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Things You Should Watch: Gaming Guyz

Posted by Bob Mackey

Nadia's Friday post about Shmorky's (of Something Awful fame) Punch-Out comic made me think of something that's also a Shmorky/video game crossover of epic proportions: Gaming Guyz. Just as his Furious Famicom Faggot series skewered the Angry Nintendo Nerd and the millions of ripoffs who think that lousy games and profanity-based analogies are the peanut butter and chocolate of YouTube, Gaming Guyz has a satirical target that's gaming related, but a bit broader: you. Well, not you, per se; the fact that the comments sections of most 61FPS posts don't make me want to end my life says a lot about the intelligence of our audience. But even though this blog is refreshingly troll-free, Gaming Guyz hosts Andy and Paulo are a chilling reminder of how gaming culture can transform us into emotionally unstable idiots with a strange attachment to Sonic the Hedgehog.

If they were real people, Andy and Paulo would be tearing up the GameFAQs message boards, endlessly bitching about whether Cloud Strife or Solid Snake should have won the latest front page character poll. Thankfully, they're entirely fictional, even though they're basically composites of the thousands (if not millions) of teenage Internet idiots out there that make us want to go Amish on a daily basis. Each episode of Gaming Guyz plays out like your standard message board argument between two irrational morons, though viewed through the lens of unique Something Awful weirdness--so along with your typical console war screaming, you've also got suicide and Sonic the Hedgehog acting as a compassionate ear for miscarriage woes.

The series started back in March of 2008 and had its most recent update just a week ago, but unfortunately the realities of being an Internet cartoonist in a harsh economy has slowed down the output of Something Awful's Flash Tub chief, Shmorky. Until then, you can always donate a few bones and catch up with Gaming Guyz via the links below. And even though I write for Something Awful, please keep in mind I get no additional income for pimping one of their features. Even though I wish I did.

Gaming Guyz Episodes:

Episode One
Episode Two
Episode Three
Episode Four
Episode Five
Election and Christmas Specials (Scroll down to find them)

Related Links:

16-bit Morals: Sonic Warns You About Uncle Ernie
Doing the Mario Over Christmas Break
16-Bit Morals: Mario Threatens Hell Upon Drug Users


Comments

Russ said:

One of my favorite parts of the series is pretending what a troll would look like in real life. When Apollo get's called up by his girlfriend, Andy merely says "did she get a miscarriage? That would be fucking hilarious." You laugh, but Trolls on forums fling this shit around on any forum imaginable. Nothing is sacred in the eyes of the Gaming Guyz.

March 30, 2009 2:22 PM

Bob Mackey said:

Yeah, it may seem to be outright absurdity on the surface, but Gaming Guyz is what happens when the message board mentality enters real life.

March 30, 2009 4:15 PM

About Bob Mackey

For a brief period of time I was Bull from TV's Night Court, but some of you may know me from the humor column I wrote for Youngstown State University's The Jambar, Kent State University's The Stater, and Youngstown's alternative newspaper, The Walruss. I'm perhaps most well-known for my bi-weekly pieces on Something Awful. I've also blogged for Valley24.com and have written articles for EGM, 1UP, GameSpite and Cracked. For all of my writing over the years, I have made a total of twenty American dollars. It's also said that I draw cartoons, which people have described with words such as "legible." I kidnapped the Lindbergh Baby and am looking to do so again in the future.

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    Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

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