Web Video / VG Myths

VG Myths is a web series created by Gamechamp 3000 about detailing Self-Imposed Challenges in video games and determining whether or not it's actually possible to complete them, or if they're just a myth. Gamechamp previously did a predecessor series called Hyrule Myths, focused specifically on The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and challenge runs of that game still use the Hyrule Myths branding.

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VG Myths provides examples of the following tropes...

• Adaptational Villainy: In Gamechamp's version of the plot of Rockman 4, Kalinka was the one who convinced Dr. Cossack to try to destroy Mega Man, believing he did not deserve to save the world in the last three games because he used glitches to do so. She also revived Dr. Wily using the Necronomicon.
• A.I. Breaker: For her Rockman No Damage runs, she has had to rely on confusing the AI to fight through a couple of the bosses without getting hit. Some examples include using Item 1 to break Air Man's tornado pattern so she could get a clear hit on him, taking advantage of Quick Man stopping and posing when a weapon he's immune to hits him so he wouldn't be running everywhere, and taking advantage of Doc Bubble Man's mechanics by using Rush Jet so he wouldn't be able to move at all.
• Bait-and-Switch: In "Can You Beat Super Mario Bros. Wonder Without Collecting Coins?," upon seeing the first obtainable Wonder Seed in the game surrounded by a ring of spinning Mini Flower Coins, Gamechamp goes on to explain how they work in increments, and how they will always round down upon exiting Wonder Mode, so if one only collects nine of them before exiting, their Flower Coin count won't go up. So, naturally, the problem is solved with a precisely timed jump between the coins since any coin collected counts even if it doesn't increment the counter. ^note She also mentioned beforehand that the coin counters are the best identifiers for coin collection since they reset when the level does, lending credence to this semantic argument.
• Bilingual Bonus: Gamechamp will almost always play the Japanese version of a game if said game was made in Japan, even though, as she admitted in an unrelated video, she doesn't actually speak Japanese.
• Blatant Lies: Said verbatim in text, in response to Gamechamp seeming to surrender the "Can You Beat Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories With A 1 Card Deck?" challenge after being trapped at the fourth Dark Riku fight.
  Gamechamp: Upon reaching Riku 4, I immediately realized that there was absolutely no way I could possibly beat this boss fight with only a single card, and that to even entertain the idea with any degree of sincerity would inevitably trigger my incredibly unhealthy inability to turn the game off. So, as much as it pained me, I ultimately made the decision to respect my own wellbeing...
  (Fade to Black... As the Continue animation suddenly activates with the text "BLATANT LIES" flickering on the screen)
• Boring, but Practical:
  • In the Splatoon 3 minimum shot challenge, she describes a method of charging the Splashdown meter without firing any shots: "Plopping"^note Entering swim form repeatedly to slowly spread ink around the map.
  • In a more general sense, "Latte strats" that involve lots of waiting (so called because you have enough time to "sit back and drink a latte") are a Running Gag in the series.
• Breather Episode: After ever-escalating manual dexterity challenges caused the series to go on hiatus because of serious repetitive strain injuries Gamechamp sustained during a run, the next challenge video is Final Fantasy with only a White Mage, a turn-based RPG challenge where the difficulty comes from planning and monotony rather than fast execution, so she can and literally does beat the whole thing playing with her feet.
• Cherry Tapping: In Can You Beat the Kirby Super Star Minimum Y Challenges?, Gamechamp uses the guard button to deal Scratch Damage as her primary method of attacking bosses.
• Cluster Bleep-Bomb: Courtesy of Gamechamp in the "Can You Beat Kingdom Hearts: Re:Chain of Memories With A 1 Card Deck?" challenge, as a result of Sora's Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure with Donald and Goofy.
  Gamechamp: No worries, Sora's been thinking the same thing, so in the next cutscene he tells Donald and Goofy he's had enough of their [bleep]ing stupid friendship-[bleep] bull[bleep] and runs back to tell Riku that Namine is a [bleep]ing [bleep] [bleep] [bleep]ing [bleep]ing [bleep] mother of [bleep], and, quite frankly, silly.
• Credits Gag:
  • At the end of every video, Gamechamp gives a special thanks to all Patreon backers at the time, some of which have usernames that are pretty much short phrases and jokes. As of the Mega Man 4 no-hit run, the backer credits take just over 6 full minutes, at which point she increased the required Patreon tier for a vocal shout-out specifically to curb the length of this segment.
  • In the Kirby Super Star video, the Patreon backer name list is divided up into parts that are read after each game in the collection.
• Couch Gag: "Welcome to VG Myths, the online internet video game TV show..."
