Ever since I made posts relating to infamous Sonic fans, a thought came to me. Who would stand out from the other? Who would I certainly go back to in a future entry because talking about an old topic would be inconsequential as said topic is really just stagnant. MichaelDragon800.
But I'll get to him another time, for now I feel like revisiting someone who I feel I didn't do the best job elaborating on when I first talked about him, and by that I'm just taking the piss out of one of his old ass reviews, while going over some of his quirks, it's kind of mandatory when you go for someone known specifically for that. I may be retreading stuff from my initial discussion of him, but that was added well after, and people already saw the initial entry. Call it new money for old rope.
I mean BlackBusterCritic hosted a livestream ten months ago and screened a recent KMR video, and nobody came to harass him over it.
Now before I go into the video, it's important that I establish who this guy was and what influenced his, quite frankly, laughable actions back then.
KingMasterReview, or The King as he's now known, was a moth that flew too close to the flame that was video game reviewing. Angry Video Game Nerd was still too big for his own good, and had a veritable collection of unfairly scrutinized people like Irate Gamer, NC17 Productions, Game Dude- wait a sec, Game Dude might've deserved it. Aside from that crowd, we had the likes of Armake21, SpoonyOne, PlayItBogart, Pat the NES Punk, DarknessTheCurse, WizWar100, Jedite1, StillGaming, Spax3, yes I have read an Encyclopedia Dramatica article listing every popular reviewer, but speaking of the latter.
Yes, I'm bringing up Spax, not out of habit, but because he actually has an indirect link to KMR's history, and ultimately, the review I'm gonna cover. While Spax was an infamous individual back then, he actually had an audience. As early as 2007, he had amassed over 3000 subscribers on his original YouTube channel. Barring anything relating to voice actors, his reviews had some charm to them, he had a personality that can be easily differentiated from the Angry Video Game Nerd, and may have been one of the first non-retro angry reviewers on YouTube.
And yes, KMR was initially influenced by Spax at the time, and decided to make his own reviews... with a not so subtle hint to his inspiration.
Review Dat Shit
The first review KMR ever did was that of Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis, for the Game Boy Advance. It was low hanging fruit, but fortunately not as low as Sonic 06. The first thing we see is text advising us to read the description, revealing he couldn't get the right footage.
Back in the late-2000s, some reviewers opted to record footage on their VHS or burn it onto DVDs. It was before stuff like capture cards really took off. But look, if you wanna get into game reviews, you gotta get your own footage. Hell, I'd take filming your GBA if it means we can get a sense of what is going on.
We then get KMR's vanity card, as in Windows Movie Maker text against footage of Sonic 06, featuring Silver. Savor the thought. This could've been an intro itself, but then we cut to a rather amateur title card. Just Silver again with the three seventh generation consoles, and redundancy.
KingMasterReview Game Reviews:.
Okay, so the King who is the master is going to review game reviews? That name, it rolls right off the tongue, doesn't it? This is actually an incredibly obvious restructure of Spax's old CNASN Game Reviews. And while it may seem obvious, if you don't understand it quite as well, listen closely and hear KMR click play on one of Spax's old videos, and hear his intro.
You know I never really hated Irate Gamer, even during his heyday, and at least I know any signs of plagiarism come from circumstance. He never had to tack on audio from the Angry Video Game Nerd's intro.
Speaking of AVGN 'knock-offs', KMR basically spells out his inspiration in a way that Game Dude did for his own game reviews. As in saying he is inspired by whoever at the start.
After voicing initial disgust, he gets right into the review and starts with the graphics. Why yes, I have also seen CNASN's third episode. He didn't mention Jason Griffith once, it's basically a classic. But to be serious, if the influence hasn't been established, KMR bases his review on that of Spax's, right down to using title cards to represent scene changes, even going as far as having the words placed on a monitor.
And speaking of that third episode, it's not that he brings up the same points others do, but its that it's made clear he's borrowing from other reviewers, such as the design of the springs. I was waiting for KMR to say "Kinda defies the laws of physics, don't you think?" At one point I felt as though he was gonna come close to complaining about the piranhas being purple in the water rather than red, but then in a moment of clarity turned back.
He then goes into what the description stated, and I'm thinking, if he couldn't find footage, why even bother making the review? Guess it would've been too obvious for KMR's first review to be that for Sonic 06.
He goes into a weird tangent about the camera being zoomed in too close, like he decides to remind us because... of a reason I'm saving for the end. I gotta say, the fact he's complaining about bad controls even though he established he couldn't get footage is pathetic. He's going after this game because everyone had, and he's not even going through the actual experience. It gets worse when you find arguments made by that one guy who's been mentioned before, and he can't even catch it in the act.
To add insult to injury, KMR actually owned a Game Boy Advance, and apparently didn't even own the actual game. Sonic was just too fast for him. Also, going back into Spax3 lore, it was around this time he began wearing his signature hoodie, and I bring this up because Aubrey is also wearing a hoodie, even doing so in his Sonic Unleashed video. It's the little details that few had picked up on.
Moving onto the sound, referring back to Spax's review of the game, he demonstrates the game's reliance on one particular sound, whereas KMR uses footage that does not back up his claim that much, beyond the initial muffle quality the GBA is known for. And apparently the sound was so bad he decided to give up.
While his outro isn't too derivative, let's just say him calling Sonic 06 Sonic the Disaster wasn't his original idea. Take a wile guess whose it was.
