What I've Been Watching: Let's Play Cat Mario

TV shows about video games -- heck, video programming about games in general -- have always struggled to find an audience. The common argument goes something like this: Gamers would rather be playing games than watching stuff about them or watching other people play. It makes sense. Actually wrapping our hands around a controller and jumping into the action is the sensation the whole medium is based around.

That said, I disagree entirely. It's totally possibly that I'm in the very small minority here (and let me know in the comments if you think I am!), but I find a weird inherent pleasure in watching someone else play a game, in getting to see them learn and make mistakes and overcome obstacles the same way I would. Maybe it's just a sense of connection, a feeling that yes, this person too understands the joy in the experience of stretching your virtual imagination, of encountering digital problems and conquering them. Or maybe I'm just a sick voyeur.

Whatever it is, I find myself getting into moods where I really enjoy watching other people play. Thankfully there's a niche YouTube sensation that caters just to me: the Let's Play series of videos, which apparently started a few years ago on the Something Awful forums (according to Wikipedia, at least). This series, which is done by a ton of different posters, is basically just videos of people doing playthroughs of game with voiceover commentary as they play. And I freakin' love it.

Here's a six-part Let's Play that I watched today on what the poster calls "Cat Mario" (although I don't think that's the actual title), a super-brutal Mario clone that toys with expectations that have been drilled into gamers' brains since the NES days. Try to forgive the dude's heavy accent -- I think he's Swiss -- and just sit back and enjoy a gamer dealing with frustration and learning the rules of a very messed up game.

Part 1: The Cruelness Begins

Part 2: Raped By A Goal

Part 3: Dude, Where Is My Goal?

Part 4: Chateau de Ghosts 'n' Goblins

Part 5: Cats, Swords, And A Giant Rooster

Part 6: Grande Finale

My favorite part -- and a fairly common one in these Let's Play videos -- is when the host starts losing his mind and humming the game's music or even making up lyrics to the game music. Insanity aside, I've got to respect someone willing to put that kind of nonsense up for mass consumption on the Internet (see also: Tim Turi).

So am I crazy for enjoying this stuff? If this is your first time experiencing the Let's Play phenomenon, check it out and let me know what you think.

I've been playing around with some ideas for my own possible Let's Play-style video series for a while, so I'm very curious to hear what other people think works and doesn't work so well!

EDIT: I had meant to mention another great source of videos of other people playing games in this post but forgot: Giant Bomb! These guys do two excellent flavors of long-form gameplay vids: Quick Looks, which are 20-30 minute glimpses of mostly new games, and the ever-popular Endurance Run, in which they do frequent 30-60-minute videos of them working through a game to completion. So far they've only done two Endurance Run games -- a whopping 155-part run through Persona 4 and a brief but fun 5-part look at the final days of Matrix Online. Really fun stuff with fantastic commentary.

EDIT #2!: A friend has helpfully informed me (via Wikipedia) that Cat Mario's actual title is Syobon Action. Enjoy looking that up and trying it for yourself!