  • "...that actively avoids turning a profit"
  • "...always making an active effort to march backwards"
  • "...that doesn't solve mysteries, has never solved mysteries, and is shocked and appalled by the accusation of ever having associated with busters of the myth variety"
  • "...that is, yes, completely 100% serious right now"
• Cuteness Proximity: The kitten finding missions in Bowser's Fury bring out an...interesting side of Gamechamp.
  Gamechamp: "Finally, there are three shines locked behind...AWWWWW IT'S A KITTY! IT'S A CAT! Uh, uh, we can't get the kitty! 'Cuz the kitty goes away! But we gotta get a cat! We gotta murder Bowser! Murder Bowser cat! Ha ha ha ha! Cat ride on cat! It's two kitties! Ohhh...it's a high cat! We need to get a cat up, up on...for, for cat! Gotta move, gotta move cat, make a moving cat! We can ascend kitties! Happy cats!"
• Demonic Spiders: invoked In her Rockman 3 damage-less run, she was particularly terrified of the Big Springer enemies that appear in Magnet Man's stage and some of the Doc Robot stages, being extra careful when encountering them due to their homing missiles.
• Department of Redundancy Department: In her video on Metroid, when talking about regional differences, she refers to the international version as "Metroid for the Nintendo Entertainment System for the Nintendo Entertainment System."
• Duct Tape for Everything: Parodied, her Metroid video includes a Running Gag of claiming the game was programmed on duct tape, which leads to a myriad of glitches and flaws in the game.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: She was much more of a Large Ham in the Jumpless Super Mario Odyssey run. Lampshaded in her personal ranking of the episodes from Seasons 1-3.
• Evolving Credits: The end-of-video list of Patreon backers gets longer each time, with the names themselves also getting longer and more ridiculous. By the Jak II: Renegade episode, just going through the list takes up one-fourth of the video.
• Fake-Out Fade-Out: Early in the coinless Sly Cooper run, Gamechamp shows that the platform activating the car to the next area is covered in unavoidable coins, making further progress impossible. The video fades to black as Gamechamp announces the end of the run... on the PS3 version, as the video resumes the challenge on the PS2 version where the car can be bypassed.
• Girl on Girl Is Hot: Much is made of the fact that in the Scott Pilgrim No Upgrades run, the single most valuable skill in the game is Kim making out with Knives, and it's going to happen really often for extended periods of time in the later stages of the run.
• Given Name Reveal: Played for Laughs in the Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal wrench-only run. Skipping the cutscene after Final Boss Dr. Nefarious' first phase at a certain point supposedly reveals his true identity...
  Dr. Nefarious: I am Diffy!
• Gratuitous Japanese: Gamechamp's original outro was "Thank you gozaimasu for watching". She changed it to "Arigatou gozaimasu desu for watching" in one video, then dropped it entirely after that.
• Heartbreak and Ice Cream: Gamechamp has an interesting way to use some of this as a result of realizing she has to fight Larxene's rematch (The first match already being extremely difficult) in Kingdom Hearts: Re:Chain of Memories shortly after the extremely hard fourth Riku battle:
  Gamechamp: Before the battle even begins, pause the game, walk to the grocery store, buy two tubs of ice cream, eat one while failing to hold back tears, then walk to Disney headquarters, beat up the entire security team, interrogate them for the keycode to the underground vault, perform an eldritch ritual on Walt Disney's corpse, hand the resurrected monstrosity the second tub of ice cream and tell him to give it to Donald and Goofy along with a heartfelt apology note forged in Sora's handwriting.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: In her challenge to complete Pokémon Blue without taking any damage, many strategies involve turning the AI's own behavior against itself. The best example happens against the Final Boss, where she sends out Nidorino to fight an Exeggutor who only knows Hypnosis, Barrage and Stomp; the AI will only use the former due to thinking it's "super-effective" despite not doing damage. Once Nidorino falls asleep, Exeggutor would use other moves as the AI never tries to inflict a status the player already has, but Gamechamp spams the Poké Flute to wake up Nidorino; the AI chooses its actions after the player moves rather than at the start of the turn, and keeps using Hypnosis, which eventually misses, allowing Gamechamp to set up and take out Exeggutor.
• Insistent Terminology:
  • Gamechamp will say "Mega Man" only as part of "Mega Man Legacy Collection". Otherwise, it's "Rockman".
  • The first Metroid game is "Metroid for the Nintendo Entertainment System", no matter what. When Gamechamp has to specify a version, she will say such silly-sounding things as "Metroid for the Nintendo Entertainment System for the Famicom Disk System".
