"I did it. I did the thing."
Radical Bromance (also known as RadBros or RadDudes) is a group of Let's Players that began their stint on YouTube on the tail end of February 2015. The group consists of four men: Alex, Rob, Matt Walker (not to be confused with the Texas Ranger or the guy in the glasses) and Striker, who make up the RadBros team. Alternatively, there's Alex, Jake and Lindsey, who compromise the alternative RadDudes side that was created for reasons unknown.
Thus far, their repertoire largely consists of Capcom or Nintendo games with modern games (typically fighters) mixed in. Word of God is that games that the group is familiar with are more likely to be played because Alex prefers taking the initial playthrough of a game at his own pace, but also doesn't find constant failure or exaggerated reactions to said failures to be amusing or entertaining.
Their YouTube page can be found here
and updates every other day (barring Schedule Slip). Striker has his own channel here and also runs a stream on Sunday and Tuesday evening on his Twitch channel.
Tropes:
- Accentuate the Negative: Walker does a lot. Alex has noted that he finds this trope incredibly tiring overall.Alex: Who would have thought that being crabby and skeptical all the time would be so exhausting?
- All or Nothing: Strangely, this seems to be the only way Arcblade works for Alex while doing Player Versus Player in Destiny, leading to either a series of kills or the enemy immediately shutting him down. Lampshaded by Alex's usage of a record scratch in the case of the it being 'nothing'.
- And Now for Someone Completely Different: Walker being the player in Shantae. In more recent times, Jake has become a regular and Alex's friend Lindsey appeared to do a playthrough of the Resident Evil 2 remake.
- The Bus Came Back: Rob returned for Resident Evil 3: Nemesis. According to him, his brief hiatus was because of his job. Rob returned for a couple goes at the Prison of Elders in Destiny, citing that he and Alex haven't found something to play together. The same thing happened again with Destiny 2, with Rob stating that the Resident Evil 6 playthrough will probably go unfinished. Alex has lamented this more than once.
- The Cameo: DisgruntledFerret, author of MS Paint Masterpieces showed up in the chat from time to time.
- Catchphrase: "I/You blew it!" whenever someone fails, "X, you need to chill the fuck out." with X being whatever is hassling them, "I did it. I did the thing." upon success and sighing or groaning in exasperation.
- Child Hater: With the word hate being a bit on the strong side. Walker and Alex have both expressed their disliking of kids and their lack of desire to have any themselves.
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience:
- Alex is partial to black and silver (but trends to blue when those aren't available), Walker's preferred color is blue, Rob's is green and Striker's is purple.
- Shifted somewhat with the introduced of RadDudes. Lindsey is depicted with orange gradients while Jake gets blue gradients and Alex now uses greys.
- Does Not Like Spam: Alex doesn't like onions, olives or shrimp. Walker hates olives to the point of revulsion.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: A fair chunk of the earliest episodes lack the Hitbox chat, the current game's logo and had a tendency to run for an arbitrary amount of time.
- Fake Difficulty: Shantae's emulation induced input lag. Later, Super Mario World and Sonic the Hedgehog. Walker notices this, but Alex apparently doesn't. Or he does, but claims to compensate for it. Later confirmed in Contra: Hard Corps, when the shot toggle keeps switching.
- Fan: Rob was formerly a big Kingdom Hearts fan and Striker is VERY fond of wrestling, often spending a whole LP series talking about an event. Everyone seems to like The Abridged Series of anything. Time will tell for Walker or Alex. Somewhat Jossed as Alex has stated that he doesn't like the connotations that come with being thought of as a fan, which is part of why he stopped choosing to be part of fan communities. Walker appears to be a fan of Sonic the Hedgehog. Still, Alex and Jake seem to like Dungeons & Dragons a lot.
- Filler: Bromance/EXTRA, where the hosts don't actually play anything and just talk about stuff instead.
- Four-Philosophy Ensemble:
- The Cynic: Walker (his gameplay style is also notably more cautious to Alex's aggressive, unflinching style)
- The Optimist: Rob (if Destiny is any indication, he is more calculating and deliberate)
- The Realist: Striker (takes things as they come, with a bit of the Optimist)
- The Apathetic: Alex
- Genre Shift: An episode dedicated to riffing the OVA from the 1990s out of nowhere.
- Graceful Loser: Frequent in-game deaths or failure don't bother Alex. Slightly averted during Mega Man 5 on Crystal Man's stage.
- Have a Nice Death: Invoked in a lighthearted way by the Rank E fanfare from Sonic Unleashed playing when Alex and Striker's team is defeated in Destiny.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: Alex and Rob give off this vibe.
Hilarious in Hindsight after Rob reveals he's gay and Alex is asexual. The same thing appears to hold water and is combined with Mood Whiplash when it comes to Alex's two new co-hosts, Jake (returning from Bad Dudes) and Lindsey (newcomer). The commentary dynamic becomes much more lively and jovial. - Hostile Show Takeover: Temporary. The episodes with Alex's childhood friend Jake became 'Bad Dudes'. Became a more permanent fixture once the regular cast became not so regular, resulting in RadDudes as the alternative title.
- Irony: Despite being cynical and grumpy, Walker prefers optimistic and upbeat media while Alex is the inverse.Alex: My favorite animes are Berserk and Golgo 13.