As a final stab, his review also contains a 1 to 10 rating system, and he knows we know what he's giving it. A 1/10, oh hey kinda like-
And we end with His World by Zebrahead, you know, from Sonic 06, that one game that had Silver-
Other Thoughts
I've heard of rocky starts but damn. What made me gravitate toward this video was how shameless it was with plagiarism and influence. It is especially egregious because Spax3 was, for better or worse, distinctive from other reviewers. When someone takes elements from a distinctive reviewer, they are hard to overlook in a clearly inferior copy. He brings up Spax more than I do in his more notable videos, and that says a lot.
When you go into reviews it is important to make it your own, something that even the likes of Irate Gamer and Game Dude did.
But, the influence runs deeper than you think, though if you knew about KMR beforehand, you'd know where this is heading. Along with handling reviews a bit differently than others, later down the road Spax decided to spice things up by incorporating animated characters into his reviews.
Now granted, this isn't an original idea for internet reviews, the Angry Video Game Nerd had done so with Shit Pickle and the Nerdy Turd in previous reviews, when he didn't have Mike Matei in costume, but those weren't constant. I mean because of limited animation things can look quite amateurish, but can yield interesting results.
For perspective, Spax had three animated characters that appeared to be constants in most of his later reviews. He used Tom 2 from those Toonami bumps, and just played clips from said bumpers to reflect his on-screen presence. But to be fair, Tom 2 does not have a visible mouth, and one of his friends at the time who voiced him and contributed game footage, while not being that close to Steve Blum, still sounds good, I mean better than another guy who played Tom in Spax's Transformers review.
Aside from Tom 2, he also used a Sonic fan character which was made by a friend of his, and even voiced by an IRL friend of his, and compared to other Sonic OCs from the time, hers was legitimate. But there was one in particular that stood out, the Noid of all things. Let's make this fair, Spax was trying to establish his own in-show universe, a character interacting with other characters, otherwise there'd be much questions to hurl toward the AVGN. I won't even bring up how two of these happen to be rabbits.
While I'm on this, it was ironic he flagged videos criticizing him on the basis he owned his videos, as in everything within them, but used copyrighted material straight up, and parody stigmas are slim. And just because the Noid was retired by Dominos due to a schizo going insane at one of their places, I mean the principle of bringing an icon from your childhood into reviews is... kinda like what AVGN did in the past, but I dunno, if the Noid were real, I doubt he'd appreciate association with a fake company involved in mass flaggings. I bring it up because I gotta, and because flagging activity on Spax's part is not as big as it was then, at worst infrequent.
I bring up the Noid because, aside from being the name of Spax's fake company used for takedown notices, KMR would use that for another influence, and combine it with his favorite Sonic character of all time, or for the time. Silver the Hedgehog.
Well before that crappy review I talked about, KMR made it clear he was a big Silver fan, unlike anyone else. It got to the point he made a video claiming that Silver was real and living with him, Silver being the equivalent to the Noid in that regard. What KMR didn't understand was that Spax didn't take the Noid as seriously, treating him as just a random wacky character he interacts with in his reviews. At the end of the day, CNASN Game Reviews was a fictional comedic game review show.
KMR didn't have that luxury. His reviews were shit, and derivative at best. And he went about having Silver on in the worst possible way. From making a dedicated introduction to including him in pictures, posts and reviews however he could. Needless to say, he was certainly obsessed, even if he was doing it for fun, apparently. Also KMR was a firm believer in off-the-cuff dialog apparently, as he would just talk without any foresight to how he speaks. Do people in Memphis like to ramble a lot?
For more seasoned readers, you know what this led to. He was the first person to ever by covered by the BlackBusterCritic for Sonic Brain Fart. Now, it was a great episode, don't get me wrong, but I feel that it didn't really go deep enough, especially since details establishing why KMR did these things was right under Jamin nose when he reacted to KMR's Hert Fellings video, and went on and on about Spax3. BlackBusterCritic, I love you to death, but that video was lacking. A RePoot was absolutely necessary, there was a big opportunity.
One funny thing that was brought up in the reaction is that Spax knew about KMR, and it was said that Spax was mean to him. I don't know the full details, and given that Spax has a level of unpredictability that has persisted, I'm not sure how exactly it went down. Either Spax was being a complete ass to KMR, or firmly blew him off. It'd be hilarious if Spax saw KMR's Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis review and wanted to get him to back off.
Really felt like Jamin was reaching in his coverage of KMR, when there was very much to cover. It got to the point he made a joke about KMR mudshoveling Silver, something people ran with, such was the way of the internet back then. I'm not even gonna call him an easy target, someone had to knock some sense into him, maybe the anal thing was just tough love? Was it to reflect KMR's obsession? I mean Silver isn't real so it's not like he's framing KMR to be a creep, just a weirdo.
So What Then?
In spite of the scrutiny he faced, KMR continued to post new reviews until around 2011, where he would disappear for a good while, and keep in mind all he had for socials were YouTube, deviantArt and MySpace, it was impossible to tell what he would be up to. He would come back two or three years later with a new video, and after a while, he began consistently posting content again. Needless to say, it's better now than it was then.
I mean to be fair I was only going off of the first review he ever did, maybe some of his older stuff was okay, who knows? A while back, BlackBusterCritic did a livestream and revisited KMR's channel, checking out one of his newer videos, and aside from taking issue with the length, didn't really clown on him. You see, BlackBusterCritic goes into his videos with the sense the people he covers would learn something or back off. Hell, everyone he ever covered manage to get by just fine, those who didn't would be brought down by entirely new charges.
Even in spite of some people still going after him in the comments, it seems to hold no impact on KMR. It is nice to see that anyone who was previously scrutinized managed to just move past it. So at least things can end happy.
I mean he is doing better than one of his fans at the time....
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