• It Makes Sense in Context: The videos often spawn sentences of this nature. As one example, from the Pokémon challenge run:
  Gamechamp: Lorelei's Dewgong, as I'm sure you're already aware, will always try to counter Nidorino by falling asleep. It doesn't work.
• Last Breath Bullet: In the Rockman 4 hitless run challenge, Gamechamp manages to defeat Wily Machine 4...except that she gets hit by a still on-screen projectile immediately after landing the final blow, meaning she has to do the whole thing again. This very nearly happens during the last boss fight as well, but this time she manages to jump over the projectile before it can hit her.
• Literal Metaphor: When needing to grab Shines while Bowser rains down fireballs, in jumpless Bowser's Fury:
  If someone were smart and not bad at video games, they would've seen this coming and left three easy shines laying around, but I unfortunately am neither of those things and have to do it the hard way while under literal fire from a hopefully figurative god-slayer.
• Min-Maxing: In the Final Fantasy 1 White Mage only challenge, this is the main strategy that GameChamp uses, using Save Scumming to get boosts to Strength, Agility and Vitality on every level up. Luck is bugged to the point where 16 Luck makes escape guaranteed, and as for Wisdom…
  Gamechamp: Wisdom. Is. Useless! Literally, objectively useless! And not Wisdom was programmed on duct tape. Believe it or not, Wisdom… was not programmed! That's not a joke, there is not a single algorithm in Final Fantasy for the Family Computer system that uses Wisdom. Wisdom is a number on your character's stat screen and nothing else. It's not even a glitch! "Glitch" would imply the devs somehow made a mistake while attempting to make the Wisdom mechanic work. (Beat) They did not attempt to make the Wisdom mechanic work! Wisdom is not a mechanic!
• Mixed Metaphor: Quite fond of them.
  Gamechamp: The more times we roll the dice, the more likely it is to come up tails at least once.
• Mirthless Laughter: During the Pokémon damageless run, the 1-in-256 glitch caused Raticate's Quick Attack to miss, leading Gamechamp to anticipate the immediate end of the run. However, Misty's Goldeen uses Tail Whip, causing this reaction.
• Morton's Fork: The Super Mario Bros. Wonder run ends like this. Once Nintendo patched the game to fix out-of-bounds glitches, Gamechamp's options were to either update the game, losing access to essential glitches and ending the run, or not update the game, losing access to essential online co-op shenanigans and ending the run.
• Non-Indicative Name: As she repeatedly lampshades, her videos do not actually explore, confirm or bust myths about video games.
• "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: Gamechamp makes one at the start of the Pokemon Blue No-Damage Run, as well as during it when describing how the level grinding sessions take actual days.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Gamechamp had the following advice to give for anyone attempting a damageless Pokémon run.
  Gamechamp: ...Don't. Please, this is a very bad idea! Seriously, if a challenge run is giving you literal nightmares, it has passed thoroughly into unhealthy territory. Do a challenge run, I always encourage doing challenge runs, just... just don't do this one please, you deserve better!
• Overly Long Gag: During the Splatoon 2 Octo Expansion minimalist run video, prior to starting a particularly shot-heavy level (her lowest score was 56 shots), Gamechamp lets out a minute-long string of repeated "NO's" with occasional moans and crying sounds. During this segment, the following text appears:
  I could not find a single second of this 20 minute video that could potentially be shortened. Really.
• Pacifist Run: Of Cave Story, Yoshi's Island, and Metroid.
  • The Yoshi's Island pacifist run deserves special mention: while Gamechamp's signature semantics arguments usually justify actions that make the runs doable (or at least, less horrifyingly difficult), the semantics of the Yoshi run frequently crank the difficulty up to eleven.
• Reading the Stage Directions Out Loud: Gamechamp will often do this for the Patreon vocal shoutouts. For instance, in "VG Myths - Can You Beat Kingdom Hearts 2 At Level 1?", one of the Patreon names was "This Video Has My Personal Seal Of Approval (make a seal noise)". Gamechamp just read out the entire name, including the part in parentheses.
• Running Gag:
  • Referring to retreating from enemy encounters as 'running away like a little sissy baby'. The joke was later retired, due to increasing concerns about connotations of the word "sissy". She sometimes still uses the phrase, but replacing said word (For example, "running away like a little pirate baby" in the Kingdom Hearts II challenge).
  • The Patreon names, which get weirder with every video.
  • Whenever a challenge requires waiting or not doing anything for a while, Gamechamp often recommends sitting back and drinking a latte. Later on in the series, during the Sonic 2 & Knuckles no directions run, she coined the term "lattelock" to describe the numerous situations that are nearly softlocks, differing only in that they can at least be escaped by letting the 10-minute timer run out so Knuckles dies.
