Link me to your favorite GB content

Like many folks, today's news hit me really hard. GB's been a part of my life for a long time, and whatever it may become after the departure of Vinny, Brad, and Alex, it will never be quite the same. Nothing ever is, I suppose. I suspect I'll be grieving for a while.

But one way of grieving as the site goes through this major change is to re-watch some of our favorite old content. We can't change the departures, but there's still years' worth of content to enjoy. So I wanted to start this thread as a place for people to share their favorite videos, and hopefully we can all benefit from discovering "new" stuff we'd missed, or remembering something we'd forgotten.

I'll start with my own list of the great videos/series that immediately spring to my mind. I'm sure I'll forgetting lots of stuff, but it's a start:

• Mario Party Party 5 is perhaps the most magical video they ever made. The fact that it was a live audience was a huge thing, but they also couldn't have had a crazier result if they had scripted it. It's four hours of everything that was great about Giant Bomb. The rest of the "Mario Party Party" videos were fun, too, but 5 is on another level.
• The original 2016 Hitsmas is probably my second-favorite video of all time, with Vinny's epic run. And in fact, most of GB's Hitman video content was pretty fuckin' great, and of course they ended up making just a ridiculous number of videos covering it as a result of the way the game was released a level at a time.
• Metal Gear Scanlon was incredible, it's peak Drew and Dan. And the fact that they played through all five games plus Revengeance led to just a ridiculous amount of content in terms of sheer hours. I'm not even sure how long it is. Probably at least a hundred hours, right?
• Breaking Brad was always fun. The four Volgarr videos were peak for me, but I also enjoyed the Demon's Souls and Bloodborne stuff, and the recent Mario 2 series.
• Then there's the legendary Persona 4 endurance run, which went for 154 videos and 100 hours. I never ended up playing the whole game through myself, I think I played for about 20 hours but never liked it as much as Persona 3 (which I loved to death and played multiple times). But having watched this series, it feels almost like I played P4 myself.
• The Until Dawn playthrough was great fun. It's just a game that lends itself to watching, I think.
• The complete playthrough they ended up doing of Contradiction! Spot the Liar was absolutely delightful. Go FMV games.
• Watching them construct terrible Mario Maker levels was fun.
• Vinny's Load Your Last Souls, in which he picked up from his existing Dark Souls save and ended up finishing the game, was great fun.
• GB's E3 coverage was usually quite entertaining, both the talking-over-press-conferences and all the guests on the couch.

I think I'll start by rewatching the Until Dawn playdate, myself. But I'd love to see other people's suggestions for their favorite content.

That time they gathered to set the record straight on Too Human.

First couple that come to mind IMMEDIATELY

• It is about to truly be the age of dragons in here.
• You're in luck.
• Rolling the dice.

https://www.giantbomb.com/shows/the-matrix-online-not-like-this-finale/2970-15527/free-video

The video that brought me here

Oh God, I didn't even think about some of this off-site fan-made animated stuff. That "You're in luck" clip is one of my faves for sure. I also love #Skate4 and Fireboylt.

Speaking of shorter clips, I'm also reminded of Best of Hitman Season 1, Phoenix Down, and Dan's epic "Pirates just stole shit from other people?".

@atheistpreacher:

Phoenix Down oh my god yes!

EDIT: I can't find it right now but Dan's question about butter with Abby just going "DAAAAAAN". I loved that.

EDIT2: Found it.

EDIT3: Also, NEVER.

@chem: I know I watched that entire RE4 playthrough because it's one of my favorite games ever, but I didn't remember that moment... another good instance of OMG WTF Dan for sure. I'm also recalling Beastcast ep. 164 in which right at the end (2:29:17 of the free version) Dan doesn't seem to understand the concept of cooking meat. :-)

Side note: It'll forever bother me that for Abbey's playthrough of RE4 they didn't install the RE4HD Project mod. It's still not even quite done after something like eight years (though they're very close!), but even the releases they've done improve the look of that game immeasurably.

The one big one I always keep going back to is when Vinny played through Bioforge. It's so good. Not to mention every other time Vinny played random old PC games in UPF or on "Random PC Games". Takes me back to the good ol' days.

