Web Video / Arcade Pit

Arcade Pit is a weekly live video game-themed game show hosted by Smight on his Twitch channel, with announcer assistance from his friend Emily Aster (formerly known as PAmaster) . Two teams control a snail traversing a map, spinning a wheel to get video game-themed challenges.

Originally a small project, Arcade Pit has gained enough notoriety to be picked up on several other networks, such as appearances on Games Done Quick and Giant Bomb though these are inconsistent, Smight has yet to miss a single show on his channel and continues to run them every Sunday at 6PM Eastern Standard Time.

The choices on the game wheel are:

• Team Battle: A player from each team plays a game with a specific goal to meet (such as beating a level or boss first). The team that beats the challenge first earns 20 points and gains control of the board. A Team Battle is used to kick off every episode, and a Team Battle with all players competing is used to end the game.
• The Gamebler: A team gets to play a game challenge. In earlier seasons, the team bets points on it, earning those points if they win or losing them if they lose. Later seasons would assign point values per challenge, with no points gained or lost if the challenge is failed.
  • The Snailser version has all the challenges be worth 15 points regardless of difficulty.
• VG Hustle: When a team gets this, they get a choice between voluntarily taking a no-risk challenge themselves or forcing a challenge on the opposite team.
• The Quizzler: A team answers two multiple choice trivia questions from games of their choice. Earlier seasons had questions given point values coinciding with difficulty, while in later seasons, they would all be worth 15 points each.
  • The Snailser version, Quizz-umdrum, gives the player a visual question, asking questions such as what a specific sign would read or what section would come next in the stage being shown.
• Quizzler Blitz: A different form of the Quizzler that has players answering five random questions in a row, winning 5 points (or 10 if they're doubled) for each question they get right.
• Drawbage: One member of a team gets to draw a prompt and their teammate has to guess what it is.
  • 2 alternate Snailser versions appear on the Snailser Wheel. Drawboyge has the guesser look at the drawing through a filter, making it look like it came from the Game Boy. Drawbagenesis has the drawer make the prompt on the Genesis games Art Alive or Fun 'n Games.
• Sound Test: A challenge where song from a game is played, with players guessing what series it's from (with guessing the specific game and where in the game it's played granting more points).
  • The Snailser version has the music track played backwards instead.
• Screen Crap: A random screenshot of a game (or a small part of a screenshot) is put on screen, with players guessing what game it's from.
  • 2 alternate versions appear on the Snailser wheel. One represented by a broken JPEG has the team guess on screenshots chopped up and flipped around. The other, represented by a flashlight, has the players guess the screenshots with the screen being blacked-out, and roaming searchlights being the only way to see the images.
• Host Choice: Smight chooses the next challenge.
  • This has replaced Feelin' Saucy, where the team got to pick instead.
• Feelin' Sad: Originally a lose-a-turn, but currently the team that lands on it is forced to play a level 4 or 5 difficulty Gamebler to protect their points.
• Grab Bag: One teammate plays a randomly picked game challenge of medium difficulty. If they beat it, the other teammate gets a chance to double the points with another random challenge.
• Test Your Smight: One player from a team plays a video game challenge against Smight himself.
  • The Snailser version, Test My Spite, has a player play a challenge the way Smight would play when taking a handicap.
• AI Arena: A game is started with only computer players and each team chooses the characters they think will win.
  • The Snailer version, Unf(AI)r Arena, has the opposite team represented by the toughest AI option.
• Relay Race: Both team members try to beat a pair of challenges before the other team, but the second player cannot start until the first player succeeds (or a pity timer runs out).
• Palette Box (FKA Peanut Gallery): All four players are told to draw a prompt that is revealed to everyone beforehand, and the stream viewers vote on which is their favorite.
• Quad Draw: All four players draw a different quadrant of a picture, usually box art, and the stream viewers vote on who did the best drawing their section.
  • This has replaced Battle Drawyale, which was basically Drawbage with both teams competing.