  • Earlier episodes would often pretend that the challenge had failed, then reveal the fakeout and continue with the run. The gag vanished fairly quickly, but made a return in pauseless Breath of the Wild.
  • If something might seem helpful or necessary for the run but Gamechamp doesn't use it, she'll say to throw it in the trash, with an accompanying visual of it being thrown into a green recycle bin.
  • Claiming to be bad at video games
  • Mispronouncing words, most notably pronouncing "chasm" and "archive" with a "ch" sound (instead of pronouncing the "ch" like a hard "c"), and pronouncing "stream" as "strem".
  • She sometimes uses "semantics" to justify why something is technically legal for a run, such as saying that a glitch involving use of the slingshot to gain infinite jump height in Ape Escape does not count as a gadget use, as it does not involve the right analog stick.
  • A single-video example^note Albeit with a Call-Back in Can You Beat Final Fantasy with A White Mage: The Metroid minimalist pacifist run repeatedly states that "Metroid for the Nintendo Entertainment System" (always referred to by this title in full, even when discussing the regional differences in the FDS version, leading to such phrases as "Metroid for the Nintendo Entertainment System for the Famicom Disk System") is programmed on duct tape.
  • In Mega Man no-hit runs, insisting that a trick, though unhelpful, is still required because it is amusing.
• Sanity Slippage: Most videos, but special mention must be given to the Pokémon damageless challenge, where hours upon hours were spent grinding and all of them could be undone by one mistake or one moment of bad luck. Gamechamp was so consumed by the run that she had recurring nightmares about taking damage in increasing stupid ways such as stepping on a thumbtack, and even after waking up would still believe the run was dead because imaginary dream damage is still damage.
• Self-Deprecation: Gamechamp frequently declares that she is "bad at video games." While this is arguably Blatant Lies coming from someone who has beaten the first four Rockman games without taking a single hit of damage (among other shows of skill), it is also a meaningful part of the challenges that she completes - most of them require patience, determination, and problem-solving to a greater degree than they require generalized video game skill and reflex.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: invoked The premise of the show is discussing various possible self-imposed challenges, such as beating The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild without climbing.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: After spending many hours fighting the game's railroading, performing the first 3/4 of the run twice and spending hundreds to get another Switch, copy of the game, and Nintendo Switch Online subscription to be able to play on two Switches simultaneously, then recruiting two more people and doing the beginning of the game with them again just to cheese a couple levels using online co-op, the Super Mario Bros. Wonder Coinless run... takes too long to finish, and Nintendo patches the game to remove glitches that had been necessary for progress up to that point, ending the run prematurely on an anticlimax.
• Shout-Out: All of the Pokémon in the no damage challenge are named after Youtubers.
• Signing Off Catchphrase: "Let me know how much this video sucks and how to improve in the comments below", followed by a variation of 'thank you for watching', "and get out of my house".
• Take That!:
  • Her wrench only run of Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters is filled with ones for the titular game, describing it as "the first and the worst game in the Ratchet and Clank PSP trilogy" at the beginning of the video and ending it with "with the dumb spinoff I hate finally concluding and freeing me from my self-imposed obligations".
  • Her video on Metroid's minimalist and pacifist run is even worse, with her intro describing it as "unlike most games in the Metroidvania genre, it sucks, I hate it, and I want to hate it even more".
• Technical Pacifist: Gamechamp's pacifist runs tend to have this. Typically she only counts if an enemy is killed as opposed to them being damaged.
  • She lets Curly Brace take out several enemies in her Cave Story run, including getting the last hit on the Core after Gamechamp takes out most of its health.
  • At one point in her Yoshi's Island run, she hit a Boo Guy with an egg, sending it into a near-death state. Gamechamp doesn't count this as the Boo Guy despawns before they can hit a wall, returning to their regular behavior upon re-loading their spawn point.
  • During her Metroid run, in addition to freezing enemies with the Ice Beam, at one point she uses bombs on some Multiviolas^note Referred to as marbles in the video. so she can get past them via taking advantage of their post-hit invincibility frames.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks!: invoked Referenced at the beginning of the Splatoon 3 Minimum Gun run, where the Couch Gag has her joke that she "has officially ripped off Nathaniel Bandy," a Youtuber who already did a similar challenge run.
• Who Would Be Stupid Enough?: In "Can You Beat Sonic 2 & Knuckles Without Pressing Right Or Left?", she says only a "dumb, stupid idiot" would farm the "really dumb extra life monitors" at the top of Chemical Plant Zone when a life underflow trick is far quicker. It was blatantly added in during editing, and footage of the trick being performed has "DEFINITELY NOT DEMO" in the corner.

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