About:
Two Best Friends Play is a popular group of YouTube of video-gamers hosted on Machinima and on their own channel, ‘TheSw1tcher’. The group consists of the ‘two best friends’ Matt and Pat along with their associates Woolie and Liam.
Origin:
Back in college, Pat first met Woolie, and then Matt shortly thereafter, spending their time together playing Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike. Prior to that, Matt met Woolie in the classroom they commandeered to play video games, while loading up Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. After college, Matt called Woolie first to do the Kirby’s Epic Yarn video, since the two have already been doing videos together. Woolie was watching a Street Fighter 4 stream at the time and wanted details (though he really wasn’t paying attention) as Matt was saying that they’d just play Kirby, instead of scripting something. Woolie didn’t take Matt up on the idea, which led to Matt calling up “Angry Pat”, and the two got to know each other better through making the video.
The Kirby’s Epic Yarn video became popular due to the comedy and contrast between the two players, with Matt taking the game seriously and Pat not caring about the game. As an homage to their beginnings, the opening theme to the main series of TBFP videos is the ‘Green Greens’ song from the Kirby games.
Players:
-Matt is laid back and constantly attempts to outwit Pat in order to make him angry. He appears very patriotic for America despite the fact that he is Canadian. He edits all of the videos while Pat plays through the games whenever they are together most of the time.
-Pat is often angry. He is known in the group for his button-mashing skills and the fact that he is a Brony. Whenever Matt complains about something, he always says, “It’s fine” in a dismissing manner.
-Woolie joins many playthroughs including the ones Pat does not appear in. He is joked about often by Matt and Pat when he’s not around. Woolie enjoys a lot of fighting games, as evidenced in the series Scrublords and Fighterpedia.
-Liam is the newest member of the group and is popular due to his adoration of anime. He has been known for accomplishing where Matt and Woolie have failed in playthroughs, as shown in the Old School Playthrough of Metroid Fusion and the gym minigames in No More Heroes 2.
Spread:
After seeing the Epic Yarn video, Machinima decided to hire Matt and Pat to do more playthroughs, giving them even more popularity and views. This new popularity inspired fan art across multiple sites in the form of animations, drawings, and more. Also created by fans was a wiki devoted to the people on the show, the sets of episodes, and running gags.[1]
TBFP also has its own line of merchandise, including t-shirts, stickers, and posters.[2]
The parody fighting game, Divekick, had a Kickstarter campaign to fund a PC release (with a $30,000 goal within a 30 day deadline). One of the pledge levels was that two pledgers would be able to add their own characters for the game. Two Best Friends Play were one of the two pledgers and used their character The Baz. The campaign was cancelled after the news emerged that Divekick’s creator, Adam ‘Keits’ Heart, the Editor-in-chief of Shoryuken.com, had successfully made a deal with his employer, Dave Lang’s Iron Galaxy Studios for the game’s release. Heart, however, still honored the pledges of Two Best Friends Play along with the other pledger, and thus, The Baz was now a playable character.
Episodes:
Throughout the series, each episode usually covered a game that was recently released at the time, though Matt and Pat would sometimes play an older game including Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks and Spider-Man: Maximum Carnage (as part of their episode briefly playing various Spider-Man games.) Each episode consists of jumpcuts to highlights of the gameplay or specific moments worth talking about. Sometimes, cutaways will occur to help enhance a joke or to make clear of a reference. Notable episodes include the (so far) four-part series of Xbox Live Indie Games, Lollipop Chainsaw, and Injustice: Gods Among Us, which started the “When’s Mahvel?” running gag within the fan community.
Other Series:
In addition to Two Best Friends Play, the Two Best Friends crew have uploaded additional series, such as Super Best Friends Brawl, where Matt and Pat would play against Woolie in free for all sessions in games such as Super Smash Bros., WWF No Mercy, Perfect Dark, and more. A running joke early on in the series was how Pat could never win a Brawl until the Anarchy Reigns Brawl, where he single-handedly defeated Matt and Woolie in a sweep.
In Scrublords, Matt and Woolie face each other in various fighting games notorious for their mediocrity, outlandishness, or its status in video game history, such as Shaq-Fu, Deadliest Warrior Legends, and Sonic the Fighters as part of the Scrublords tournament. Each episode starts with the two fighters in Street Fighter II’s opening edited to look like Matt and Woolie, and ends with the loser beaten up (as a reference to most fighting games that do that) and the winner giving a quote related to the game just played.