Tropes associated with Arcade Pit:

• The Ace:
  • Frequent competitor ProtonJon is seen as one when it comes to retro game challenges and trivia and has won in almost all the shows he played in.
  • Smight himself is ridiculously skilled at almost any game he plays. Test Your Smight, a map challenge that forces someone to beat him in one of the versus challenges, is seen as one of the hardest challenges to win for good reason, even if the player takes the challenge's handicap.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: Teams can have their titles decorated throughout the game with stripes, a car (with gold rims!), Donkey Kong with a pompadour, or make it into a candy wrapper.
• April Fools' Day: 2017 had a bizarre April Fools Day episode. The usual art is replaced by art that embraces Stylistic Suck, a bunch of ridiculous spaces are put on the board (including a forced challenge to solve a math problem), the games used for Gamebler and VG Hustle are romhacks (mostly hard ones) and the quiz questions are either incredibly obscure, sensible questions with a bizarre presentation or questions made by a Markov chain. Watch the madness here.
  • 2018's April Fool's Day episode began looking like a relatively normal (albeit silly) Easter-themed episode...and then Lavos shows up. Watch the craziness here.
  • 2019's continued the trend, having the players play odd and poorly made bootleg games, introduced two new game challenges including Final Fantasy IX Voice Acting Theater, which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin with hilarious results, and Psychedellic Catsgroove, a variation of Sound Test where players have to guess the game music which is being performed via scatting by Psychedellic Eyeball and Catsworth. It also featured the return of the infamous "What colors are Flandre Scarlet's wings?" quizzler question.
  • After a few years break, 2022 introduced a real whammy as Emily introduced team one and team two... and then team three, four, five, six, seven and eight for a total of sixteen players, followed by the screen pulling back to reveal a Mario Party like game board, complete with dice rolls, spaces, minigames picked via roulette, and coins from winning that that would be required to buy Golden Snails (Stars). Ladies and Gentleman, may we introduce Bizzarecade Pit (which Smight would later turn into a rare but recurring variation on the show.)
• The Announcer: One non-player, usually Emily Aster, is on hand to do introductions and generally snark at the other players.
• Art Evolution: New logos for each challenge are added as the series goes on, along with new maps for the snail and an intro.
• Author Avatar: Smight is represented in the various introductions by the Apple Man from the Fruit of the Loom commercials.
• Bonus Space: One spot on the board is a built in Feelin' Saucy.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • Bubsy is constantly made fun of, not that the bobcat doesn't deserve it. The Team Battle introductions depict him losing to a ninja, a worm, and even flops from nothing. A forth one showing him lie dead adds in that he quotes his own tweets.
  • Team Retsupurae loses by a ridiculous margin.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: There have been a few episodes where the winning team wins by so much that the final Team Battle is done as a formality. One of the biggest examples are the Retsupurae vs Oh, Okay episodes, with Retsupurae losing by a 300 point margin in both episodes.
• Christmas Episode: The Christmas 2017 special. Though instead of being directly Christmas themed, it's a 4-on-1 match against Smight. It can be watched here.
• Deadpan Snarker: Emily is not above roasting the contestants, especially if they say something ridiculous.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: The Beta episodes were not as refined as later ones, with the most notable weird thing being the map as a live action camera feed of Smight moving game pieces across a hand drawn map.
• Famous, Famous, Fictional: The famous pieces of art in the Screen Crap intro include one of Andy Warhol's "Campbell Soup Can" paintings, Vincent van Gogh's "The Starry Night", Hokusai's The Great Wave off Kanagawa, and a close up of Mario's butt. Mario's zoomed-in butt was one of the correct answers from the April Fool's episode's Screen Crap.
• Foreshadowing: During a game where ProtonJon had been losing several challenges, slowbeef asked him if he was trying to ruin his secret project. slowbeef won that game and later released True Gamer, a series with the premise that he is trying to prove that he is a "true gamer" after it was suggested that he was a "casual" after losing to Jon on Arcade Pit.
