Marcus Sparacio is Armake21 (now known as Marc0 or TheWaste0Time, previously known as NicotineAlien and BoxedEntertainment21), (once) a Caustic Critic of video games for the NES. Marc0 made himself known when he went up against The Game Boys, a group on YouTube who are now known as Freeze Cracker, having slammed them publicly. He would eventually start reviewing video games in September 2006 with his "Games That Suck" series. Armake21 was one of the foremost of the glut of video game reviewers to come about after the success of The Angry Video Game Nerd. Later, he would host a Video Review Show called "Context Sensitive", where he reviews modern titles for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
He was also a big inspiration for The Spoony Experiment back when Spoony was starting out.
Sadly, he died January 29, 2023.
His last YouTube account can be viewed here, as his old accounts were deleted. He was doing a series called "Marc0 Plays", and had also gone back to his roots of playing retro games, and replaying some that he'd originally reviewed, such as Total Recall.
Games that had been reviewed or discussed (in no particular order)
- Total Recall
- Treasure Master
- Dr. Chaos
- Action 52
- Nerf Arena Blast
- Jaws
- Dragon Power
- Bomberman Act:Zero
- Widget
- Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing
- Batman: Vengeance
- Wurm
- Demon Sword
- The Ring: Terrors Realm
- WET
- Alone in the Dark (2008)
- Soldier of Fortune: Payback
- Hour of Victory
- Vampire Rain
- Quattro Adventure
- Gilligan's Island
- Star Wars: Rebel Assault II: The Hidden Empire
- Adventures in the Magic Kingdom
- Aqua Teen Hunger Force Zombie Ninja Pro-Am
- Kendo Rage
Armake21 provides examples of:
- Affectionate Parody: Armake21 was being compared to the AVGN an awful lot. So he spends the first half of his review on Ghostbusters II for NES acting like the Nerd and even dressed up as him.
- In a more general sense, the Armake21 "Games that Suck" character was intended as a caricature of the flood of AVGN wannabes, who thought swearing in frustration was the peak of wit and were simply really bad at the games they tried to review. One of Armake's lines, for example, was a claim he took over 800 attempts to beat a Boss Fight in the NES port of Shinobi (it only took 12 tries).
- Catchphrase: "Avoid it like the fucking plague!"
- Caustic Critic: Pretty much his character, with tons of swearing and improv.
- When it came to games like Vampire Rain and Alone in the Dark, he surprisingly averts this trope as he was more forgiving towards negatively viewed games to the point of giving them a little more praise.
- Celebrity Is Overrated: Has gone on record as saying that he doesn't miss the days of his booming popularity, as it took a toll on his life and personality, and that he's comfortable with just having a more underground following on YouTube.
- Cluster F-Bomb: Especially prevalent in his earliest reviews.
- Content Warnings: There was a time where Marc0 had his content warnings in some of his videos because he received complaints from some parents of younger viewers watching his videos.
- During a live stream, Marc0 talked about talking to a child's mother during a game of Rainbow Six: Vegas and telling her why her young child really shouldn't be playing M-rated games.
- Creator Backlash: He regretted going after The Irate Gamer so much, feeling that in the end all he did was give the guy more attention. Both of them privately buried the hatchet with each other years later before Armake's passing.
- Creator Breakdown: Has went through a few of these, eventually leading up to shelving the Armake21 character.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Marc0 previously did series called: Games That Suck , Games That Rock , and Strange Games
- Four-Point Scale: There was a point of time where Marc0 decided to introduce a rating scale, but later decided against reusing it, thinking that reviews cannot be measured.
- From Bad to Worse: In his Bomberman Act:Zero review, he quickly warns you at the end that "the shit hits the fan." He wasn't kidding...
- Go Mad from the Revelation: At the end of his Games That Suck Apocalypse movie, he discovered that his once-finished review of Deadly Towers was lost thanks to a software crash. His highly requested review. He reacted as you would expect from this trope.
- The ending to his Quattro Adventure movie also garnered a similar reaction from him.
- In the end of his Bomberman Act:Zero review, he goes from this to Unstoppable Rage after reaching level 89 and dying. Oh and there is no way to continue your progress. He gave the game exactly what it deserved.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: And how.
- Improv: Marc0 does this for nearly all of his videos, and does it well.
- It's Been Done: Marc0 doesn't really criticize the game because it's like certain other games, but he does criticize them if they copy the concept, but not how good it is. Like Renegade being a Double Dragon clone and somehow being so much worse.
