Okay, today I’m going to talk about my two favorite YouTube channels.

First, there’s DeceasedCrab. DC does “Let’s Plays“. The definition of an LP is sort of nebulous; an LP isn’t a speedrun; it’s more of an attempt by a player to present a game in its entirety. For that reason, it doesn’t make much sense to do LPs of games that are popular and easily available, unless you want to go the MST3K route on them.

While DC did not invent the LP, his excellent LP of La-Mulana catapulted him into the spotlight. Since then he has wisely stuck to playing rare, out-of-print, offbeat and indie games.

DC talks while he plays, and he’s basically either commenting on what is happening or free-associating. His fans (including me) love him because he’s constantly dropping anime, manga or gaming references into his LPs. He’s also got a habit of breaking out into song; indeed, more than once his viewers have sent him songs to sing on the air.

DC also has a fantastic ethic about his videos. He rarely swears (indeed, he accidentally dropped the F-bomb in his second video of La-Mulana and then instantly chastised himself) and he posts a video practically every day.

Every time I go to DC’s channel I know I’m going to be treated to something funny and unique.

My other favorite YouTube channel belongs to GarlandTheGreat. Garland is pretty much the exact opposite of DC. He doesn’t do voiceovers. Most of the games he makes videos for are common, popular games. But Garland’s videos are amazing.

He’s done complete 100% runs of Crash Bandicoot 1, 2 and 3 and a Metal Gear Solid run on Extreme difficulty where he takes no damage (until he encounters some absolutely unavoidable hits at the very end).

But his real love is in destroying Square RPGs.

Remember the Midgar Serpent in Final Fantasy VII, which was deliberately made so powerful your party couldn’t beat it, forcing you to tame a chocobo to get past it? Here’s a video of him defeating it with just Tifa at level 5.

He has completed a run through Final Fantasy X where he was not allowed to use the Sphere Grid, not allowed to customize his weapons, not allowed to summon Aeons, and not allowed to use Overdrives. Indeed, that wasn’t challenging enough for him, because he’s now begun another playthrough where he is also not allowed to use items or Riku’s “Trio of 9999” mix.

The thing that really makes his videos is his patience. He routinely talks about taking hundreds of tries to get a video right. In the intro for his Metal Gear Solid videos he mentions that he has played Metal Gear Solid all the way through 62 times.

He is currently working on his two magnum opii: a tool-assisted 100% speedrun of Final Fantasy VII…and a non-tool-assisted 100% speedrun of Final Fantasy VII.

Whenever I go to Garland’s channel I know I’m going to see something amazing done to a video game I thought I knew everything about.