Unprofessional Fridays: 04/12/2013

Backflips 'n BioForge - Part 01

Backflips 'n BioForge - Part 02

Backflips 'n BioForge - Part 03

The playdates were always good too, similar to when people would bring in old games for UPF. Here's a really great series:

Playdate: Tender Loving Care (04/07/2017)

Playdate: Tender Loving Care (04/14/2017)

Playdate: Tender Loving Care (04/28/2017)

There are just so many great moments/videos/series that should be preserved forever. Over the years I've downloaded most of these and kept them. They will always be classics.

Phoenix Wright Wii Quicklook

It's by quite a margin this Pax panel:

PAX East 2013: Giant Bomb Panel - Part 01

PAX East 2013: Giant Bomb Panel - Part 02

Stardew Valley Quick Look

Stardew Valley Playdate

Dan's enthusiasm for Stardew Valley was infectious. And the videos were just super relaxing to watch.

The Fortune Street TNT was my first live stream on GB, and MAN it was a fun ride.

Demo Derby is such a good time, oh and Metal Gear Scanlon!

Ill miss you guys, and hope nothing but the best for all of you on your new endeavour. Thank you for all the laughs and fun :)

10-13-2009 Bombcast with Jonny V and Adam Boyes

Big Live Live Show Live 2010

The birth of <> ($775 million dollars)

The end of Xbox Live on the OG Xbox

A whole YT playlist of Best ofs for the '09 Bombcast

The first ever GOTY debate. The entire thing is a little over 2.5 hrs. (GTA IV won because it's the best game of all time.)

this was peak GB for me, the Ryan Era. Simply too much content to ever boil down to a "comprehensive" shortlist this was just off the top of the dome. There was great stuff on the site every day of the week, for years. The energy and love around the site was just infectious.

Wish everyone all the best going forward. GLHB.

EDIT: I forgot but you used to be able to make lists on the site of videos. don't know if you can still do this so I refuse to delete this list I made in like 2011. Over 150 classic videos. Enjoy.

https://www.giantbomb.com/shows/endurance-run-shenmue-part-16/2970-12393/free-video

In this episode of the Shenmue ER, the crew once again were forced to wait for hours of in-game time for the story to progress (as per usual with Shenmue).

Vinny used the opportunity to break out the guitar. Enjoy the angelic voice of Dan Ryckert as he performs some Neal Young covers in the voice of Kermit the frog.

Concert starts at the 33:00 minute mark.

The Bomination Series:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgtKS0Fyqgw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oerx5WEpXMI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cinw63ulsSg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N9SBuz6t_w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqPVqTKzU3U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gbx1_xQ0AA

You can listen to best ofs from all bombcasts here:

https://www.matthewfloratos.com/this-year-collection

I got in after the 'the hotspot' gamespot era, but those podcasts are brilliant too. I recommend starting with the hotspot 2005 and working through those then Bombcasts in order.

Too many to list, but you can't go wrong with the chart topping Barkerville.

Edit: I spent way too long looking for Power.

I still laugh uncontrollably at this

Let's watch a pro

Here's one I forgot about: the GB East playthrough of The Quiet Man during Extra Life, featuring Cop-Dad and Mom-Wife. Looks like the YouTube version is actually gone, but it's still downloadable. What a ridiculous game. The level of incredulity from the crew throughout is delightful.

EDIT: Also, Vinny re-tweeted this Twitter thread a few hours ago that compiles 45 favorite GB moments:

https://twitter.com/airbagged/status/1389708043441557505

EDIT2: Oh, and who could forget #FREEKESSLER?

I am more than 2 thirds of may way of watching Metal Gear Scanlon for my 2nd time.

I have also watched Load Our Last Souls with Vinny, Rorie and Ian at least 3 times. One of my favorites for sure.

The whole P4 Endurance Run. It's the "let's play" style standard. I watch it when I'm sad sometimes and it always cheers me up no matter whats going on. The combination of those guys just chilling on a couch in a basement slowly warming up to all the characters, and the game itself, I swear it has healing powers

Does this count? Brad fuckin' *crushes* it.