As well as Scrublords, Matt and Woolie produced a short-lived fighting game series called “Fighterpedia”, where the two would comically discuss various things in the fighting game genre, whether it was specific games, ideas, or something random. The first episode, Rejected Street Fighter Designs, was the video where Two Best Friends’ unofficial mascot, The Baz, began his development. The Baz is a design based off one of the rejections who had the word “Zubaz” on his shirt, The Baz also exhibiting electricity as one of his powers, and his origins (“born under a blood-red moon”) is a reference to the game Weaponlord. The final episode of Fighterpedia was humorously showing Woolie’s “quest” to EVO 2012, with the knowledge that he would be facing world-famous Street Fighter player Daigo “The Beast” Umehara. The video included highlights from the match with the result of Woolie losing “like a boss”.
Matt and Woolie have collaborated on Old School Playthroughs (since they had a childhood and Pat didn’t) along with a co-operative playthrough of Bionic Commando: Rearmed and a playthrough of Predator: Concrete Jungle. The Old School Playthrough of Metroid Fusion introduced Liam to the Two Best Friends fanbase. Liam’s exposure along with helping further the playthrough gave “Rising Superstar Liam” a following of his own within the community. After this video, Liam would begin to appear more often, even earning a main spot in the No More Heroes 2 playthrough.
At the beginning of August 2013, the month-long “Rustlemania” series began, with Matt, Pat, and Woolie all playing video games in the professional wrestling genre. Along with WWE and WCW video games, other professional wrestling games like Rumble Roses XX, TNA iMPACT, and Ultimate Muscle Kinnikuman Legacy have been showcased. At the end of each video, the trio would state whether their jimmies were rustled or not. Each video begins and ends with the theme song of a notable professional wrestler, with Matt, Pat, and Woolie’s heads replaced with the Gorilla Munch Gorilla’s.
Animations:
The animator for the opening sequences of each Two Best Friends Play video, 2snacks, has uploaded videos called “Two Best Sisters Play”, which features Princess Celestia and Princess Luna from the animated series “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic” in the roles of Pat and Matt, respectively. The audio remains unchanged while everything else is animated around the audio to make it seem like both Luna and Celestia are in the game themselves, as well as playing it.
Alongside “Two Best Sisters Play”, 2snacks has also animated a few episodes in the side series “Two Best Friends Fun Time Adventures”, where Matt and Pat travel into various video game worlds, although the first episode was simply about Matt and Pat discussing the topic of escort missions in the apartment, and the second episode talking about video game box art, though the second episode helped set up the more adventurous part of the series.
YouTube user PlagueOfGripes has also uploaded videos of animations about Two Best Friends Play, in a similar vein of “Two Best Sisters Play” where the animation is built around the audio, except the animations feature Matt and Pat themselves, along with visual gags thrown in based on the dialogue. The first Two Best Friends Play animation by PlagueOfGripes was uploaded on November 16th, 2012, where Matt and Pat talk about the townspeople in “Silent Hill Downpour” knowing about Pyramid Head and one of the citizens having dated his sister “Triangle Girl”.
Running Gags:
There have been many running gags and inside jokes that have resulted from Two Best Friends Play videos. Notable gags include:
-Matt being obsessed with “American” things, such as Captain America, Tina Armstrong, and more.
-Matt’s obsession with Emma Stone and the Japanese porn star Hitomi J-Cup
-Woolie’s constant asking of when the group will play Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (thus coining the phrase ’When’s Mahvel?‘)
-Matt and Pat’s references to ‘The Woolie Hole’
-Matt’s tendency to call all cars PT Cruisers
-The ‘Shame Car’, a car in which people Matt and Pat deem shameful should live in
-Woolie and Matt’s obsession with Ice Cream Bars
External References:
[1]Two Best Friends Play Wiki – Two Best Friends Play Wiki Posted on 8-19-2013
[2]SharkRobot – Two Best Friends Play Posted on 8-19-2013
Facebook -Two Best Friends Play Facebook Page Posted on 8-20-2013