User blog:WikiSchm2000/An Honest Review 1

Time for a new blog post series called: An Honest Review. Basically its a list of blog posts where I watch videos and make fun of them. It is not an expert piece of criticism but rather a humorous review based on my experiences with these videos. So without further ado, we'll start with one of MarioMario54321's videos:

'''MM54321's SM64 Bloopers: Mario Jumps The Castle! (August 10, 2007) [Runtime: 6:50]'''

'''Starting off this series, we have the first ever video by MarioMario54321! Well, not exactly the first one. This is the first one he hasn’t definitively deleted for...reasons. Anyways, this is the first official MM54321 video. Out of around 800.'''

This is going to be a long series, isn’t it?

'''Anyways, for a first video this isn’t too bad. Not great, but for a YouTube video in 2007 it could have been a lot worse. In terms of actual story it is basic, but still unique enough to be enjoyable. It also helps that the characterization is solid. Trust me when I say that this won’t happen too often.'''

'''We start with the best sign of starting out any new channel: a blue screen that obviously looks like the production was done with Windows Movie Maker. However, considering this was done in 2007 where the only real video editing software at the time was Maker, I’ll excuse the creator. Also, Unregistered Hypercam2.'''

Meme that to oblivion if you want.

'''But I’m not going to be pointing out these two tools every single time. Otherwise, I’ll have to spend the first two paragraphs of each review complaining about them. And again, 2007. Fraps and Sony Vegas weren’t popular options at the time.'''

'''Getting on to the actual video, we start with Mario saying that it is a beautiful day outside. The first thing you’ll notice when we start (besides the 2007 quality) is that these characters speak with text instead of voice acting. Now, this is a super convenient solution and a good alternative since I don’t expect the creator to be voicing 100+ characters as the series goes on. Plus, we do get to hear his voice acting later anyways.'''

And after hearing his voice acting, you’ll agree that the text was a better option.

'''However, you know we’re in for something special if Mario’s FIRST LINE has a misspelled word. Specifically the word beautiful. His English is actually good most of the time (even in the earlier videos, shockingly), but he occasionally slips up.'''

'''So Mario is apparently trying to jump the entire castle. If you’ve never heard of SM64 Machinima before I’m going to have to explain. There’s a cheat code named the Moon Jump where Mario can have an infinite jump. Can you imagine how easy Mario’s life must be with this power? He can just jump straight to Bowser’s castle very time!'''

'''But no, apparently he wants to jump over this castle instead. And to start out, he recalls all the times he’s attempted to jump over it. Plus his appearance also changed to a retro NES look in the process. Go figure.'''

'''Anyway, every attempt shown involves Mario failing to succeed in various ways. Either he breaks the fabric of space and time and goes inside of the castle or he just conveniently stops any forward motion and just lets the force of gravity lead him to impalement on a flagpole. In other words, the Mushroom Kingdom’s air resistance has to be pretty high. On his last attempt, which was number 776? He attempted this 776 times? I think with his track record on the first two attempts he would clear it in 50 at most.'''

'''Well, inferring that Mario somehow made backwards progress until this point, his previous last attempt ends with him clipping the wall boundary and dying from a landing. Obviously this shot was used after his second attempt since he has half health so this should actually be attempt number 3, but whatever.'''

'''So now he’s attempting his 777th jump. Because 7 is a lucky number. Oh, and his retro look is still there. On his 4th...whoops, I mean 777th...attempt, he succeeds. However, he does hit the wall so I don’t think it counts. Apparently the creator doesn’t care about this since one obvious cut later we go to the backyard of the castle. It would be a nice transition and a good sense of space if we didn’t have the boundary incident earlier.'''

'''Also, thinking about his previous attempts somehow made Mario revert back to his old colors? I dunno, maybe stress changes him or something. Just a forward note, this doesn’t happen in any other video. This is just a strange occurrence in this particular one.'''

'''After successfully doing this task, a mysterious voice congratulates him for beating (being?) the first person to jump the castle. As a reward, Mario is given the ability to walk on lava. There is also an unspoken bonus to this ability: every Boo in the backyard freezes up (???)! However, there is one catch that Mario doesn’t hear simply because he’s now a horror movie teenager.'''

'''Excited, Mario immediately heads to Lethal Lava Land because why not. He meets MIPS along the way just so that I can say that MIPS appeared before Luigi. Take that you lousy green plumber!'''

'''Getting too off topic here. At the land, Mario reverts back to his original outfit? Okay? He walks on lava and celebrates with Scatman music.'''

'''Now, Scatman is good music and I won’t debate that. However, it did get the creator copyrighted. So now every video that had Scatman needed to be reuploaded. Boo-hoo indeed.'''

'''Moving on, Mario walks around for a good solid minute before getting trapped in the volcano. The plot drags here, but only for a minute or so. It gets MUCH worse later down the line, trust me. Plus, it’s set to Scatman music.'''

'''He gets trapped in a volcano and tries to walk up a lavafall. This burns him, however. I don’t really see the downside to ignoring the voice’s warnings since it was minor enough. Mario decides he’s had enough and attempts to jump out of the volcano. Wasting around thirty seconds, he gets out, grabs a Wing Cap, and flies off. I kid you not that takes up the last two minutes of this video.'''

'''And even stranger, Mario completely misses where the Wing Cap box is even though he is DIRECTLY UNDERNEATH IT AT ONE POINT. If that isn’t being completely oblivious, I don’t know what is.'''

'''Mario breaks the fourth wall, knowing he’s in a video, and it ends. MarioMario54321 promises to make more videos and leaves with the line “Just you wait!” Besides being the type of line I’d expect to hear from a villain after their defeat, his claims here are true. They are oh so true.'''

'''So overall: the plot was interesting, it dragged near the end, and the music choice was solid overall. It ranged from Smash’s how to play music to Bomberman 64 music (we’ll be seeing lots of him later on) and other stuff I can’t bother to learn about. Mario’s dialogue didn’t quite gell with canon with “EXTREME PAIN!” being a notable line I would never hear him saying. But in the context of these videos and their goal this is fine.'''

We’ll get to the more juicy stuff next video.

BUDGET FUN (AKA the section where I tally the amount of lines every character speaks in order to figure out who gets top billing in each video/series. Also the section where I try to reason how much each set of videos would cost for MarioMario54321 to produce using random garbage I came up with. In terms of coins, but if you want to relate this to real currency think of each coin as worth $100):

Filming Rate (AKA the cost for every second of film): 10 coins/second.

Reasoning: New filmmaker, MarioMario54321’s location set is limited to the Mushroom Kingdom.

Filming Cost: 4100 Coins.

Line Rate (The same across all actors due to contract laws): 5 coins/line.

Reasoning: Mario is the only major actor with the only other two characters being a spirit and a rabbit cameo.

Mario - 40 (200 Coins, pretty generous if you ask me)

That voice from the fountain (Not Luigi) - 5 (25 Coins, I guess this counts as a tax seeing as I don’t know why this guy would need money)

MIPS  - 1 (5 Coins. He’ll at least get a few meals out of this cameo.)

Bonus Fees:

Scatman Song - I’m a Scatman (100 Coins)

Breaking the laws of physics (10 Coins, if only because I can't do 9.8 coins)

Freezing several Boos (50 Coins)

TOTAL COST: 4490 Coins

'''As expected, Mario got top billing for this video. Pretty much because he’s the central focus of the entire video and since we haven’t introduced any of the other main characters yet. Things aren’t too crazy yet.'''