Web Video / Arlo

Arlo in his natural habitat.

"I have one word to sum up how I feel right now, and it's... screebleglooble... shmuh."

— Arlo on the matter of Metroid Prime 4

Arlo is a Gaming YouTuber who started his channel in 2014, where he uploads reviews, skits, and opinion pieces. He's known for his lighthearted attitude and delivery, and his sense of childlike wonder and enthusiasm. An outspoken Nintendo fan, but he dabbles in PC gaming and has acquired a PS4 to broaden his horizons. He's capable of addressing controversies in the gaming scene, and isn't afraid to defend his own unpopular opinions, but he manages to do so without being overtly sarcastic, cynical, and all while keeping a completely consistent PG rating. He's also had a column in Nintendo Force called Arlo's Headcanon since their Christmas 2017 issue, where he writes Nintendo fanfiction.

Oh, and he’s a blue, furry Muppet-styled monster.

Though a generally small channel by some standards, he has seen a great increase in subscribers and views following his videos discussing Paper Mario: Color Splash and general coverage for the Nintendo Switch, which he has been making since it was called the NX. Partnering with Gnoggin and co-starring in some of his videos certainly didn't hurt either...

He has since opened a Patreon in the hopes of pursuing YouTube as a full time job.

Can be found here, and his Let's Play Channel can be found here.

---

This YouTube channel provides examples of:

