The D-Pad

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Revision as of 08:39, 23 March 2014 by Labster (talk | contribs) (Vorticity moved page The D Pad to The D-Pad)
"And this... is The D-Pad." Cue music.


The D-Pad is a weekly hour-long video game podcast starring Rick Desilets, John Selig, and Nick Bebel, with recurring guests Holly Fletcher, C/J Haley, and Dan Suitor. It debuted in April 2011 as a spinoff of the Open Lounge podcast. Turns out they were the fourth podcast called "The D-Pad", and hadn't noticed.

While the show is primarily geared toward video games, it also spends time on movies, television, music, and pop culture in general. The podcast got off to a good start, but suffered a failure to launch after a major special guest for the second episode[1] was suddenly unable to appear, leaving the show without much of a fanbase, whom the hosts now refer to as "The Threes" (see Fan Community Nicknames below).

In the beginning, there were extra features on the website including R-Rated (uncensored movie reviews), Game Over (articles calling out individuals or groups), and Live from the Brown Carpet (awards show liveblog, also the only one still going in 2012). A staple of the show since the Summer 2011 has been Let's Plays, which are arguably the biggest draw of the series in 2012. Originally just a series of specials for the 20th anniversary of the release of Sonic the Hedgehog, the series' popularity led to over 20 hours (and counting) of videos online.

Recent additions to the format include the segments Nick Bebel's Video Game Short List (Nick reviewing games new and old) and Putting Our Guests to the Test (having guests and hosts alike record a course time in the Super Mario Kart course Mario Circuit 2).

They're also on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and are available for download on iTunes.

You game?

The D-Pad Let's Play has featured the following video games:

The D-Pad provides examples of:

The D-Pad

  • Ad Bumpers: Nearly every episode opens with a brief bumper for older-sister program Open Lounge.
  • All There in the Manual: Well... sort of. [3]
  • As You Know: Turns up anytime the hosts want to convey news to the audience which they already know themselves.
  • Beginner's Luck: Rick had never put together a March Madness bracket before 2011, then proceeds to beat the rest of the pack by a mile. Naturally, when it came time for Fantasy Football, he took dead last.
  • Berserk Button: The Wii is not two GameCubes taped together.
  • Billboard: The top of the website has a rotating banner, usually showing the latest podcast episode, any Let's Plays in progress, and the premiere episode.
  • Bonus Episode: Early on, an extra episode was marked as a "Bonus Stage" which featured Rick and Nick enduring a one-hour cake race.
  • Bonus Material: R-Rated, Game Over, and Live from the Brown Carpet. Also The D-Pad Let's Play, which seems to be taking on a life of its own.
  • Booze-Based Buff: Somehow, Rick's drunk lap of Mario Circuit 2 gave him the fastest times on the show thus far, even though he wasn't exclusively in first sober.
  • Butt Monkey: Rick made the mistake of saying in an early episode that he used a Google spreadsheet to keep track of his progress in Pokémon Black Version. John and Nick have reminded him about this in nearly every episode since.
    • Rick finally responded by just putting a visual representation of it online, deciding it's better just to own it and run with it rather than fight it.
  • City Shout Outs: To Worcester, Massachusetts, where the show is normally recorded. Also occasionally to Somerville, MA; Providence, RI; and New Haven, CT.
  • Crossover: Occasionally the hosts of Open Lounge appear on The D-Pad, and vice versa.
  • Documentary Episode: "Safe Haven" follows Two-Bit Pictures through the 48 Hour Film Project in New Haven, CT.
  • Drinking Game: Every tenth episode features a drinking game you can play with the hosts. The hosts usually have a drink or three while recording, but these specials usually crank it Up to Eleven.
  • Drunken Master: Rick claims to be good at video games sober, but substantially better when drunk. Recent feats include setting the lap/course records for Mario Circuit 2 and performing "Master Exploder" on expert guitar and vocals flawlessly.
  • Fan Community Nicknames: The hosts referred to their (questionably existent) fanbase originally as their "threes upon threes of fans", now better known as simply "The Threes".
  • Gag Censor: In the (increasingly rare) event that something needs to be censored, it's often replaced by a sound effect from a classic 8-bit game.
  • Heterosexual Life Partners: All three hosts, most prominently Rick and Nick.
  • Hey, It's That Sound: When an episode goes to its Pause Break, a Mario coin sound effect is heard.
  • Iconic Logo: Justified in that the podcast's logo is based on the NES's own D-Pad. It is, however, the only Podsmiths product that uses a logo in place of a font.
  • Intermission: Every episode features a few-minute "pause break" with musical interlude.
  • Let's Play: Originally just a bonus while the podcast celebrated Sonic Week in June 2011, it soon became a staple of the website experience.
  • Live Episode: "We're Doing It Live!", a live half-hour episode recorded with an audience at ImprovBoston's Geek Week Festival.
  • Mascot: For a brief time Nick's chinchilla, Zooey, was an unofficial mascot of the podcast.
  • Multi Part Episode: Sonic Week consists of Act 1, Act 2, and six Let's Plays in-between.
  • Never Trust a Trailer: The loudly touted R-Rated Retro (or RRR), a review series celebrating games' and systems' 20th anniversaries, never materialized (though Word of God states there is a replacement series being prepared for 21sts instead.)
  • "On the Next...": Played straight in early episodes, but after a few too many big episodes fell through before they could be recorded it became a frequent lampshade. It made a comeback at the end of their first year.
  • Our Slogan Is Terrible: Somehow, the show always seems to end with one of the hosts suggesting it's time to "shoot the dog".[4]
    • Thankfully, their actual ad slogan is the much more appropriate "You game?"
  • Please Subscribe to Our Channel: At the start and end of most episodes.

 Nick: It's game over, man! Game over! Now go level up at Podsmiths.com."


The D-Pad Let's Play

 Rick: DON'T USE THE FEET! Don't use the FUCKING FEET!

 John: So, front yard, tomb... first floor, second floor... this little path right here?

 C/J: Oh, Something Remote got distribution?

  • Let's Play: One of the newer, jankier Let's Play groups. At the end of March 2012, there are 12 LPs and over 100 individual videos totaling 22 hours of video.
  • Missing Episode: The group recorded roughly half of a Let's Play of Kirby Super Star (while drinking heavily). Sadly, because the emulator recorded only the button presses and not the video itself, the exact playthrough could not be replicated and recorded.
  • Mood Whiplash: The first four episodes of 5 Days a Stranger feature the hosts joking around about the camp nature of the game. Until Day Three. John starts taking it a bit more seriously after getting properly creeped out by an 8-bit game.
    • An even faster example occurs in the middle of a sentence in this video.

 John (reading Matthew DeFoe's diary): I found a new friend. He is behind the door in the kitchen and he doesn't have a name.

I AM JOHN MOTHERFUCKING GODDAMN SELIG

  1. ↑ * (later revealed to be NintendoFanGirl)
  2. ↑ * given up after spending an entire episode struggling with the game's Scrappy Mechanic]]
  3. ↑ * It's an Affectionate Parody of the So Bad Its Horrible instruction manual for Kung Fu.]]
  4. ↑ * Not to be confused with Shooting the Dog.
  5. ↑ * or C/J
  6. ↑ * Also Yahtzee.
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/The_D-Pad?oldid=817386"