Hello, and welcome to Retsupurae.com, the Official Website of Retsupurae. We're your hosts, "slowbeef" and "Diabetus" and we talk over games, gaming videos, etc.

Some Playlists

Some Recent Retsupuraes we did:

Earnest Evans: Anime Adventurer

Newgrounds Flash Games we talked over:

Our Podcast

On libsyn (RSS) iTunes On YouTube

Contact Us

Twitter: @slowbeef @The_Betus
Our Facebook: For your Social Media needs
Ask.fm: Slowbeef Diabetus

Frequently Unasked Questions

What is Retsupurae?

Short answer: We make fun of Let's Play, bad Flash games, longplays, and other assorted stuff. We're a humor channel, I think. I hope. We also do a podcast called Retsutalk.

Long answer: Well, to start with:

What is Let's Play

You may have seen the "Let's Play" phenomenon on YouTube. This was started on the Something Awful forums by a poster named LuigiThirty who posted a thread titled "Let's Play Oregon Trail" in the BYOB forum. Posters' names were put into the game and virtually went to Oregon, got dysentery, broken limbs, etc It eventually spawned other threads for JRPGs, which didn't work out as well.

A poster named Vlaphor made a screenshot Let's Play on I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream which was more of a guided walkthrough. It got really popular, and others followed suit.

Having done something like this in my Metal Gear 2 Strategy Guide, I tried my hand at Something Awful Let's Plays and eventually did the Genesis port of The Immortal. As a supplement, I decided to add a commented video playthrough as a bonus. People liked that better, so I switched over. I started another Video Let's Play of Super Metroid which was a lot more popular and spawned a bunch of other videos. The Games forum on SA got overrun and the administrators ended up making Let's Play its own forum.

Users like Proton Jon and DeceasedCrab bucked the trend and hosted their videos on YouTube (which at the time, due to lack of HD support and an 11-minute time limit, was actually not a great choice for hosting video game videos). It got popular there too, and years later, here we are.

So, I ask again, what is Retsupurae?

One poster on SA made a Super Mario Bros. 3 Let's Play video in which he made no progress, died a bunch, and ... well ... it was one of those videos you probably watch back and say "I'll try that again" but he posted it anyway. Forumsgoer Sinix and I watched it while on a Skype call and started making fun of it. We overdubbed it, people liked it, and since I'm a forward thinker, I shelved the idea for about a year.

When we noticed people on YouTube taking a cotton to this Let's Play stuff, we also noticed... well... a lot of them were really weird. People took phone calls mid-video, sometimes they'd have a camcorder that wasn't even pointed at their TV, one guy ate a bowl of spaghetti in the middle of I Wanna Be The Guy.

Retsupurae was a thread on SA with a dedicated YouTube channel where Proteus4994, Diabetus, and I overdubbed the Let's Plays, making fun of the videos and the LPer. SA loved it. Reactions from YouTube LPers were... ...strange. To say the least. A guy who reviewed soda on his YouTube channel threatened to kill us. People freaked out and claimed we were killing Let's Play. One group led by UltraJMan started "LPers United" in which he played La Mulana with no commentary as a form of protest. Somehow, I didn't make that up.

Silly Internet drama happened, but the short of it was we got an unintended reaction: People liked Retsupurae. Including some of the LPers.

In fact, it turned out Retsupurae increased a few channels' popularity and some people even took our criticism - though it was primarily intended to be humorous - as a notion that maybe Let's Play actually could use a few standards?

Years later, the channel's grown bigger than any of us intended or could've predicted and we've toned down the troll aspect of it. It's intended to be funny first and foremost and remind people that as much as they love Let's Play (and we like it too), let's face it: It's kind of silly and there's nothing wrong with laughing at yourself. Most people who get Retsupurae'd actually enjoy it for the exposure, so it's kinda win-win!

Where did the name come from?

It was sort of a nonsense thing I came up with long ago. It didn't really mean anything in particular.

Some people think it's racist and when I asked why, there were really creative racist things I never thought of like "it's like supposed to be Chinese bootlegs of Let's Plays" or something but that's giving me too much (?) credit. I was studying Japanese at the time and learning shit like "a-i-su-ku-ri-mu" (ice cream) and "me-ro-n" (melon.) If you know any Modified Hepburn, you can tell I wasn't far along in my studies. (Let's Play would actually be Japonified as "retsupurei".)

I got Retsupurae'd! What do I do?

Don't panic!

Early on, we had some people who liked us but thought we were like the YouTube Let's Play Police and would spam people's channels with comments and messages like "you suck" and "shut down your video" and other crappy shit. We've since made a couple of videos and podcasts explicitly telling people not to do this... and it seems to have worked.

So, enjoy your views and subs!

...But if you don't want your video on Retsupurae, contact us (See above) and we'll remove it - no questions asked. There has never been a case where we didn't do this. And if people are bothering you on your channel, let us know where and one of us (okay me) will tell them to knock it off.

Seriously, we're not here to tell you what you can and cannot put on a video hosting site. Frankly, we're two shmucks from the Internet and there's nothing wrong with telling us to fuck off. But we like to think we're also reasonable people, so drop us a line if you're having Retsupurae-related issues. Holy hell, did I just type that?

Do you take requests?

Yes and no. We don't make fun of kids (there were two exceptions to my knowledge and in both cases, the LPer liked the video, but we got lucky there and don't do it since.) Videos exceeding 15 minutes tend to be harder to make fun of. Scarecams get a little dicey, but feel free to suggest them.

Can I be on Retsutalk?

There is no harm in asking, but we don't do this for a living, so scheduling can be pretty tricky. But yeah, contact us, show us your LP channel and we'll work something out!