One of my favorites showcasing both the amazing community as well as the incredible rapport Vinny and Austin have: Manfred's my friend

The first Giantbomb content I ever saw/heard was when I had heard them mentioned as a good podcast on some site earlier, then didn't have internet access where I was at the time, and somehow did a non-google internet search through my old non-smartphone's search section which brought up some Youtube results and saw this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-46OrsGYOEM

"...keep your hands and feet inside the OH JAESUS"

Had me cackling.

I think I also found Drobot Callin' the same way:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CI-hHQGvaQE

GiantBomb crew there for the end of PS Home. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e5E_WhlOjHY

Hands down my favorite Quick Look of all time is the Euro Truck Simulator 2 Quick Look. It checks so many boxes for me. It's got traffic shenanigans, fake radio stations, at one point it quits being about that game and about shitty ad scams. It's incredible.

Next up is the UPF with the Dream Gear thing. A ton of random games on some bootleg device that I'm convinced Vinny bought at the gas station on his way to work. The crew going through these games is fucking spectacular. Each one is a new treat. Part of what I love about this is nobody knowing what any of these games are going to be, so they're just guessing based on the names.

I usually throw Giant Bomb Infinite as I'm going to sleep. On occasions when it's down, I put on one of a couple videos that are on YouTube.

First, there's Papa Vinny's Pizza Party. It's a gauntlet of Giant Bomb multiplayer classics. And the rare feature where Dan actually loses a few games (LOL).

Then there's this unarchived video of Ryan Davis's Famicon Lot. This is the OGs Jeff and Ryan playing a ton of random untranslated NES games. I think something I really like is seeing genuine first reactions. This does that and also serves as a crash course of the NES/Famicon catalogue.

Beyond that, my favorite series are Demo Derby, Mario Part Party, and anything Jeff has done with TrackMania.

I feel ya brother. May be time to revisit. All this talk and the guys leaving has me feeling so sentimental and sad about GB now.

Tough!

Here's a favorite E3 moment of mine that somehow didn't make it into the "Best of" video at the time (E3 2017, night 2).

https://twitter.com/Onishi_Keigo/status/1390190479682248705

Rather than echo what others have already posted, I want to share this. I know it's not technically Giant Bomb but it's often the first thing that I think about when Brad and Vinny pop into mind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lodNiydYtsk

Man i needed that. Thank you.

https://www.giantbomb.com/shows/quick-look-throwback-multimedia-celebrity-poker/2970-14908

In my humble opinion, I submit what I believe to be one of early GB's finest work. It has everything, b-list celebrities, mid 90's crap FMV and that ending, oh god that ending.... I don't think I've ever seen a finer piece of unscripted comedy in my life.

"Let's watch a pro ..."

Spraying down the bear in Zoo Tycoon (Vinny riffing on games is just the best)

https://www.giantbomb.com/videos/embed/8263/?time=3250&t=3250&e=-1&autoplay=1

What IS Firewatch - https://youtu.be/P-DjN6_LLwk

Game Room 10/27/10 - https://www.giantbomb.com/shows/quick-look-game-room-for-102710/2970-14973/free-video

The 11/21/2014 UPF, the first one I caught after subscribing for the first time. Go to 37:00 to see Dan Ryckert pull a long con in Fibbage XL.

I really enjoyed listening to this compilation by @humanity about Brad and Vinny's Brothers bet:

It was great to hear Drew and Patrick on the podcast again.

@khessed: Wow. I had no idea Brad could sing!

The day they finally landed it. :)

There are so, so many moments. I haven't been watching much of the more recent stuff they've been doing, but this site will always mean a lot to me. I first subscribed to be able to watch the Whiskey Media Happy Hour.

This is a weird one in the sense that it's really only important to me, but I think I'll just share it anyway.

Ever since I became a premium member, set the site as my homepage, and basically became fully initiated into the low-key cult of personality that is Giant Bomb, it had been a thing on my bucket list to play a game on stream with some of the staff. I wasn't sure it would ever happen, but then on December 11, 2017, it did.

