just a little bit more time together. I see that these dudes aren't so dissimilar to myself, and the bullshit I like to shoot with my best friends. It's why I keep coming back, it reminds me of fun I have with my friends. I don't pretend that I'm friends with any of these four hooligans. I don't think I'd want to be. Rather, I want to have moments like these with the people I care about, get along with, and have a shared sense of humor. It's rare that a Let's Play this absurd can invoke such a deep sense of care for my peers, and yet, Oneyplays SUPER MARIO WORLD manages to do just that, even if it takes sitting through more than an airplane flight length's worth run time of weapons grade ridiculousness.
You don't need to watch it; I've done it for you. I've watched it multiple times, actually. Do something else like hanging out with your friends. That's probably a good use of your time.