• Ambiguously Bi: While he makes it no secret that he's in love with Samus Aran, he occasionally drops hints that he may also have a thing for Leon Kennedy.
• Aside Glance: Fond of these, especially during reactions.
• Big "WHAT?!":
  • Once he realizes he's watching a teaser for Metroid Prime 4, followed by incomprehensible babbling and delighted screaming.
  • Paper Mario: Color Splash, on the other hand, earned a series of confused Flat "What"s from him that worked its way up to a Big "WHAT?!"
  • His reaction to an HD remake of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door started with some Big "WHAT?!"s as well.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: May or may not have a gizzard according to his Yooka-Laylee review.
• Book Ends: Arlo's gibberish opening lines for his 'breakdown' of the Metroid Prime 4 trailer provides the page quote. After an emotional but overall dignified presentation, Arlo proceeds to let loose one last string of gibberish, and then passes out on the floor.
• Both Sides Have a Point: In "It's Time to Talk About Nintendo Charging $70 for Zelda", Arlo has conflicting thoughts about the premium pricing for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and discusses them in the form of a pro-premium Arlo and an anti-premium Arlo Talking to Themself, with both Arlos acknowledging the good points on each side.
  Anti-Premium Arlo: Well, now that we've explored both sides of the argument, would you say we've come to a conclusion? Are we closer to knowing what the answer is to all this?
  Pro-Premium Arlo: No.
  Anti-Premium Arlo: ...So there you have it!
• Brick Joke: When Death loans Arlo his PC setup for a Super Mario Odyssey review, he does so on the condition that Arlo doesn't spend too much time complaining about the motion controls. During the actual review, when Arlo does get around to talking about the motion controls, Death can be heard groaning in the background.
• Character as Himself: Well obviously that blue puppet had to have come from somewhere, but no mention of it is made and Arlo has creatively and obliviously dodged questions asking about his true nature. As far as Arlo is concerned, he is himself.
• Chaste Toons: Arlo's real-life (human) son is referred to as his "nephew" so nobody has to question how a Muppet has children.
• Content Warnings: The show itself keeps a consistent PG rating, but when dealing with games that have a much higher rating, he warns viewers not to let the young ones watch.
• Couch Gag: Arlo's current intro logo is done in the style of the Nintendo Switch logo, but the snap sound effect is instead replaced with a different short voice clip of Arlo in every episode.
• Crossover:
  • Arlo appeared on an episode of James Rolfe's Rental Reviews to talk about Kermit's Swamp Years.
  • He guest starred on Shesez's show, Boundary Break, that focused on Pikmin 4.
  • Arlo has a brief sketch on Caddicarus during the Spyro retrospective where he freaks out about fairies crawling around under his fur.
  • When Lockstin gathered people's opinions on social media for a video about Pokémon's Mega Evolutions, Arlo made a voice-only cameo in the video to read off his own response.
• Demonic Spiders: Discussed in "Why Hammer Bros. are THE WORST", a video where Arlo analyzes how the Hammer Bros' abilities and attacks are all designed to counter Mario's strengths and make them extremely difficult to deal with. Their primary attack, a hammer thrown in an arc, matches the movement of Mario's primary attack, his jump, preventing him from leaving the ground and thus from attacking and requires him to approach them up close before performing a jump. Because they raise their hammer over their head before throwing it, they also become invulnerable to attack for a split second and require very precise timing to attack — but they also alternate randomly between throwing one hammer and throwing three in a row, making it difficult to predict their actions. They also jump randomly between the ground and higher platforms, and when on the latter become completely unreachable and control all the air space in the area; they can still be defeated by hitting the platform from beneath, but to counter this one weakness they also tend to appear in pairs so that there's usually one on the platform and one guarding the floor beneath it.
• A Dog Named "Dog": Arlo sometimes implies that there’s an entire species of Arlos, and his name just happens to be the species name.
• Double Standard: Discussed in his review of New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe, where he criticizes Nintendo for giving up on series like F-Zero because they can't think of any new ideas for them, while continuing to produce new games in series like New Super Mario Bros. without introducing many significant new ideas.
• Flat "What": Upon learning that Piranha Plant was going to be in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. He also gave a series of these while trying to process the Paper Mario: Color Splash trailer that eventually escalated to a Big "WHAT?!"
• Four-Point Scale: Arlo explains here that he ranks games from one to seven in an attempt to defy this trope; avoiding a multiple of ten in order to distance himself from the idea that "only 70% means bad". Or rather, he ranked games from one to seven, as he then announces that he's decided to stop scoring entirely, on the grounds that the mindset that invokedReviews Are the Gospel have made game scores just something to argue about.
• Giving Up on Logic: He recommended this in the wake of E3 2018, where Nintendo focused on Super Smash Bros. Ultimate to the exclusion of nearly everything else. Yes, it would have been reasonable and logical to expect more games than just Smash, but Nintendo has historically not always done the most logical thing, so adjust expectations accordingly.
• Hong Kong Dub: When Arlo got bronchitis and couldn't voice a video, he had Kane, his editor do the voice overs while Arlo did the Mouth Flaps. They obviously aren't coordinated, and at one point Kane was wondering what to do as he finished talking while Arlo was still flapping.
• Inelegant Blubbering:
  • Arlo's video on Metroid Prime 4 being delayed. He takes it extremely hard.
    Arlo: (trying to hold back tears) I gotta go eat a... pumpkin muffin that I made last night. It turned out pretty good! Turned out pretty good, very low sugar; it's nice though, it doesn't need to be that sweet, you know what I mean? It's already made of pumpkin, nuts on top, it's good stuff. You go, you, you go! Gee-get outta here! Get outta here I-aaaaa, go, go clean your room... bye... (walks away from mic & bawls his eyes out)
