Tipping Forties

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Kuvo: "Wait. So he killed off all the Ronso? He actually did something useful!" Topikal: "Yeah, I know. I actually like him a little better now." -Beat- Kuvo: He's still an asshole.

Tipping Forties was a group of young gentlemen in Arizona that enjoy the drink.

They also enjoyed making Let's Plays.

Originally a team of three gents named Ryan, Benson and Michael, they started out on the Something Awful forums under the handles Kuvo, topiKal and bandunk, respectively, with a let's play of Final Fantasy X which gained some popularity. Following that up with an additional let's play of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots and adding Alex (a.k.a. Marvelis) to the team, they came into full-swing... until the beginning of the Final Fantasy X 2 Let's Play, where Marvelis bailed out.

The guys also made other videos that put a face to the voices. You can find their site here, or watch their videos on Kuvo's Viddler, TippingForties's blip, or TippingForties's YouTube. There's also their non-LP series, Lunch Break, found here and their Movie High Low

On May 27th, 2012 they announced their breakup, which meant the end of the podcast as well as everything else that had the T40 name on it. However, Kuvo and topiKal will continue doing Let's Plays. topiKal will also continue doing podcasts.

Tipping Forties has Let's Played the following:

• Final Fantasy X [link]
• Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots [link]
• Tales of Symphonia [link]
• Fugitive Hunter - War on Terror [link]
• GoldenEye (1997) [link]
• Shenmue [link]
• New Super Mario Bros. Wii [link]
• Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game [link]
• Vanquish [link]
• Fallout: New Vegas [link]
• Little Big Planet 2 [link]
• Fable II [link]
• Final Fantasy X 2 [link]
• Grab Bag, where they play various shorter, single-session games.

They also do a weekly Podcast.

---

Tipping Forties provides examples of:

• Accidental Pun: Asking for a rain check while talking about a date with Raine.
• A Date with Rosie Palms: In what amounts to being possibly one of the funniest moments of the LP; Shenmue episode 30 concludes with Bandunk explaining (at length) his best and worst experiences concerning the various porn that he has watched over the years.
• Americans Hate Tingle: The Forties are all pretty unanimous in their hatred of Yuna, Colette, Nozomi...
• America Saves the Day: The generally attitude taken on during the Fugitive Hunter LP.
• Artistic License Biology: That's not what badgers look like guys!
• Audience Participation: In some of their Let's Plays, they ask for various things from people on the Something Awful forums.
  • For Tales of Symphonia, they asked viewers to suggest drinking words for them to use. This backfired spectacularly when someone suggested "world".
  • For Golden Eye 1997, they asked for challenges to perform during gameplay, which they then picked out of a hat.
  • For Little Big Planet 2, they asked people to either create or recommend custom levels for them to play.
• Base Breaker: The T40's new style of pre-recorded commentary making it's début in the Final Fantasy X-2 LP. The common consensus currently seems to be slanted on the Hate side of the scale however.
  • It got so bad that they started over with the old format. And Marvelis bailed out, so it's even more like the original FFX run.
    • Ryan admits this in the final so what did we learn of the Final Fantasy X-2 LP - and rather graciously takes full credit for the whole situation.
• Big No: Alex made several as bandunk used his warp block in Mario Party to overtake him and got the star.
  • Ryo lets out a Big No in the first episode of their Shenmue LP, which is lampshaded by Benson.

Benson: "Damn, that was a big no!"

• Book Ends: Final Fantasy X was their first LP, its sequel was their final one.
• Broken Streak: They managed 90 videos of not using Presea until a scripted event forced them to. Needless to say they were crushed.
• Can't Hold His Liquor: Bandunk is always the most noticeably drunk at the end of each session.
  • Ryan seems to have taken to being the most noticably drunk in the middle of a session, although this may just be because of his drink choice.
• Catch Phrase: "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"

Kuvo: "Good work X, you did it." Bandunk: "It seems to me, you lived your life like a candle in the wind..." Benson "Get out of here X!" Marvelis "I fuckin' hate this game..."

• • Bandunk calling himself by a variation on his name, often a word related to what's happening with -dunk on the end.
  • Kuvo groaning, "Thanks, Game!" when it turns out the player must do something absurdly unintuitive to proceed.
• Chekhov's Gun: While wandering around in New Vegas, bandunk managed to find a Lucky 38 VIP Keycard and states that he knows what has to do. Upon confronting Mr. House, rather than doing any quests for him, he uses the Keycard to instantly gain access to the Control Room, where he deactivates him, thereby cutting off an entire ending before he even started.
• Cherry Tapping: In Tales of Symphonia the 40s unintentionally do Forcystus in with Colette's Pow Hammer (seen here, around 21 minutes in). Their reactions to this are great.