- Jack of All Trades: In regards to video games, Alex seems to abide by this. Or want to.
Word of God is that he very much believes in the old phrase 'jack of all trades, master of none, but better than a master of one'.Alex: When I was a kid, I almost exclusively played platformers, fighting games and action games. It was until I played Final Fantasy VII and Super Mario RPG that I got a real taste of the genre. Since then, I've tried to keep my mind open to the possibility of finding the game in a genre that makes it 'click'. As a result, my backlog is now difficult to manage. - Laughing at Your Own Jokes: Alex, as he also functions as the editor. A fair portion of his post-edit jokes go over everyone else's heads, to his frustration.Alex: I work hard on my jokes, okay?
- Letters to the Editor: Alex and Striker took to the mailbag in the second Cervantes episode of Soul Edge. Sometimes comes up nowadays.
- Level Grinding: Averted mostly. Alex has expressed that he has zero qualms with applying the Game Genie or GameShark to a game to speed the process along. In Mega Man Legends 2, Walker continuously stops to pick up fallen money, despite being told not to waste time.
- Medium-Shift Gag: Alex has a tendency to forget that he can't do visual gags on the show. At least until he started adding them in post.
- MST: Trio Date Night, which is really more of a return to form for Alex if his dead website is any indication. Alex also made a video advertising the Bring Back Mystery Science Theater kickstarter because of his love for the show. Became a literal joke in the ninth episode of Resident Evil – Code: Veronica.
- Most Common Super Power: Alex points this out about basically all of Shantae, going so far as utter 'Titties!' when Risky is present or by calling the series itself a prototype of Monster Musume jokingly.
- No Sense of Humor: Definitely Walker, who hates Alex's jokes far more often than he seems to enjoy them.
- Pretentious Pronunciation: Alex's insistence on saying the word 'elephant' in a suave accent.
- Put on a Bus: Rob after the Resident Evil 2 episodes. It occurred again post-Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, but didn't happen until the middle of the Resident Evil 6 playthrough and appears to be more or less permanent now, despite remaining in the intro.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Walker and Rob (to a lesser degree) are the Red to Alex and Striker's Blue. Alex himself is the Red Oni to Striker's Blue in terms of relativity.
- Reused Character Design: Any faces that show up in the title cards. Striker and Walker claim to be guilty of this, Walker to a lesser extent. Alex says that he doesn't like it and prefers to avoid it, but is willing to recycle names at least.Alex: While I wish I had Osamu Tezuka's talent, it's better to browbeat diversity into a habit for creative endeavors than develop any kind of Star System or whatever. No one wants to see the same character repeatedly. Don't be lazy.
- Running Gag: The suffering of Brad Vickers. Alex immediately getting up to fast forward whenever the photographer shows up in EarthBound.
- Schedule Slip: No new videos were posted from December 2019 until July 2020, likely due to Alex's physical and mental health issues.
- Sibling Rivalry: Overlaps with Would Hit a Girl. In the Resident Evil: Degeneration MSTing (which Youtube took down), Walker implies that Alex and his sister physically fought frequently. Alex edited the actual line out, noting that his mother really hates when the topic is publicly broached.
- Signing-Off Catchphrase: "Next time on RadicalBromance..."
- Sprite Comic: Walker himself still makes one called The Other Side while not co-starring on Radical Bromance. Alex previously had several. This can occasionally lead to the two of them talking about an older game's sprite style. Came up a lot during Megaman X4 from Walker, while Alex would generally change topics.
- The Teetotaler: Alex is basically this, contrary to Walker and Striker to a lesser degree.Alex: I don't like the taste of alcohol, don't like dealing with people who regularly drink and generally find the notion of using it as even a temporary problem solver to be sketchy at best.
- Theme Tune: Getting heavy usage following the sixth Destiny video.Mr. X gon' give it to ya! ...Until dad comes home after spending time with the reefer man.
- Theme Naming: Every game's playlist has 'bro' somewhere in the title.
- Those Wacky Nazis: Alex and Rob using stereotypical Nazi voices whenever they read an Apocalyptic Log in Dino Crisis. Unfortunately, it didn't make a comeback in Resident Evil 2. Harsher in Hindsight nowadays.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Alex appears to have an unhealthy love for cinnamon bread and Mongolian barbeque. Both Alex and Walker have a professed love for burgers restaurants.
- We Are Experiencing Technical Difficulties: If something like this happens on this show, it's probably the audio. Emulation of Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3: Nemesis also appears to invoke flickering letterbox issues. Usually the reason why doing modern games takes a while.
- With Friends Like These...: Sometimes it's difficult to tell if they're Vitriolic Best Buds, Bash Brothers or if Walker just dislikes Alex. As revealed during their Sonic 3 & Knuckles playthrough, Walker enjoys having an argumentative friendship of sorts with him. Alex, however, states that he really doesn't like arguments. Brought up again and mostly jossed during an episode of Resident Evil. Walker's brand of humor involves taking things at face value or pretending jokes aren't funny as reactions. Aside from that, there are times than not where it comes off that Walker isn't interested in being there.
- You Wanna Get Sued?: Alex has said that any time there's a musical gag, Youtube's automated copyright system triggers. He doesn't seem to care.
