There are plenty of YouTube channels out there where people do mad stuff in video games. Most of it is stuff like crazy plays, speedruns, and 100% completions. That’s fine because while they’re hard, they’re still humanly possible. But when it gets to this level of absurd, then it deserves a special mention. Gamechamp3000 does things in games that sane people will never want to do.
I’m half-kidding when I say the guy is a whackjob. Then again, I’m also completely serious in saying that because his feats are indeed ridiculous. Just watch them and see yourself asking “HOW?!” while putting up the Italian hand gesture for “WTF?!”
NOTE(12OCT2023): I was made aware that Gamechamp3000 is now non-binary. I either was not aware of this or they hadn’t come out and transitioned yet when I wrote this post in late 2019 (I can’t remember). Just take note that I’m not intentionally misgendering them. Reader discretion is advised.
WTF is Gamechamp3000?
Gamechamp3000 is a Patreon-fueled YouTube channel run by this dude who has a smooth voice (which I envy) but also needs to get his head checked. He’s an insane person who accomplishes feats not even nominally crazy people would ever think of doing, even those of his ilk. His VG Myths series features him inflicting self-harm to the delight of his audience.
He’s in the completionist category, which is a bunch of gaming-focused content creators that take it upon themselves to 100% complete their games, including every quest, every secret, every achievement, and every nook and cranny of in-game worlds.
Gamechamp3000 makes people who watch his Twitch streams both excited and concerned. What makes him different from every other completionist out there is how he turns challenging himself up to eleven. He asks himself preposterous questions regarding how he completes games.
Most of these games are not Battletoads or I Wanna Be the Guy levels of difficult, and some are even mundane. Pokemon, Crash Team Racing, Dead Rising, Ratchet & Clank, and so on—games actual people play. Given enough time and focus, anyone can 100% those titles.
But Gamechamp3000 then embarks on finishing them in almost-impossible ways, like he’s a competitive eater who takes it upon himself to eat a hundred hotdogs through his anus. Below are the first two videos of his I ever watched, and they blew my brains out of my skull.
VG Myths: Can You Beat Pokemon Without Getting Hit?
This is his most recent video as of this writing. The title alone should ring alarm bells, but you may think it’s not impossible if you play it in an emulator with save states. With enough time and patience, you should be able to do it.
He didn’t give himself that luxury. After mocking the audience with the statement, “… and yet, not once has anybody ever actually tried to be good at them,” he laid down the rules for his unique and harebrained challenge run.
- He was to beat the entirety of Pokemon Blue on official hardware without any one of his pokemon taking a single point of damage for any reason.
- Saving the game was allowed due to game length and need to have a life, but save-scumming was not—loading a previous save was forbidden.
- If a mistake was made, he had to live (or die) with it.
- If damage was incurred, he was to delete the save file and restart the run from scratch.
If you still can’t believe it, read it again. If you consider his authenticity in presenting this run as genuine—never breaking any rules and actually going through with it—then his accomplishment is nothing short of admirable (and concerning for his mental well-being).
He did have a workaround. He used the Dodrio Gameboy Tower in Pokemon Stadium to run the game at 3x speed. It’s still technically Nintendo official hardware, so it should count. It was the smart thing to do as he had to grind out levels for his Rattata/Raticate in daycare. The Tour de France has nothing on that underground bike ride.
His main strategy for the run was to grind his pokemon until they can one-hit-kill everything in their path. He caught a Rattata, named it General Squeaks, learned quick attack, and put it in daycare to level it up to 60+, then make it learn swift later on.
Swift (TM39) is the most important attack for this strategy as it’s like a quick attack that never misses as it disregards accuracy checks altogether.
There’s that one crazy part of the run wherein he misses a quick attack against Misty’s Goldeen. He showed the livestream footage, wherein he and the chat were flabbergasted by the development, and even more so at the result as the Goldeen chose to do a tail whip in response. If it had done anything else, the run would have been forfeit.
At that point, he was already on his 73rd attempt and it was the first run wherein he got to evolve his Rattata into a Raticate. Joggle that in your brain—73. How did he have a life?
Trick question. I’d guess he barely had any.
He started with a Charmander, but it wasn’t his main—that would be General Squeaks. He would then acquire a Jolteon named Nathaniel Bandy and a Nidorino named Etika. Those three were his final team going into the Pokemon League.
He named his rival Asprey, who is Pikasprey on YouTube. He’s another crazy person who likes to soft-lock (render a game unbeatable by removing one’s own victory conditions) Pokemon games for fun. Maybe I’ll write a post about him in the near future.
Gamechamp3000 did eventually complete a real damageless run with no reloading on official hardware. Of course, since he’s not an asshole, he implored the audience to not do the same.
Because mental health is wealth.
VG Myths: Can You Beat Crash Team Racing Without the Gas Pedal?
I know nothing about Crash Team Racing. I never played it, so I can’t talk about this video at length. The only thing I can understand is that it’s a racing game, and all racing games have one thing in common—cars with gas pedals.
How the hell can you make a car move, much less win a race, without using the gas pedal? But somehow, he did it. That’s nuts.
Conclusion
Most of us will never play games like this. I certainly wouldn’t because I have neither the requisite focus nor patience for this form of gameplay. But it’s cool to see those who do, and actually putting up the fruits of their self-imposed labor. There are people who are into masochism, and there are people who are into Nuzlocke runs.
Then, there’s Gamechamp3000—the guy who did a straight damageless Pokemon run.
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