He did another great video on Catastrophe Crow, a video game ARG similar to Petscop that actually had me fooled for the first few minutes. Also, major props to whoever actually made Catastrophe Crow. Now that is how you do a creepy lost video game.
Catastrophe Crow is really high quality but I've watched so many Super Mario 64 hacks/mods that I immediately recognized the game is probably a heavily modified hack of Mario 64 (and if not it definitely uses Mario 64 assets). Still didn't stop me from going to the Google Doc linked and checking out all the ARG content before I even finished that video on it.
Catastrophe Crow is really high quality but I've watched so many Super Mario 64 hacks/mods that I immediately recognized the game is probably a heavily modified hack of Mario 64 (and if not it definitely uses Mario 64 assets). Still didn't stop me from going to the Google Doc linked and checking out all the ARG content before I even finished that video on it.
I'm just happy for once someone bothered modding a game and giving some visual idea of what the "lost product" was. It generally doesn't get much worse than a video game creepypasta/tall-tale.
I'm just happy for once someone bothered modding a game and giving some visual idea of what the "lost product" was. It generally doesn't get much worse than a video game creepypasta/tall-tale.
Been binge watching Lemmino recently. Really sucks that he makes 3-5 videos a year.
I was also wondering if you guys would help find a (somewhat) related channel. The entire channel was based around debunking various cryptoids and paranormal activities. It was kind of similar to Last Chapter and Trey the Explainer.
I remember he specifically debunked Bigfoot sighting and Ghost Hunter garbage. Sorry for being vague.
I've been binge watching MrBallen lately. His narration is great and theirs a huge variety of stories. His videos that deal with stalkers and other odd encounters are keeping me up at night. I can't stand his thumbnail clickbaiting, though, and he does these really bizarre like-my-video games that exist to manipulate children into commenting.
If you skip his intro and outros the guy is more tolerable to watch.
Hard agree. he looks like a douchebag wanna be jaystations with his backwards hat and shitty thumbnails but his narration is really good. Don't judge a book by its cover?
I like Merc's stuff, though if his accent is hard for you to listen to I can see why he isn't for everyone. I find it weirdly relaxing though, and I appreciate him throwing up subtitles for people as well
Wait, Crow 64 is just an ARG? Congrats on making it gay. I like learning about obscure games, I don't like them being used by shit artists to create utter garbage. ARG's are generally trash. I have yet to see an ARG thats actually good. It all devolves to "omg so spooky" bullshit.
ARG's should make you question reality, not make you think "oh here's another gay art project". But what would I know about thematics in art? I'm just some fucking scrub, what the hell would I know.
If anyone is looking for some good True Crime stuff than the guys that own Forensic Files have full episodes up on their youtube channel spanning season 1 to 14, for some reason under the name "Medical Detectives". It's really the only True Crime show I'm into mainly because the person narrating it (RIP Peter Thomas) is just perfect and I like them explaining the more technical/scientific side of things. I don't know if there's any specific episodes I'd recommend, but I'd just note that the earlier episodes are a lot more graphic in showing crime scene photos and such before they toned it down a bit.
Some of the episodes deal with diseases but most of them are crime related, what I find neat about the latter is seeing how forensic techniques developed over time. Haven't bothered with the new seasons because it's just not the same without Peter Thomas narrating it.
I'll also recommend looking into old radio shows, there's a bunch of mystery/detective/crime/horror series produced over the years they were popular before the TV stole the spotlight. I more listen to comedy shows, but here's a list of shows (stolen from the subreddit for this stuff) that might be of interest. It's missing some good shows, but it's at least enough to start.
COPS & ROBBERS
Dragnet: Follow straight talking Sgt. Joe Friday through this police procedural as he and his various partners investigate crimes throughout L.A.
Tales of the Texas Rangers: a western version of the police procedural.
Broadway Is My Beat Extremely hard boiled New York police investigator Detective Danny Clover solves crimes without ever cracking a smile.
Other shows to check out: The Black Museum, Casey: Crime Photographer, I Was A Communist For the FBI, Gangbusters, Calling All Cars
PRIVATE DETECTIVES
Philip Marlowe: Relatively straight laced.
Sam Spade: Somewhere between hard boiled and comedic.
