Back when I was a kid, I got up early on Saturday mornings, not to watch cartoons, but Mystery Science Theater 3000 on the SciFi channel. It was the best thing to start off the day with. Terrible movies with funny jokes being told by a guy and two robots. Most of the jokes went over my head, but I still laughed at all the ones that I did get.
This was something that would stick with me for a really long time. Mystery Science Theater is timeless. The concept of making fun of bad movies has existed since before the show even aired back in 1988.
This concept has evolved to modern audiences on the modern platform of YouTube. Let's Players are the new MST3K. While that statement doesn't exactly do Mystery Science Theater 3000 justice, hear me out.
My favorite Let's Play channel on YouTube is the Game Grumps. I love their commentary, they always make me smile, and some of their best series come from the worst games.
It's always so great to hear their ridicule of these broken, or unfinished games. Random glitches, or poor design will usually be the topic of conversation, but the Game Grumps always have some good stories or jokes to tell.
From Iceland, there's BigirPall. These are just two guys who play bad video games, and try to break them by clipping through walls, and just by performing silly antics while the rest of the video game world turns.
It is always hilarious to see the silly antics of these two while the games themselves act so seriously. Games like Construction Simulator, or even Assassin's Creed attempt to create a genuine experience, but end up being ruined by these two, and the result is a riot.
Thirdly, there's the Super Beard Bros. of The Completionist crew. While not a regular channel that I watched, their playthrough of Saw The Video Game was very entertaining.
Jirard The Completionist and his best buddy Alex take on this terrible game. It's a drab and dull adventure highlighted with a few crescendos of genuine sadism, but over all the game sucks. With the commentary of these two best friends, they make it really fun to watch. On their primary show where they review games to the 100% completion rating, they actually did a review of the Saw game. It was mentioned that the games only saving grace was having a friend along to enjoy it with.
That's the reason that we enjoy these things so much. It's why they're so successful. It's because of the people that are involved. Whether you're with a friend and playing the game yourself, or watching a group of other people suffer through a terrible game, it can make for quite the time. Mystery Science Theater 3000 is awesome because of the quality writing, and that writing works because there are multiple characters to play off of each other. While Let's Plays have a more free-form and "improv" atmosphere, the commentators can still crack a few clever one liners.
Playing bad games is something that me and my brother used to do all the time. Well, they weren't entirely bad games, but Star Wars Battlefront 2 and Dynamite Cop were games that would have us laughing our butts off every time that we played. I'm not sure if these games intended to have stupid physics, or mechanics that just didn't work, but they were so much fun to play with each other. So, grab a friend, and play a bad game together.
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