Rip of the week: 25/11/2024
Slope Dude
Season 4 Episode 2 Featured on: Summer-Colored Smiles ~ The SiIvaSummer All-Star Festival Collection
Ripped by eg_9371
You may notice it's been a while since the last post, as it was with the post before it, and so on. Truth be told, the switch to weekly posting came with its own set of issues for my flow of work; mainly, that I've gotten too damn ambitious in my writing for some of these posts. I'm incredibly happy with the end results of a lot of them and feel more confident in being able to wholeheartedly recommend reading any of my post-hiatus posts than I do a majority of my pre-hiatus posts...but it also means that I'm met with self-induced hurdles on how and what to write about. I can't just cover a rip that I just find funny and neat; It has to be historical, it has to be magnificent, it has to have immaculate pathos, has to tie into the SiIvaGunner spirit or whatever else I find myself waxing on about...
No, you know what? Screw it. I'm behind on my posts anyway. We're doing a simple goodie today. Writing the same day it's posted, of a rip I just keep returning to for a good laugh, with no strings attached. Old-school style. Slope Dude.
Back on Lagplane, I mused a bit about the novelty of memes that leave us almost as quickly as they arrive, the consequences of the intensely rapid meme economy born from modern social media. It was a lot of waffling to justify writing about a flamboyant Andrew Tate impersonator, but it's hardly as if these trend-based jokes are a new occurrence on SiIva. I'm reminded of how 2016 saw a handful of rips poking fun at then-notorious online figure Keemstar, for instance – but perhaps stranger than these, are when jokes on SiIva crop up without any recent relevancy, are incredibly prominent for the length of a season or so, and then fade away just as suddenly as they appeared. Unlike Stuck Inside of FEEL SO FINE STUCK INSIDE fame, unlike the Mad Mew Mew Becoming Uncanny rips, unlike so many other jokes on the channel...the appearance of Game Dude on SiIvaGunner throughout Season 4 felt as if it came out of nowhere, made even stranger by just how limited its presence felt. We got a handful of rips, a bunch of appearances in medley rips, a cameo in a lore video, and then the tune was out just as quickly as it had entered. No relevancy, no big explosive tie to the themes or intent of Season 4 Episodes 1 or 2 in particular; just a silly theme with a handful of rippers who decided to play around with it.
Part of me wonders, akin to rips like old town ribbon race, just how much of the appeal of the joke here becomes lost without whollistic knowledge of its lore. The tale of Game Dude is one of the internet's many bizarre sidequests, long overdue for a YouTube video essay a la HBomberGuy's body of work to truly bring it all to light, yet for now still remaining obscure enough to only be spread in whispers between those who know. It was the kind of thing I myself was given the "privilege" of uncovering on my own terms after first watching a Game Grumps episode built entirely on indirectly mocking him and growing all-too-curious about what he's up to; one of many Angry Video Nerd Clones trying and failing ever so badly at being funny playing bad video games, Game Dude's last legacy online would be to be known as the guy who fled his home state when called to court over stalking his ex-girlfriend. It gives the imagery of a bumbling, somewhat pathetic figure, someone who tried and failed to find online fame through poor mimicry and wound up unable to take proper responsibility for themselves. Like the aforementioned Lagplane, it adds just that extra aura to the theme song attached to the character, the original intro to his theme songs; once a song with the levity focused on the games and show now feels as if its mocking the very person making the videos themselves. Indeed, few things are as certain as life, death, and the Nostalgia Critic effect.
All that is to say, that I get a lot of amusement from the Game Dude theme, and of all its handful of rips focusing exclusively on it I think eg_9371 hit the nail right on the head with Slope Dude. There's no gimmicks, twists or turns; its as simple as a melodyswap/arrangement rip can be, an Outertale or Jesus of the Underground that trades in the pathos and nostalgia for a complete commitment to the silliness of the bit. Slope from Super Mario RPG, like much of the game's soundtrack, already has such a bombastically silly tone to it; the buildup to the main melody finally kicking in at 0:14 in particular sells the joke so much harder, a marching band drum roll all to introduce the fucking Game Dude theme. The instrumentation feels absolutely perfect for the tune and is matched equally as perfectly by the context said tune appears in in the game, running after Booster up a slope midway through the game. The hummability of the melody, the context of Game Dude's situation and the silliness of the sound means the jokes write themselves; as one commenter says, "He is the Game Dude // He is so rude // He flees the country // when his court date is due".
As per expected of eg_9371 and his ripping prowess, Slope Dude is about as pitch perfect as it could be, an idea pursued to its logical endpoint much like Forest of Tears or dong music. Regardless of scale or time invested, the rip ends up being enjoyable in such a simple way, applying the perfect amount of levity applicable to such an absurd figure of YouTube's past. It's likely a lot of SiIva viewers completely forgot that Game Dude was at one small point considered a reoccurring meme on the channel, and he never quite got anywhere past his introduction the same way something like the similar-in-spirit Minecraft With Gadget of Season 2 got with Become as Gadget. Yet the small handful of rips featuring him were still there, all condensed all into Season 4 Episode 2 in particular; and though he's likely to remain forgotten by most fans, I'll remain a loyal Game Dude – and Slope Dude – fan until nobody else remains.