Gatorbox channel avatar, 2020.
Gatorbox is a comedy web show based in Texas. They specialize mostly in video games, with their most popular series being "Your Level Sucks", where the channel's host "Draco" comedically bashes poorly made Super Mario Maker levels.The show also frequently takes looks at obscure games. Their topics often range far beyond games however, including series such as GatorUNbox, where they take looks at unusual thrift-store items.
Tropes found in Gatorbox
- Accentuate the Negative:
- Your Level Sucks specifically focuses on poorly-made stages that get a rise out of Draco. Good or merely boring stages will get cut, although Draco did a special episode focusing on the good stages that were cut.
- Subverted in some of his specials and live streams, where Draco will tape all stages he plays to see what he gets.
- In one episode, Draco reveals that he played a lot of ridiculously bad stages in a row, preventing him from having to cut anything, though much to his aggravation gameplay-wise.
- Affectionate Parody: Draco makes one himself, based on the many stunts and failures of Evel Knievel.
- Ambiguous Syntax: Draco plays an automatic stage called "Just go roam around", which he initially thinks is hinting at Mario roaming around aimlessly, but actually means that the player can do other things while the stage plays itself.
- Berserk Button: Your Level Sucks focuses on Super Mario stages that Draco hates for a wide variation of reasons, but certain tropes within the game piss him off as soon as he sees them, including:
- Submitting the tutorial stage one receives at the beginning of the game. It reached the point where Draco even pretended to go out and kill a user who had submitted one.
- Star Runners, especially when it seems apparent that the star is only there because the maker couldn't beat their own stage.
- Automatic Stages, or stages that play themselves without the player having to do anything. However, Draco seems to find these more boring and unoriginal than rage-inducing, and frequently skips them or cuts them out of the video altogether. Stages where you only have to hold right to win are viewed in the same regard.
- Stages that overuse the sound effects given by the game to the point of them being unbearable to listen to.
- Stages with the New Super Mario Bros. engine. Draco particularly hates it for its gravity engine and wall-jumping mechanic, though is not completely prejudiced against it - he made a New Super Mario Bros. stage aptly titled, "A Good New Super Mario Bros. Stage".
- Stages that rely on exploiting glitches in the game.
- Black Comedy: Explains that the reason a stage's title was a bunch of random letters was because the maker is a stroke victim.
- Call-Back:
- In the first collection, Draco played a stage dedicated to someone named Lulu. Several collections later, he plays a stage made by someone named Lulu, and recalls her name.
- When he comes to a stage named "Underwater Madness", he wonders if he's already played it. He actually played a stage called "Underwater Mayhem" in the first collection, and archive footage of it is added to explain Draco's deja vu.
- Draco ends up playing two stages made by a user called 8-Bit Fan during his Super Expert special, and when he realizes that he's playing another stage by him he skips the stage.
- Catchphrase: "Your level sucks", of course, although Draco doesn't make a routine of it, especially in later episodes.
- Characterization Marches On: Draco grows more affable as the series goes on, directly addressing his audience much more often and finding more enjoyment out of bad levels, rather than merely scowling and dishing out criticism like he did in the earlier episodes.
- Cold Open: Unlike in all the other episodes, Draco does not introduce the show in the first episode, immediately beginning with a level. Could be seen as Early-Installment Weirdness.
- Continuity Nod: Draco references his joke murder of someone who submitted the tutorial stage when he realizes that he hasn't played the tutorial stage much since then.
- Curb-Stomp Battle:
- When one stage made a Goomba in a Clown Car its final boss, Draco could only laugh in exasperation as he easily killed it.
- Enemy spam without stars often results in Mario being the one getting stomped, which Draco dislikes just as much.
- Double Take: Did one the first time he saw Kamek make the ending flag disappear, and was impressed. When he found out about how it worked, however, he then viewed it as nothing but a cheap annoyance.
- Epic Fail: Happens to Draco himself when he jokingly pretends to have transformed into a stuffed Rocket Raccoon. When he tries to get his body back into the shot, he ends up hitting the camera and knocking it over.
- Everyone Has Standards:
- Draco gets some flak for mocking levels that might have been made by children, but when he played one level and realized the creator was almost definitely a child, he withheld most of his criticism (although he did make a jibe toward the end, and frequently mocked the creator's name).
- Though he seems to not pay much mind toward his detractors, Draco got incredibly angry when someone disliked videos he made for a hospital charity in a disliking spree.
- Although Your Level Sucks bases itself on mocking other people's stages, Draco blacks out all the level IDs to prevent his viewers from playing the levels and harassing the creators with comments, as Draco keeps his comments to the show rather than making them directly through Miiverse.
- Fast-Forward Gag: When Draco took 8 full minutes to complete a Super Expert level, he fast forwarded the tape of it in order to specifically accentuate its length.
- Global Ignorance: Draco sometimes messes up the nationalities of the level creators when he looks at the flag by their name, though this is sometimes corrected with a caption during editing.
- Gratuitous Japanese: Since he doesn't know Japanese, Draco sometimes says random Japanese words or sounds when he plays a Japanese level due to being unable to read the title (except when the title features the three characters that mean automatic)
- #HashtagForLaughs: When he played a stage whose title was a hastag, Draco gave his insults at the end in the form of hashtags.
- Hypocritical Humor: Draco occasionally mocks game streamers who pander to their audience and ask for money, although he himself has a Patreon and has partaken in a few viewer specials where he plays viewer-submitted levels, although he attempts to maintain his brand of humor in the process.
- Insistent Terminology: Draco always calls the Fire Koopa Clown Car the "Guy Fieri Machine".
- Jump Scare: Draco had a tendency of inserting the "I'm Ethan Bradberry" meme into a few collections, overlaying his face with Ethan. The stark increase in audio levels adds to the brief shock.
- Let's Play: Your Level Sucks can be seen as a specialized version of this, although Draco frequently mocks other LPers.
- Let's See YOU Do Better!: Draco highlighted a comment of this nature from a YouTube watcher, and proceeded to do just that by giving the IDs to his levels immediately afterwards. Your mileage may vary on their quality, but Draco has stated that he does try to maintain his standards of quality, unless he makes a parody stage like "Your Level Sucks: The Experience". When he realized one of his stages was rendered unplayable due to a game patch, he deleted it. He even made a special episode where he applied his critical brand of humor to his own stages.
- Overly Long Name: Draco will sometimes take jabs at stages that are very short or simple but have long names, especially if the title is in Japanese.
- Please Subscribe to Our Channel: Draco does this at the end of many episodes, especially the newer ones, though he makes fun of people who excessively do it. He tries to keep it out of his playthroughs and attempts to explain how subscribing benefits his ability to create more content.
- Rage Breaking Point: At the end of his Super Expert special, Draco gives up on the mode after he fails it repeatedly, growing tired of the awful mechanics most of the stages have.
- Rage Quit: Is prone to skipping levels that have cheap and unfair gimmicks, are not pleasant to watch, or are automatics/tutorial stages.
- Self-Deprecation: Especially in later episodes, Draco often refers to Your Level Sucks as "the worst show on YouTube" during his introduction.
- Stylistic Suck: Draco did this when he made "Your Level Sucks: The Experience", as he based the entire level off of a bunch of bad tropes.
- This Is Gonna Suck: Sometimes Draco can get a bad feeling about a stage just from the title alone, especially if the words "automatic" or "water" are mentioned. Stage titles that indicate this is the creator's first stage are also usually giveaways. Also, you know that, with a few exceptions, every stage you watch in an episode is going to be bad since Draco only puts the bad stages he plays in the videos.
