15 years ago,
— Brad Lynch (@MarinoV1) February 9, 2024
On a cold dark night,
A news reporter was killed...
So we jumped into a television for a 155-day test of endurance. pic.twitter.com/XoGdDUFDnX
Disregard the publish date on the YouTube posting of the video. People forget this tidbit, but when Giant Bomb launched, it relied entirely on its site video player and did not have a YouTube presence until about two years into the Whiskey Media run of the site. Nonetheless, as the title of this thread suggest, today marks the 15th anniversary of the Giant Bomb Persona 4 Endurance Run; a video that many, myself included continue to be a pioneer of the current Let's Play format that has become ubiquitous among video game-based YouTubers and streamers. While Giant Bomb was not the first to play around with the concept, Jeff and Vinny's adventures with the game continue to be one of the site's most well-known early forays into video-based editorial content.
For many, this series drove them towards the site, and served as an introduction to the works of Atlus in general. For those of you that might be new and missed this series, it's definitely a blast! Maybe consider the user-made "Best of" videos if you are wondering if it still holds up!
However, here are some things that people have forgotten about the series. First, Yukiko's Dungeon was a big judgement call for Vinny and Jeff. If they had failed in Yukiko's dungeon, the Endurance Run would have been over at that point. Due to the miso soup event as well as the capsule machine event they were on the last possible day to free Yukiko. It was do or die, and luckily for everyone involved it turned out in everyone's favor because at that point they decided to see the game to the end.
Second, the series also almost met a premature end when the tape archive for episode 50 got corrupted. Dave Snider and Vinny documented the frantic effort to review the backup tapes in an attempt to make sure the episode did not become completely lost.
To all of you that have move on to great and wonderful things outside of Giant Bomb since the Persona 4 Endurance Run first aired, I wish you and those you love nothing but the best. To all of you still naming your Persona characters some variation of "Charlie Tunoku," here's to you!
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