Benson: "Hammer Brothers RULE!"

• The Chew Toy: Despite the Forties hating every game they've played in general, some characters manage to be at the forefront of their hatred; Tidus from Final Fantasy X, Otacon, Johnny AND Sunny from Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, and Presea from Tales of Symphonia. The latter is probably the queen of this, inspiring mocking or anger every time she even speaks.
  • No love (hate) for Kimahri? They hated him so much that they planned to finish off the final boss by having him use Self-Destruct. Of course, being drunk, they sort of forgot.
  • No love/hate for Raiden either? Repeated wishes for his death all throughout the Let's Play didn't really give the impression that they liked him. It doesn't help that the 40s enjoy logic, while Raiden makes literally none.
  • For Fallout: New Vegas, none of the Forties like Cass, due to her not being interesting to them. Benson also hates Boone, and calls for his death more than once.
• Critical Existence Failure: The end of the life of their copy of Final Fantasy X-2 after they all unanimously agreed it was one of the worst games they had ever done a Let's Play of.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Episode 56 of the Fallout: New Vegas LP. Because bandunk was playing LA Noire at the time, he kept holding down the R2 button in NV, thinking it'd make him move faster.
  • The friggin' X-button in Final Fantasy X-2...
• Deus Ex Machina: The ending of the Mario Party 5 LP.
• Drinking Game: For some LPs, words are chosen for the crew to drink on, and each week a few are picked by the SA forums.
  • During their Metal Gear Solid 4 LP, they drank everytime a character said "Nanomachines", "Patriots" or "La Li Lu Le Lo".
  • For the Tales Of Symphonia LP, the drinking words were "Regeneration" and "Mana". Sometimes someone who was playing two hours before the crew would tell them to drink on the word "world" and "Cruxis".
  • For their LP of Golden Eye 1997, the crew would pick drinking conditions out of a hat and drink if they failed to meet the requirements.
  • The New Super Mario Bros Wii LP had them drinking whenever one of them dies, someone kills another or when one of them uses a continue. We're not sure how they survived that.
• Drunken Master: The leader of their Super Monkey Ball scoreboard got a fantastic score no one else can get close to...while being completely smashed.
• Drunken Song: Done very commonly, most notably by bandunk. It seems to me...he lived his life like a candle in the wind.
  • "TRYIN' TO CATCH ME RIDING DIRTY. TRYIN' TO CATCH ME RIDING DIRTY"
  • They've also challenged fans to make a collection of every drunken song they've ever done. Considering how often they sing and how many videos they have (5 videos a week nearly every week for about a year and a half at this writing, with little to no Schedule Slip), it would be quite the challenge.
• Easter Egg: How they hint at new LP's nowadays. They'll hide images in the programming of their website that give small hints, leading the thread to hunt and guess.
• Ending Fatigue: By the end of Tales of Symphonia everyone just wanted it to end and started to hate it more as the LP went on.
  • Also Final Fantasy X-2 (with each episode as it went on finding more hate and something similar to depression) and To a degree Fable II.
• Ensemble Darkhorse: They love Tom. He reminds them of someone they love.
• Every Episode Ending: So what did we learn today?
• Fan Art: They've generated quite from the SA forums, ranging from MS Paint humor to actually decent pieces to even music. Check the LP Archive of FFX for a good amount of it.
  • And on three unhappy occasions, a Fanfic.
• Fan Nickname: More than a few.
  • Rüsty for Tidus.
  • Small Ronso for Kimahri.
  • Poop for Akiba
  • Rad for Kratos.
  • Old Kentucky for summon spirit Corrine.