It was Jason and Ben playing the Monster Hunter World demo. In the first hour, they beat the easy Great Jagras together, but then failed out on Anjanath. To be fair to them, the way monster health scaled with multiple players was kinda screwing them, since they had a smaller health pool for single-player, and a larger one for 2-4 players, so two players was basically the hardest you could make it. The game was later patched to have a health pool in-between these two extremes, specifically for two players. But at the time, it was what it was.

So they opened the room up to others about an hour in for help, and I actually got in (as "Keigo Onishi," a name I stole from the anime Texhnolyze), along with one other person. Together, the four of us took down Anjanath, and then even managed to hunt Diablos with almost no time left to spare.

It was pretty surreal for me at the time. I remember keeping the stream on another screen as I hunted, and of course there was a massive delay for me between the game and the stream. But it couldn't have been a better game for me to play with the GB duders, since I'm a big MH fanatic and have been playing it since Monster Hunter Freedom Unite on the PSP, and hence did pretty well. In fact, there's a brief fraction of a second at 1:09:53 (Jason sped past it on his screen) at which you can see that I got all four end-of-hunt "cards." Ben then commented on it by saying to Jason, "You know, this screen might say otherwise, but I feel like you and I were definitely the stars here." Jason responded: "I skipped past it in embarrassment."

So, yeah. Incredibly cool moment for me. I wasn't on-mic with them or anything, but it was still really amazing to be able to play something with the guys. I'll always remember that one.

Game Room quick looks kept me coming back.

https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrboIp9iOi5rn5cJCAQnrz-9d8T__Lx5U

The Life is Strange playthrough was one of my favourite GBeast series. It started as a Choose Our Own Adventure (a short-lived series where the audience voted on what game the east team played). Eventually, after people voted for them to continue playing it 2 more times in a row, they gave in and converted it to to be the third thing they finished playing all the way through as a Playdate after Contradiction and Until Dawn. The first three parts of this series are free, the rest is premium.

The reason it sticks out for me is they started out playing it in a kind of jokey fashion like the west coast people did where they poked fun at some of the more awkward bits of dialog, but they stuck with it long enough to realize that there's a fair amount of depth to the game's story. Obviously they joke around a bit but it's easy to tell part way through the first few episodes that they go from being skeptical of the game to completely invested in what is going on. They even went as far as to try to make a case for what they had played of the game during GOTY that year.

Part 1:

Part 2, Part 3

Playdates (Premium): Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7

Alex: "Nice shootin', Tex"

*literally a second later*

Max: "Nice shootin', Tex"

*everyone loses it*

For other honourable mentions that I haven't seen mentioned, the GBeast Playdates for American Truck Sim, all of Clue Crew, Steal My Sunshine (really, basically all of the GBeast Premium content). I'm going through the whole back-catalogue and downloading everything I want so I'm sure I'll find a ton of older stuff soon and I'll post some of it here.

This is the most underrated Quick Look on the site and it just so happens to feature our departing trio. Whenever I wanted to show people what Giant Bomb was I would turn to this video and it never failed to get a huge laugh out of them.

I figure everyone's gonna bust out the hits so I wanted to mention a couple of deep cuts that I remember really fondly.

Story Hour: Adventures feels like watching a bad movie to laugh at the plot with your friends. Special mention to the spontaneous, unified yell of "ZOOOOOOO!" at the splash screen with no comment on it afterwards.

Train Simulator: Trains vs Zombies is... An experience. Stay for the ending.

Crime crew was a fun Trainwreck but Vinny being trapped in a physics hellworld had me howling like nothing else, it could only happen to him.

https://www.giantbomb.com/shows/episode-06/2970-19398/premium-video

7:00 mark is where it gets wild.

@khessed: like kalos, I had no clue Brad had such a good singing voice! Thanks so much for sharing. I'm gonna miss him, Vinny, and Alex.

Edit: I forget to add that my favorite thing on GiantBomb was Quick Look: Left Alive. It's a perfect example of how talented folks can make something very funny from even a mediocre game without needing to get hyperbolic or rip it to shreds.

The Hotline Miami Quick Look. Just listen as Ryan as he realizes what the game is. It's the best. Just the best.

Taken from:

https://www.giantbomb.com/shows/quick-look-motion-sports/2970-14959/free-video

It remains my favourite Quick Look and I quote it often irl. Great stuff.