Sherlock Holmes: It's Holmes, just as he should be.
Nero Wolfe: brilliant investigator who sends his lackey to do all the footwork because he himself is literally too fat and lazy to be bothered.
Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar: A hard edged insurance investigator who specializes in foiling the schemes of insurance frauds.
Other shows to check out: Richard Diamond, Philo Vance, Mystery Is My Hobby, Jeff Regan: Investigator, Nick Carter: Master Detective
CRIME
The Shadow: A rich playboy uses his highly trained skills and brilliant detective abilities to remain cloaked in shadow in order to terrify and fight criminals. (Sound familiar? Yeah, but the Shadow beat the Bat to the punch by a decade.) The shadow uses his mental powers to remain invisible and scare the bejeezus out of crime.
The Whistler: The Whistler is your narrator. He introduces you to a new person each episode who is about to commit a heinous crime. The Whistler sits back with you as you both watch the crime play out, him often telling you the criminal's thought processes. Right up until we all learn together that crime doesn't pay.
Pat Novak, For Hire: Not quite a PI or a cop, Pat Novak is a dour, smart mouthed problem solver who usually doesn't want to be involved but rarely has a choice in the matter.
Other shows to check out: Boston Blackie, Nightbeat
HORROR
Inner Sanctum Mysteries: Good scary stories with a host who delights in ghoulish puns and wisecracks.
Lights Out: One of the most respected and feared horror anthologies in radio.
Mysterious Traveler: Have a seat on this train to nowhere, and listen close as the mysterious traveler next to you spins you a tale to make you wet your pants.
Other shows to check out: Weird Circle, The Hermit's Cave, The Unexpected, Arch obler's plays, The Price of Fear, Quiet Please, Dark Fantasy
---------------------------------------These aren't really Crime/Horror but thought I'd include them anyway-------------------- SCIENCE FICTION
Dimension X: a collection of sci-fi often written by the leading masters of the day including Isaac Asimov, Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, Fredric Brown, Robert A. Heinlein, Murray Leinster, H. Beam Piper, Frank M. Robinson, Clifford D. Simak, William Tenn, Jack Vance, Kurt Vonnegut, Donald A. Wollheim, Graham Doar, and Jack Williamson
X Minus One: Same as Dimension X Flash Gordon: serial broadcast about Earth's first interstellar hero.
Other shows to check out: Alien Worlds, Exploring Tomorrow, Space Patrol, 2000 Plus
WESTERNS
Gunsmoke: The adventures of US Marshal Matt Dillon and his not quite a deputy, Chester Proudfoot as they work to maintain law and order in the growing cow town of Dodge City, Kansas. The show was revolutionary for it's sound effects and often disturbingly violent and bleak scripts. the good guys don't always win in Gunsmoke.
The Lone Ranger: The tales of the masked crime fighter and his faithful indian companion, Tonto.
The Six Shooter: Jimmy Stewart as Brit Ponsett, a friendly, easy going, yet deadly with a gun, cowhand and his wanderings across the old west.
Other shows to check out: Have Gun Will Travel, The Cisco Kid, Hopalong Cassidy, Frontier Town, Challenge of the Yukon, Frontier Gentleman, Hawk Larabee
You can find most of this stuff on Archive.org but it's also pretty common to find playlists for specific shows on youtube since most of the shows are in the public domain now. Sad thing is that due to the age some episodes sound terrible, but most aren't too bad. I've found this channel in particular has a bunch of different shows all nicely put together in playlists. There's no real overarching plot, anything you need to know is typically told at the beginning of each episode, so you can pretty much pick any episode at random.
Wait, Crow 64 is just an ARG? Congrats on making it gay. I like learning about obscure games, I don't like them being used by shit artists to create utter garbage. ARG's are generally trash. I have yet to see an ARG thats actually good. It all devolves to "omg so spooky" bullshit.
ARG's should make you question reality, not make you think "oh here's another gay art project". But what would I know about thematics in art? I'm just some fucking scrub, what the hell would I know.
Apparently. I just stopped looking into it a moment ago because while it seemed interesting at first for the same reason you said (obscure game), there's about 2 minutes' worth of extremely empty gameplay that rushes to do the weird stuff.