    • Since Old Kentucky is a real-life cat, they seem to name anything vaguely feline after him. Shenmue has Old Kentucky, Young Kentucky, and Middle-Aged Kentucky.
  • Bagel Nosh for Noishe.
  • Nasty for Zelos.
  • Soap for Regal.
  • Fuck-san for Fuku-san.
  • Hillary Clinton for President Elizabeth Winters.
  • Space Putin for Victor Zaitsev.
  • Bowserstone / Bowsertown for Bowerstone.
  • Ninja Scroll and Turtle for Ormi and Logos in Final Fantasy X 2.
• Fantastic Racism: The Forties don't like robots. Or furries. Though being Goons, the latter's unsurprising.
• Five-Man Band:
  • The Hero: Ryan
  • The Lancer: Benson
  • The Big Guy: Alex
  • The Smart Guy: bandunk
  • The Chick: Bandunk's Wife (or Benson's Girlfriend)
• Flanderization: Drinking has become a more and more important gimmick as the Forties have advanced. In the begining they were hecklers who occasionally had a few and now they have drinking games and are verging on cirrhosis. Not that anyone's complaining.
  • This reached its crowning point for the Golden Eye 1997 LP, where drinking conditions were basically what you were watching it for. When they played Shenmue, they didn't use them at all, so they can get back to their roots. Curiously, they seemed to drink even more without the conditions.
    • This Trope has now been reversed in near enough it's entirety. The T40's haven't used their what are we drinking catchphrase in years and with the exception of the final episode celebrations they rarely get as blind drunk as they used to - in fact they've potentially changed so much you could near enough apply the Early Installment Weirdness Trope to them.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble:
  • Sanguine: Benson (topiKal)
  • Choleric: Ryan (Kuvo)
  • Melancholic: Alex (Marvelis)
  • Phlegmatic: Mike (bandunk)
• Gag Dunk: Blurrily switches between this and MST at times, but most certainly during ToS's Z-Skits (although those started as Speaking Simlish). See here.
• Gag Sub: Done here with Kamen Rider Black RX for a competition (they tied for first). Features Special Guest Minifoo.
• Getting Crap Past the Radar: Ryan likes to sneak in references, like ancient dentistry and Jill sandwiches, to see if he can get them past Benson, who hates those.
• Griefer: Everyone at every possible moment in New Super Mario Bros Wii, which is par for the course.
  • Also one of the things that has some Goons to complaining that the Freelance Astronauts have already LP'd the game in much the same fashion. Seeing as it was Maxwell Adams himself who asked them to LP the game, it seems some people just want something to complain about.
• Hard-Drinking Tropes: And how.
  • Taken to its logical conclusion in Fallout: New Vegas, where they manage to get the protagonist addicted to alcohol eight episodes in.
• Hello, Insert Name Here: Used to great effect during the Final Fantasy X LP, such as naming Tidus "Rüsty" right off the bat, and eventually giving increasingly creative names for the Aeons, such as naming Anima "YOUR MOM" and the Magus Sisters "STOP", "CRYING" and "FAGGOT" respectively.
• Hollywood Tone Deaf: Benson is terrible at singing The Offspring
• Hopeless Boss Fight: What the gang thought that the fight with Kratos was even though that fight is doable, just difficult. Yggdrasil is a straight example though.
• Hype Backlash: Final Fantasy X and Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots are very popular games...that don't get much love from the Forties. Shenmue, to a certain extent, gets this as well; despite being a Cult Classic, the Forties don't particularly like it.
  • Averted with Fallout: New Vegas. the Forties agree that, apart from the numerous bugs, it's still a fun game.
• Incredibly Lame Pun: Napdunk.
  • Hurricane of Puns: A Tad Mad at Bad Rad.
• Is It Something You Eat??