  • He doesn't do much better when Reggie Fils-Aime retires.
  • Then there's his reaction to the Pikmin 4 reveal, as he can barely hold back that Pikmin has a new game.
• Insistent Terminology: During the crossover episode mentioned above, James refers to Arlo as a muppet. Arlo takes offence; he is a monster.
• Joker Immunity: Discussed in "Nintendo Villains Who Should Retire", where he argues that it holds back series that have a heavier emphasis on story such as The Legend of Zelda, Star Fox, and Metroid by making them retread the same ground over and over again and preventing their stories from going in new directions.
• Lame Pun Reaction: Occasionally, Arlo has these reactions as apologies when he makes a particularly awkward pun.
  • At the end of his Channel trailer, Arlo pulls up a random video game joke from google when he doesn't know how to wrap up the video.
    Arlo: Why are Koopa Troopers afraid of the world? They lead shelltered lives...
    (Beat)
    Arlo: ...I am so sorry.
  • In the Monster Hunter: Rise review, he opens with an awkward dual pun on his being a monster and the guy whom he buys his games from being called Vern, which he then profusely apologizes for before cutting away to the review itself.
    So now, it's finally time to answer the question — can the long-running series finally hunt down this monster, or did Rise have me saying "Why, Vern?" ... V-Vern, Vern is the guy at Best Buy who, uh, sells me my games. Like "wyvern"? ... I'm sorry. I'm so- I'm so sorry. It's so bad, I'm so sorry. Oh..."
• Literal Metaphor:
  • Occasionally when he did News Roundup videos regularly, Arlo got on his high horse to rant about things like skeevy behavior in the game industry or exploitative business practices. By which we mean, he has an actual (offscreen) high horse that he called over and climbed on before ranting. Her name is Roberta.
  • In "This is Not a Review of Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope", he explains that he can't bring himself to play or review the game because of Ubisoft's corrupt business practices — while standing in front of a burning bridge. Later, in "Ubisoft is a Sinking Ship", he referred back to this gag and said he would have done a similar one for that video if his green screen had been set up (instead using footage from Skull & Bones to allude to the metaphor).
• Porting Disaster: In-Universe
  • His opinions on third-party ports can often vary. On one hand, he does love playing any game portably on the Switch. On the other, he acknowledges that he does prefer playing games at higher resolution and framerate, two things that have to be sacrificed for any current generation game to run on the system. Hence his strong desire for an enhanced Switch model.
  • Discussed in his review of the Switch port of Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus. He enjoyed the game, and acknowledges the port as a technical marvel, but while it was fine in docked mode, it was too muddy and hard to see in handheld mode. Thus, he recommended the game, but only recommended the Switch port to people who owned nothing else to play it on, since it runs even better on other systems.
• Puppet Shows: As defined by the nature of its host. He could easily pass for a resident of Sesame Street.
• Rage Quit: While reviewing Paper Mario: The Origami King, he found the boss battles could range from really easy to very frustrating. Arlo calls it the "I want to go home point".
• Saying Sound Effects Out Loud:
  • In the review videos, he usually transitions between his intro and the bulk of the review with gameplay footage wiping onto the screen with a "whoosh" sound — which he cues by actually saying "Whoosh!"
  • In his Paper Mario: Color Splash retrospective, he comes to a surprising conclusion about the game three years after it came out, and emphasizes it with this.
    Arlo: I can officially say that my first experience with the game was not a 100% accurate reflection of its quality. Its unpleasant elements are not as unpleasant as I originally thought.
    (Beat)
    Arlo: They're worse. Record scratch sound!
• Song Parody: "Hey Kirby", a cover of "Kirby" by Aesop Rock with the lyrics changed to be about Nintendo's Kirby.
• Squee: When there's a big-name surprise announcement, Arlo tends to get very loud. The best examples are for Metroid Prime 4 (here), Breath of the Wild 2 (here), and Metroid Dread (here), Pikmin 4, (here), and the HD remake of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (here).
• Stock Quotes: Watches the Fallout 4 story trailer and is able to call nearly every other line.
  Male Protagonist: I didn't ask for this world...
  Arlo: But it's the one you got?
  Male Protagonist: But its the one I'm in now.
  Other Voice: Don't you get it? You don't find the institution...
  Arlo: It finds you?
  Other Voice: The Institution finds you.
  Arlo: [glances at fourth wall]
• Sunk Cost Fallacy: Discussed in "The AAA Bubble Is Finally Bursting". Arlo says that during the 2023 Game Awards show, there were so many games with "guys in power armor shooting zappy guns" that he felt his brain turn off. However, Arlo notes that these companies who make games are trying to grab a piece of the pie in the live service market, long after it's become clear that such games aren't sustainable. Arlo speculates that the reason these companies are releasing these games in spite of apathy towards them is due to three factors: A) the game industry as a whole trying to play Follow the Leader and failing, B) gamers at large getting wise to what live services games are trying to be, and C) the desire to try and make some money from their game, even if gamers largely won't care about it.invoked
• Tears of Joy: An animated version of Arlo has these in the video of him reacting to, after all these years, Pikmin 4. Judging by his overly excited reaction, it probably happened in real life too.
• Tempting Fate: Arlo's reactions to the announcements of Metroid Prime 4, Breath of the Wild 2, and Metroid Dread all start with him reminding himself that he's not getting his hopes up for whatever Nintendo's about to show him — and then within seconds he sees the reveal and starts Squeeing.
• Vocal Evolution: Arlo had a noticeable Brooklyn accent in his early videos, but it gradually disappeared.
• Waxing Lyrical: In "Top Ten 2022 Games That I WANT TO PLAY NOW", Arlo keeps inserting lyrics from All-Star into his explanations.

---

...What? Something's off? You think he looks weird? Is it because he's blue? Dude, get with the times.

---