- Marc0 went on record to mention that WizWar100 beat him to reviewing both Deadly Towers and Predator for the NES, and mentioned that the Predator review was especially good, and done way better than he hoped to accomplish.
- Keep Circulating the Tapes: Due to losing three accounts and Marcus' refusal to reupload the videos himself, his reviews are posted on various sites and YouTube channels.
- Machinima:
- Used to make some videos using The Movies, namely The Door Hurts
- He has done voiceovers and videos over different video games, including Halo 3, Kengo, and more.
- Mandatory Un Retirement: Invoked. After abandoning and calling off the character, Armake, for the longest time and had no desire to make more game reviews, he suddenly decided to do one more "Games That Suck" video after playing Aliens: Colonial Marines. Needless to say, there was much rejoicing among his fanbase.
- MST: Inspired by Retsupurae, he started a short lived group known as the Fail Sessions, with some memorable lines and videos included.
- Old Shame: For some reason, he absolutely hates his old videos, and refuses to reupload any of them no matter how many times he's asked.
- Orphaned Series: On multiple occasions he never finishes reviews or Let's Plays that he starts. Including Fallout 3, Killzone 2, Alone in the Dark (2008), and Neverwinter Nights 2. Justified for his Let's Play of NWN 2 since it stopped due to the game not running or recording properly.
- Poe's Law: He first debuted during the Caustic Critic explosion of 2006. His modus operandi was to play horribly on purpose and swear at the TV as if swearing was funny in and of itself; this was all a big riff on The Angry Video Game Nerd wannabes who couldn't write jokes. The Poe's Law part came to a head in his Shinobi video, whereupon he had to post a followup video making it clear that his videos up to that point were all Stylistic Suck.
- Schedule Slip: Has happened on several occasions; most notably with "Armake21 vs. Action 52", which suffered a delay of nearly a year and a half for numerous reasons.
- Serious Business: His clash with the Irate Gamer, to both him and his fans.
- Shout-Out: The (lesser-known) second part of his infamous Irate Gamer rant, where he gave praise to other reviewers such as Stop Skeletons From Fighting and The Spoony Experiment.
- In return, Stop Skeletons From Fighting made a response video as a joke to shout out right back to Armake21. Spoony, likewise, referenced Armake21 on a couple of occasions.
- At some point, he has mentioned that Play It Bogart was his biggest inspiration.
- Take That!: His (now infamous) rant against the Irate Gamer.
- Before that though, he does have a habit of talking back at the AVGN fans who constantly compare him with the AVGN. He even decided to parody the Nerd to show how baseless the comparisons are. For the record, he does highly respect James Rolfe to the point of standing up for him against the Irate Gamer.
- He also did a rant about the infamous Chadwarden 'PS Triple' video, which he didn't know was a Stealth Parody. Later on, he admitted that Chad fooled him good.
- He also has very strong opinions on video game reviewers in general (especially "mainstream" ones) as well as the state of the game industry. Though he's also gone out of the way to put a "take with a pinch of salt" disclaimer on his views.
- There was a time where he was streaming, got drunk and invoked this trope towards Spoony. Though he may not have meant it.
- He also had his share of
Fan Dumb, and did take a shot at them every now and then, especially to the ones that really want him to release video game reviews consistently. One of his few responses includes making a video showing how difficult releasing his kind of game reviews can be. That and he does have a life.
- The Cameo: UrinatingTree had a voice role in his Halo 3 review.
- The Movie: Games That Suck: Apocalypse NES, and Quattro Adventure are edited and treated like mini-films.
- Armake21 vs. Action 52 was planned to be this as well. See What Could Have Been below.
- Toilet Humour: Marc0 ended his strong review of Bomberman: Act Zero by peeing on it.
- Unstoppable Rage: Goes into this at times, though Bomberman Act:Zero takes the cake as he got so angry, he beats up the case and disc, before finally pissing on it.
- Video Review Show
- What Could Have Been: He was originally going to open a website with the help of some friends of his, similar to the likes of Channel Awesome with YouTube reviewers. It never came to fruition.
- Marc0 had intended to release Armake21 vs. Action 52 as a movie, but due to various reasons (mostly personal ones), it lead itself towards Development Hell. Eventually, he decided to release it as a multi-part game review.
- The ending in that movie would have had Armake21 killing himself , as Marcus himself confirmed during a Ustream, on top of other scenes that were teased.
- There were other videos he intended to start or finish on (such as a review of Killer7), which never came to light.
- Marc0 had intended to release Armake21 vs. Action 52 as a movie, but due to various reasons (mostly personal ones), it lead itself towards Development Hell. Eventually, he decided to release it as a multi-part game review.