Benson: *Slaps a guard with the same face texture as Dr. Doak.* bandunk: "Ya chopped Doak!" Benson: "Chopped Doak? Chop-Doak." Ryan: "That sounds like a fried dish."

• It's Easy, So It Sucks: Benson doesn't like games where it's impossible to die, like Bioshock and Fable II.
• Jerkass: Marvelis.

Benson: "Would you say 'for sure' or 'for shizzle?'" Alex: "Shut the fuck up." Benson: "...that's fair."

• Larynx Dissonance: Anyone who voices a female or young character...except bandunk.
• Leitmotif: Mr. Roboto for Presea and Bubba's shrimp list for the Wonder Chef.
• Let's Play
• Loads and Loads of Loading: Fallout: New Vegas Episode 17.
  • Also, Busy Scissors. 1/4 of the video's runtime is spent loading.
• Memetic Badass: JECHT IS THE BEST!
  • STOP BEING A FAGGOT RÜSTY
  • Rad is so rad, he doesn't have a attitude, he has RADittude.
  • Lizardman owns, because he is both lizard and man.
• Memetic Molester: The Forties turned Zelos into this. To be fair, a lot of Fanon does too.
• MST: The style of the LP's. The guys drink while playing bad/silly games and make fun of what they see and each other.
• Missing Episode: The Lost Episodes.
• My Nayme Is: Octagon, apparently.
• Musical Episode: What episode 17 of the Golden Eye 1997 LP became at the 17 minute mark.
• Naming Conventions: The first video of an LP is named The [x]ing Game. For instance, Final Fantasy X's first episode is named The Crying Game (yes, that one).
• No Indoor Voice: From Shenmue: "HEY MISTER!!!"
• Non-Action Snarker: bandunk tends not to play, at least in MGS4 and FFX, choosing rather just to lampshade and snark at-will. At one point he just hands his controller to Bandunk's Wife to get her to play Raine so he could take a rain check.
  • Unprecedently broken for the New Vegas LP, in which bandunk takes the wheel. He's not particularly good at it.

Alex: "bandunk's pretty sad that he died to a gecko."

• Now That's Using Your Teeth: Solid Snake catches bullets with his teeth?
• Once Per Episode: Many of the videos end with bandunk being cut off mid-sentence.
  • "WHY WON'T ANYONE LET ME TALK?!"
  • "So what's everyone drinking today?"
  • "So what did you learn?"

Ryan: "Hello and welcome to Let's Play X, I'm Ryan or Kuvo." Benson: "And I'm Benson also known as topiKal." Alex: "I'm Alex AND Marvelis." bandunk: "Aaaaand I'm bandunk... or Micheal."

• Only Known by Their Nickname: While most of the gang has taken to going by their real names, Michael still tends to be called bandunk.
• Overly Long Gag: By the end of the Tales Of Symphonia LP, everyone except bandunk would start groaning and trying to make Benson stop when he did Genis and Noishe impressions.
• PC vs. Console: Alex (and to a lesser extent Ryan) dislikes consoles, namely first/third-person shooters. Enter the New Vegas LP on a PlayStation 3.
• Robot Girl: The Forties turned Presea into this, even though she's just an Emotionless Girl in canon.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: What the Golden Eye 1997 LP is based around. At the start of every mission they would impose a fan-submitted restriction on the player.
• Schedule Slip: Averted hard. After getting their save-file in Shenmue corrupted, Kuvo sat down and played the entire game up to that point again; it took him six hours to get back to where they left off. The recap is found here.
• Serious Business / Stop Having Fun Guy: Alex, especially seen during the Mario Party LP.
  • Everyone in the New Super Mario Bros LP.
• Shaving Is Science: Invoked in Shenmue for a joke involving Ryo cutting himself while shaving.
• Shout-Out: Very common, especially to Legends of the Hidden Temple, Short Circuit and Star Fox 64.
  • This bit from Fable 2, when the Spire is first introduced:

Alex: "Oh, The Matrix." Ryan: "Is this Final Fantasy the Spirits Within?" Benson: "You gettin' any Half-Life 2 flashbacks here?" Bandunk: "I feel like I'm playing flOw." Alex: "...We all made different references."

• The Show Must Go On: See We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties. Lost or defective recordings, broken equipment, or corrupted save files have yet to stop them from their surprisingly good schedule track record.
• Silent Partner: Silent Roommate. Sort of.

Ryan: "What do you think of this game Silent Roommate? Silent Roommate "..."

• Slash Fic: During the FFX LP, the guys would read slash fiction about the characters to pass the time during the boring to watch temples. One written by a fan even managed to name an episode. See Unusual Euphemism.
  • Recently taken back into practice for the Tales of Symphonia LP. Apparently the Metal Gear Solid ones were all "too creepy."

bandunk: They're all creepy! All of them.

