Jon Jafari is Jon Tron, a video game critic on The Game Station. Using a cheerful, energetic style and plenty of cutaway gags and visual puns, he talks about certain elements of video games, good and bad, and occasionally reviews specific titles. His sidekick is a green parrot named Jacques, who talks in a vaguely robotic voice, has glowing red eyes, and offers stoic commentary to contrast Jon's boundless energy. Crucially, he avoids games exhaustively covered by other reviewers (with a few exceptions from the NES era), focusing rather on early polygonal titles from "gaming's adolescence"; in a sense, Jon could be considered a newer generation of internet critic.In the earlier days he was rather non-caustic, criticizing games with little to no anger, but as of late he's been getting rather harsh. Just look at his reviews of Star Wars Kinect, Monster Party, and the Bubsy games. Doesn't stop them from being hilarious, though!He uses a lot less profanity than most others in his profession, and reacts to games he dislikes with exaggerated confusion (and sometimes sadness or disappointment, or less often, outrage). His initial reaction to the nonsense and weirdness in the games he plays is chilled out and accepting... until he finally snaps, often with hilarious results.He claims to have been inspired mainly by The Angry Video Game Nerd and Spoony. Then he photoshopped them making out.Jon has been inducted into That Guy with the Glasses, specifically Blistered Thumbs (naturally). He also recently revived his second YouTube channel, JonTronLoL, where he casts League of Legends games with all his characteristic energy.In the summer of 2012, Jon started a new YouTube channel with Egoraptor, called Game Grumps, wherein they play games and hang out.Not to be confused withProton Jon.
Achievements in Ignorance: Jon is somehow able to play Minecraft on Super Nintendo by putting in a Metal Gear Solid 3 box and taping a Gamecube controller to the controller slot. Eventually lampshaded near the start of his video on the Bubsy series.
Jon (Trying to appease Jacques): Jon, that doesn't go there, you sillyBITCH!
He's also seen playing games after putting them into the console sideways, upside down, missing the console entirely, and on one occasion putting the console on the cartridge (fitting it into the slot after a moment)
Ambiguously Gay: Aquaman might be trying to tell us something with those tights. Like that he likes tights.
Angrish: Expect him to fall into this when something particularly stupid happens in a game/movie he's reviewing.
Ascended Fanboy: Jontron loves the Continue series, even going as far as to give them the Colbert Bump, so it can be pretty noticeable that he was excited to crossover with them in a special, though not to a The Knights Who Say Squee level.
Jon was big fan of Egoraptor before he actually met him.
Awesome, but Impractical: When Jontron discovers that there is a combo list In Aquaman Battle for Atlantis, he notes that they are pointless because he was able to beat every enemy by just mashing the A button.
To The Bat Noun: Did Aquaman lose his hand at the Aqua-Mill? "Gotta get those Aqua-Union Benefits! ...Aqua-Dental." (falls silent)
Berserk Button: At the end of the Nightshade review, it is implied that he REALLY doesn't like to see old women getting beaten up.
The Cameo: Makes frequent appearances in Peanut Butter Gamer's show. In PBG's Cursed Mountain review, he appeared in a flashback as an old mountain guru.
Also, Egoraptor as Natalia in Malkovich's Gaming Game Show.
Candid Camera Prank: The second 'Gaming in Public' episode. To prove that people would exaggerate the (alleged) harmfulness of video games, Jon created a bogus petition claiming the Nintendo 3DS caused blindness in children (featuring, among other things, the phrase "Heil Hitler") and asked random passersby to sign it for him. All of them signed without reading... and one of them signed even after having read it. Jon, naturally, crowned him King.
Catch Phrase: "I quit" whenever he finds something so incredibly stupid he has no other words to describe it.
"Am I the only one...?"/"I can't be the only one!"
"Oh nooo."
Clingy Macguffin: Jacques tries to destroy the Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts cartridge and Mind Wipe Jon, but the pieces re-form.
Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Every single episode will have you wondering if Jon is cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.
Cluster F-Bomb: When Malkovich offered to take calls from viewers on Malkovich's Gaming Guilty Pleasures, all but one of the callers replied with a simple "Fuck you." The one who didn't asked if his mother had a penis.
Creator Backlash: 'Top 10 Overrated Games'. A really solid episode, actually, but Jon probably couldn't handle the bad press. He's taken it off his site (the link once directing to it now leads to a sad song on YouTube), and the episode description reads something like, "This is an episode I made that I hate. It's now in its rightful place—Hell!"
Cultured Bad Ass: Jon has displayed a distinct interest in Greek and Roman history.
Curse Cut Short: The end of the My Sims review has Jon walk all way from California to Peanut Butter Gamer's house in Texas, only to find Jacques there.
Jon: Jacques man, how'd you get here? Have you guys...have you guys been doing something...behind my back?
Jacques: I can teleport, you numbnut.