It has a good opening, but then just throws THIS IS AN ARG! THIS IS AN ARG! at your face on repeat.
Wait, Crow 64 is just an ARG? Congrats on making it gay. I like learning about obscure games, I don't like them being used by shit artists to create utter garbage. ARG's are generally trash. I have yet to see an ARG thats actually good. It all devolves to "omg so spooky" bullshit.
ARG's should make you question reality, not make you think "oh here's another gay art project". But what would I know about thematics in art? I'm just some fucking scrub, what the hell would I know.
I've been binge watching MrBallen lately. His narration is great and theirs a huge variety of stories. His videos that deal with stalkers and other odd encounters are keeping me up at night. I can't stand his thumbnail clickbaiting, though, and he does these really bizarre like-my-video games that exist to manipulate children into commenting.
If you skip his intro and outros the guy is more tolerable to watch.
Yeah, I understand he is playing the Youtube algorithm, but it's so gay and over the top. I kept ignoring his videos when recommended because of that clickbait, but when I saw one about missing 411 I decided to watch the video and found that the quality is actually quite good. The comments are annoying too, clearly shows the audience clickbait usually attracts. It's kinda ironic that one of the better horror story channels is hidden among all that clickbait shit.
A lot of it has to be explored through the Wayback Machine since the company that ran the whole thing went offline around 2012 or so, which is a huge pain in the ass. Its still one of the classic ARGs and the wiki summarizes a lot of the content.
I recently came across a channel called Fascinating Horror while looking into various theme park accidents (morbid curiosity and the like). He does very concise summaries of various real life tragedies, both historical and modern, which is perfect if you're like me and unable to engage in a 10+ minute video for only 5 minutes worth of content.
Fascinating Horror is excellent. Plainly Difficult is another great channel that covers real life tragedies, although his content is more focused on nuclear/chemical accidents.
A lot of it has to be explored through the Wayback Machine since the company that ran the whole thing went offline around 2012 or so, which is a huge pain in the ass. Its still one of the classic ARGs and the wiki summarizes a lot of the content.
Most ARGs suck and even if the art is good the structure is usually bad or uninteresting. I shouldn't have to look at a damn twitter account or know obscure code languages that have no logical reason for existing in the ARG in the first place so I can figure out the mystery(Whenever I see an ARG and they use binary code but the ARG doesn't have much or anything to do with that stuff at all I lose brain cells. It's just so lazy). Though I do like a lot of the stuff Alan Resnick has made and Adult Swim's infomercials.
The only ARGs I think are unironically good are anything made by Alan Resnick, the Slenderman ARGs (like Marble Hornets as a prime example), Petscop, the Ben Drowned ARG, and I am Sophie (though it's more unfiction but it's good as satire on "Trendy" Youtube celebrity culture) to name a few.
Most ARGs are either boring, only interesting if someone were to regurgitate it, or so bad they are hilarious (Best example is "Hiding in my Home" which is just two autismos larping in some sort of Death Note style of dynamics with one fat A-Log and some edgelord good at editing)
I've been trying to figure out what makes the difference between good and bad ARG's and I think it comes down to intent: does the story exist for the sake of puzzles, or do the puzzles compliment the story?
Wham City ARG videos all have really interesting stories that can be enjoyed on their own, and for those who want to know more there's a big rabbithole to dig through like in This House Has People In It and Live Footage of a Bear. And it's not just "puzzles" like omgz if you turn the contrast up you can see hidden text!!!1111!! or stupid shit like that, you can tell how much effort they put into everything, and it's not even guaranteed that any of it would be discovered. That's true dedication to their artistry IMO. And then you have garbage like One Day Die where the story is bad and every puzzle is just "decode this toddler level hidden message, watch an instagram live, decode more autistic puzzles.." wash rinse repeat.
For ARG's with no puzzles and only a storyline that needs to be pieced together, it's really just about the acting and general execution. I think I've mentioned it before but Post Content is one of my favorite ARG and it's very amateur but you can tell these people know what they're doing. Allantutorial is another obvious example, it barely got any attention at first because everyone genuinely believed it's just some retard doing retard stuff.
Meanwhile you have stuff like Daisy Brown and This Room Doesn't Exist that started off nicely but got really fucking dumb the longer it went on because the acting and production was just shit.