• • Episodes featuring Slash Fic:
    • Barthello: Shakespearean Tragedy
    • Suddenly Close Nipples
    • Vulnerable Brown Cave
    • (Why Can't We Be) Friends with Benefits
    • Octagon
    • Then he punched Wang in the face
    • And Woman!
    • Indecent Exposure
• So Bad It's Good: They consider Fugitive Hunter: War On Terror to be this.
• So Okay It's Average: The gang's opinion on Tales of Symphonia.
• Sound Effect Bleep: Towards the end of Mario Party 8, Mike begins talking about "something really gross that shouldn't be repeated". Almost everything he says is bleeped out, save for "No, but -- but here's the gross part!" The reactions of the others are left uncensored.
• Spanner in the Works: Fuck Watermelon Hands.
• Special Guest: Bandunk's Wife and Silent Roommate. Since episode 79 of ToS, Benson's Girlfriend.
  • Silent Roommate is starting to not be so silent.
    • Alex used to be "Kuvo's Roommate." Perhaps the same future for Silent Roommate?
    • The threads have liked Benson's Girlfriend, almost like a Ensemble Darkhorse.
  • Stealtly Asian, AKA Matt Smith.
• Spoof Aesop: Every episode each member has to give one.
• A Tankard of Moose Urine: For the Cooking Mama Mother's Day special, the boys drank what their mothers normally do. Unfortunately for some, this involved drinking Sambuca, which they hated.
• Tempting Fate: In their FFX LP, Kuvo explicitly states that "Final Fantasy X-2 is a terrible game and we will never play it." It wound up being their final LP.
• Title Drop: Done in reverse; the Forties, after saying a particularly funny or ridiculous quote, will often mention that that will be the title of the video. Most of the time, it does.
• Too Dumb to Live: Many times the T40s team will get lost (mostly in Tales of Symphonia), and end up in a place where they don't need to be at all and will spend a good twenty minutes there before realizing they need to be somewhere else. This is particularly infuriating when it is blatantly stated where the next important location is in the dialogue. This is a good source of rage to those who are familiar with the game.
  • Best shown in the episode Unbeweavable where they talked to every single NPC in the city... except the one they had to.
    • Although to be perfectly fair, the Forties often do this as a result of being very, very drunk, thanks to their sadistic viewers. The above video is also the best example of that, too.
  • During Final Fantasy X 2 the group is fighting a trio of Blue Orbs. Assuming Blue means ice (when it actually means water), they try fire magic. When that doesn't work, the group doesn't know what to do, despite the fact the Orbs constantly cast water spells. They died two or three times in that one fight. Even after finally winning, one of them complains about fire not working.
• Total Party Kill: What happens when Bandunk takes the reins.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Type 2. The Forties are certainly not very nice to each other. Of course, that's part of the fun.
  • Notably in their New Super Mario Bros. Wii LP, where they all deliberately try to fuck over each other any chance they get, but they still laugh about it.
• Unnecessary Combat Roll: Seen frequently in Fugitive Hunter and a drinking condition in Golden Eye 1997.
  • Lampshaded during Fugitive Hunter by Benson when he pointed out that you couldn't hit them when they rolled, but they couldn't hit you either so it was pointless.

Benson: He John Woo'd!

• • Seen even MORE frequently in their Golden Eye 1997 let's play. They even made a drinking game where the current person playing has to drink every time an enemy action rolls.
• Unusual Euphemism: Vulnerable Brown Cave'
• That One Boss: The forties have encountered a number of these; Seymour Flux and Yunalesca in Final Fantasy X, Ocelot from Metal Gear Solid 4 (partially due to the control system unique to that fight), and Sylph the Wind-chicks from Tales of Symphonia.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: Marvelis is showing a lot of this in Fable II. Fallout: New Vegas also had quite a bit of this.
• What the Hell, Hero?: The aptly named Fuck Bandunk, by both the other Forties and the thread.
  • A bit of a Running Gag, too; just replace Bandunk with the name of whoever's massively screwed up that episode.
• We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties: Dreb Ja Vu, a rerecorded episode of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots because Ryan forgot to check to see if they were recording. Curiously enough, they posted the audio because Benson felt the story about clowns had merit.
  • The Sheena Shuffle, where half an episode of commentary was lost due to dead batteries.
  • Here, too. They recorded a whole week of Golden Eye 1997 without any game audio, so they rerecorded and released the audioless ones as Lost Episodes.
  • During episode 19 of Shenmue, the Forties noticed and commented on a problem with the controller... and then their save file got corrupted. Kuvo bought another controller and spent 6 hours playing through the entire game up to the point where it happened to avoid Schedule Slip.
  • During episode 7 of New Super Mario Bros Wii, Bandunk's Wii Remote died on them. We then got to see Alex and Benson going to Target for a new one.
  • At the beginning of episode 11 of New Super Mario Bros Wii, the audio got really crackly and sometimes died. Kuvo said that he would fix it. And fix it he did.
  • During Final Fantasy X-2, Kuvo's beaten-up PlayStation 2 would crash the game every time they got a game over.
• Xanatos Speed Chess: Bandunk decides to play the game his own way.
  • To elaborate, one accidental trip to H&H Tools lead Bandunk to formulate the happenings in the video above, much to everyone's surprise.

Bandunk: Hi! I win! Yaay!