• Game Show Host: Smight himself, although he does not demonstrate the hamminess that usually goes with the trope and relegates such to his co-hosts Emily Aster and Psychedelic Eyeball.
• Loot Boxes: Added in later seasons mostly replacing the Zonks, loot boxes give the team a Cosmetic Award that alters the team banner, such as turning it into a car or flipping it upside-down. Gaining multiple loot boxes has the cosmetics mesh together. More recently, loot boxes may now contain Snailser, which brings out the Snailser Wheel. See the Whammy section for more info on that.
• Nice Guy: Parodied with Team NiceBoyz of ProtonJon and TieTuesday.
• Overly Long Name: Pink and Betus formed a team once with such a name, resulting in their team The team that has PinkKittyRose and The_Betus and not the other team that has Tinahacks and Aetyate Listen Folks It's Gonna be Cas' Sesh' All Around Heyo Smile if You're Having a Good Time, shortened down on the game board to The Team due to its length.
• Rage Breaking Point: While slowbeef already expressed frustration throughout the tenth episode, ProtonJon identifying a Wizards & Warriors screenshot that he knew sets him into a rage.
• Running Gag:
  • A shrill noise of Curly from a The Three Stooges game playing in some parts of a map.
  • Bubsy is everywhere! He appears on many of the maps, in the TVs for Gamebler/VG Hustle and there's usually one square on the map that plays back a Bubsy line.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Smight does this in the Quizzler Blitz intro, when he gets fed up with Beanie Guy repeatedly answering the questions before Smight can even fully read them.
• Series Mascot:
  • A snail. Specifically, the snail enemy from Bomberman '94. It also stands in as the main piece both teams have to move around the board.
  • Bubsy is essentially one as well, being portrayed in many of the show's animations and having soundbytes on the board. This is a lesser case though, since his presence is more out of irony than sincerity.
• Spin-Off: Due to the sheer amount of Quizzler questions, a spin-off show called Quizzler Deluxe was made that's completely dedicated to answering Quizzler questions and Drawbage. Unlike the main show, contestants are randomly selected from the audience.
  • A.I. Arena also has its own weekly show where the audience gets a chance to place bets on the games with "Smackers".
• Suddenly Always Knew That: Whenever a player turns out to be good at a difficult game. TieTuesday calls this the "speedrunner surprise."
• Tempting Fate:
  • Getting a doubler and mentioning the possibility of the wheel landing on Feelin' Sad.
  • ProtonJon said all his losses have been on yellow at the start of the game that was his first lost with TieTuesday.
• Terrible Artist: Many people that play Drawbage, but especially PsychedelicEyeball. This is seen as a detriment for Drawbage, since a bad drawing can ensure that the artist's partner has no idea what they're trying to depict and it won't win any favors in Peanut Gallery (unless the bad art happens to be funny). Inverted with Madithen, who drew a great drawing of a Don't Starve prompt and is the head artist of Arcade Pit.
  • Taken to extreme levels with Diabetus whose drawing of Akuma was so legendarily awful that Smight added it to the gallery animation for Screencrap.
    M_D_C_T: (Trying to guess what Diabetus is drawing after letting him draw)... I think I made a mistake.
• This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: Happens sometimes when speed runners are on the show and they end up getting challenges for the game they run.
• Unexpectedly Obscure Answer: With the sheer amount of games that Quizzler, Sound Test, and Screen Crap draws from, there are bound to be a lot of these from lesser known games.
  • “What are the colors of the gems on Flandre Scarlet’s wings?”
  • Subverted with a question asking what Ranga and Barong fuses into. While this was treated as this in the show, the answer is actually a specific fusion based in actual mythology that requires no knowledge of obscure fusion tables.
• Whammy: The Feelin' Sad part of the wheel. Earlier episodes flat out had the team lose a turn while later episodes force the team to play a level 4 or 5 difficulty challenge.
  • The Snailser Wheel can be seen as one big wheel of Whammies. Outside of the alternate challenges mentioned in the game section, the wheel also has a section where the team loses their dice (or lose 10 points should they not have any) as well as a section where the team has to do a challenge at a difficulty of 7 Snails. There is one section that lets the team avoid all of this, but the wedge is so thin, it's not likely to happen very often.
• Zonk: The spaces on the board that don’t contain points or events usually have a pretend prize that functions as Zonk.

---

"BUBSY WILL NEVER WIN!"
~The Management

---