"Your daily dose of horny French hardcore gamer."
— Benzaie
A YouTube and (former) Channel Awesome reviewer. Benzaie is a hyperactive French retro gamer with a self-deprecating sense of humor who hosts "Games That You Might Don't Know but That are Still Pretty Damn Sweet", a look back at obscure old games, mostly for the Sega Saturn and Neo-Geo. He has a pet / sidekick / roommate / son / brother / lover, Beary Bear, and a tongue-in-cheek rivalry with TGWTG member That Dude in the Suede. Also hosts FAQ You, Hard Corner, and Heavy Metal Package, as well as his Benzaie's Top Five segment. His GameFap and Let's Fap shows are hosted by one of his other characters, Master Bate.
Mostly does videos in French these days with a revamped version of Hard Corner, this time taking place in a game store.
This work provides examples of:
- Affectionate Parody: In Spoony's review of Mazes and Monsters, Benzaie makes a guest appearance and decides to have his own fun with the controversy over the Critic's The Room review by dressing up and acting as Tommy Wiseau.
- Amusingly Short List: The In Name Only Top 5 lists at one point only had two entries.
- Author Filibuster:
- The first part of his Rapelay review consists of him ranting about the American overreaction to a game that wasn't even available in the American market.
- He follows this up in his Can't Escape the Heroine review with Beary going on a long rant pointing out the hypocrisy of a game about male on female rape being banned, but not a game about female on male rape.
- Bilingual Bonus: In the end of Benzaie's Moktar review, he has a flashback with a conversation in French. None of the English subtitles match.
- Casanova Wannabe: The "FAQ You" segments. Bate is very confident about his sex life and his ability to score with women. It's implied that he's pretty much this without the failure part mentioned in the trope, but doesn't quite completely cross into either Handsome Lech or The Casanova territory.
- Catchphrase:
- "Laaaaaame!"
- "But wait!" (subtitles: "Attendez!")
- "I loe (insert noun here)!"
- "Oh, boy!" (cue ending theme)
- "… Oh! Hello, and welcome to THE Hard Corner!"
- "Waddafuk? Dees ees boo-sheet!" Lovingly parodied by almost everyone on Channel Awesome
.
- Character Blog: Beary's Facebook page.
- Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys: He briefly discusses the topic in the beginning of this video. In Song!
- Culture Clash:
- According to one of Spoony's vlogs, this happened when he was introduced to the concept of sales tax being excluded from the price tag, which does not happen in Europe.
- Judging by how often it was mentioned in the "TGWTG Does Benzaie" anecdotes, this is apparently something of a Berserk Button for him now.
- According to Spoony's commentary, while filming Kickassia, he got confused and then angry over seeing "pie a la mode" on a menu. In English, it means "pie with ice cream", but in French it means "pie of the style". Both he and the other critics concluded that America was fucked up.
- Deadpan Snarker: he can enter good ol' Sarcasm Mode whenever the occasion proves fit. For example, in a brief exchange among the comments on this video:MrLolcatsXD: "are u really benzai off tgwtg?"benzaie: "nope I just steal his footage and even uploaded some videos here BEFORE he would upload them to TGWTG... I'm that good of a hacker !"
- Deal with the Devil: When you make a deal with the devil, or Ze Sad Panda in this case, you have to play Street Fighter on the Amstrad 464 CPC. The prize for winning: The computer itself.
- Depraved Bisexual:
- In character he has done some very, very sick things, and although his bisexuality isn't really a part of it, it adds to the package.
- Master Bate on the other hand (as well as being extremely horny) is pretty fucking depraved every time he appears.
- Dolled-Up Installment: Played for Laughs, After watching Benzaie even up the score against Handsome Tom in a match of Street Fighter II, Master Bate comments that he hasn't been this excited since the announcement of "Rapelay 2: MarzGurl Edition".
- Dream Sequence: Every episode of Hard Corner starts with Benzaie having a video-game related nightmare of his young days − such as getting Kokoto Kart Racer instead of Mario Kart for his birthday.
- Driven to Suicide: Benzaie, after realising Robert Patrick was in the Double Dragon (1994) movie. He got better.
- Fan Disservice: in the Let's Fap for "X-Change," whenever he gets to a sex scene he ha a tendency to start using strange voices, including his Hard Corner voice (for the male-turned-female protagonist), Kermit the Frog, a pirate, and Beary
- Formula-Breaking Episode: There's his Signature Style, and then there's the serious, informative interviews he does for DigitalGames.fr. His top 10 films of the 80s, 90s and "2Ks" were also very analytical.
- Greek Chorus: Beary.''(Off screen) "IT SUCKS!"Benzaie: "Beary, SHUT THE FUCK UP, I know it was you!"
- Gender Bender: Apparently this is what happens when a guy watches too much Jem and the Holograms
- Ho Yay: Benzaie makes it pretty damn clear in his review of "Beverly Hills Cop: The Movie: The Game" that he just wants to touch some other guys in his rap song. Namely Phelous and Spoony.
- I'm a Humanitarian: In his IK+ review, Benzaie tells Beary his mom is dead, but she's still around...as in she's been feeding them for the past few months. Cue Beary glancing at his meal, and Ben telling him to hurry up and eat, since he "can't microwave your mother".
- Let's Play: His Bate character has one called "Lets Fap", where he plays through Cobra Mission on the DOS platform, claiming it to be one of the very first interactive games featuring animated nudity. Of course, all the nudity itself is censored for the review.
- Luke, I Am Your Father: Bate + Facehugger = Bearie!??
- Mr. Fanservice: He frequently does cameos in other TGWTG members' videos in which he is either in his underwear, or completely naked. There's also the one time he cosplay as Conan the Barbarian for Suburban Knights.
- Multiple-Choice Past: Beary has about as many origin stories as Dr. Insano.
- Odd Friendship: He's friends with Manuel Ferrara, a French-American porn star who happens to be a huge videogame nerd.
- Refuge in Audacity: The Jizz-O-Meter Rating Scale, among other things in GameFAP. Bate's horniness is the driving force behind his actions for EVERYTHING.
- Ruined FOREVER: On one of his Lets Faps, he told his cohost to "make the Cookie Monster noise". Her response? "You just ruined Cookie Monster forever"
- Running Gag:
- Subverted.Whenever Ben comes up with a new running gag he tries to kill it as fast as possible.
- The phrase "Ça dépasse l'entendement!" ("That's inconceivable!"), born in his review of the promotional VHS of the Playstation, has been reused in other Hard Corner episodes, and even in some of his cameos with other French youtubers. Initially, it was a sarcastic reaction to the VHS gushing over Battle Arena Toshinden and its "inconceivable" diversity of weapons (the video showed a bunch of swords, and a lance!)
- Robot Me: In the third act of Computer and Spaceman, Computer takes on the form of Spaceman after going power-mad.
- Shared Universe: As a former member of Channel Awesome, he is automatically part of the Reviewaverse.
- Shirtless Scene: Probably more then all the other shirtless scenes on the site, but hey he's French.
- Stealth Pun: "I'm your host, Bate, the master of hentai games and subtle puns."
- Testosterone Poisoning: The "Benzaie's Hard Corner" and "Heavy Metal Package" segments. The cute bear stays even then.
- Wholesome Crossdresser: He dresses up as a woman a lot, and looks damn fine doing it too. Except for the beard, of course.
- Wife Husbandry: Beary is both Benzaie's adopted son and future husband. He also once tried to hook Benzaie up with his sister, Sega Game Gear.