Jon: Ooooooooooooh-YOU PIECE OF SHI-*roll credits*
Deep Immersion Gaming: Parodied; Jon is seemingly sucked into his Joe & Mac cartridge, only to reappear in his house a moment later. Jacques asks how he managed to escape.
Jon:I just left.
Brick Joke: Turns out the characters from the game can " just leave" too. The episode ends with a dinosaur boss walking into Jon's living room.
Discriminate And Switch: Jon nothing the lack of mermaids in Aquaman; there's nothing in the city but shirtles Mer-men.
"Maybe Aquaman was trying to tell us somethin' about himself by wearin' those tights. ...Like, that he likes tights."
Disproportionate Retribution: When the QA guy gives a less-than-satisfactory review of Sonic Free Riders, one of the Sonic Team developers bludgeons him to death with a flashlight.
Narrator: But did you really expect anything more from the people who made Shadow the Hedgehog? Like, really.
Early Installment Weirdness: The earliest episodes of Jon Tron had little of the style he eventually grew into and became popular with, instead approaching games more seriously and more in the style of his predecessors.
Everything's Better with Dinosaurs: Averted, as he reviews several crappy games with dinosaurs, and even lampshades their prevalence in his Home Improvement video, saying he hadn't even noticed it until fans pointed it out to him. He ranks dinosaurs alongside spiders and skeletons as video game enemies that are often thrown in with the least amount of sense and originality according to plot, especially in the 16-bit era.
Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Jon tries to reassure himsel that Starfax Temperatures will improve. Can't judge a book by its cover! Unless it's Stuff On My Cat.
"Cause, that... you're pretty much gettin', y'know, the whole experience right there."
Expospeak Gag: Let us partake in some Dino City, brother.
In the ending to his Starfox Adventures video, he threw the disk into space. The very end showed that it was on a crash-course for "Banjo Kazooie: Nuts an Bolts", which he reviewed later.
Four Point Scale: Invoked and Played for Laughs. Jon devised a meaningless ratings system wherein it's actually impossible for a game to receive bad marks (in its own way a dig at Video Game Journalists and their reviews), no matter how much he bashed it in his review. Sonic Colors and Donkey Kong Country Returns received an "A/5" and a "Six Golden Bananas+/Shigeru Miyamoto" respectively; even though Jon spent the whole video mocking them (though it's pretty clear he enjoyed both). Nimbus, described as "A game you will maybe forget", got a B/5.
Regardless, many YouTubefans seem to think that he hates DKCR because of the things he said in his review. A simple comment search would reveal that he'd seriously give the game a 9/10.
Funny Background Event: During Final Hallway XIII, when Jon starts panicking as he realizes the gravity of his situation, Jacques is chewing on his ear.
Genius Ditz: Despite his frenetic and slightly spastic persona, Jon has a very good understanding of game theory and will sometimes take a moment to explain exactly why a particularly bad fault is so fatal. For instance, his comments on being able to ignore the complex combo system in Aquaman and win reliably by mashing the A button leads to an explanation of "Dominant Strategy", and the blatant Breaking the Fourth Wall in Bubsy 3D prompts him to elaborate on Willing Suspension of Disbelief and how such forced self-reference damages it. Since he tends to slow down when explaining these concepts to allow the audience to comprehend what he's saying, he usually lampshades them by shrieking GAME THEORY TIME!! and/or splicing in a The More You Know type clip.
In the Stairfax Tempratures review, his reaction to the Bafomdad.
Haunted Technology: Jon tangles with demonic or possessed games on occasion, usually residing in the particular bad game he's reviewing at the time.
Heterosexual Life Partners: Jon has Egoraptor with whom he created and hosts Game Grumps. He also has PBG with whom he created the (now defunct) Normal Boots site.
Hookers and Blow: His interpretation of Sonic Team as an over-the-hill Eurotrash rock band who've long since stopped caring about the music.
"Welcome to Sonic Team! We make games, I think!" (SNORRRT) "What the fuck is a Sonic?!" "That's—that's not a Kinect at all! It's just a Monster can I rolled the wrong way."
"So what? I don't care, I don't CARE." (I care immensely)
In his Monster Bash review, Jon puts his $150 game disk in a microwave burrito and slams it into his CD tray while disjointedly singing "Don't forget to be careful with your raaaaare gaaaaaaame! C'mon, s'just get in there, we gotta play."
Jon: Welp, better get out my shot-glass. [Slams a massive glass mug on the table] Don't try this at home, kids; you might get dead!
Inelegant Blubbering: Fox McCloud being stripped of his Arwing and his blaster. What Rare giveth, Rare taketh away.
[Fox rolling around in cutesy landscape] why would someone do this? why would somebody do this on the first—! ...I'm really mad! I'm really (degenerates into sobs)''
Keet: Jon himself, though lately he's been becoming less like this and more of a "scream a lot and (literally) bash the thing being reviewed" reviewer.
Malaproper: Jon does this constantly as part of his character. Sometimes he makes up for it by adding subtitles... which are also full of malapropisms.
Metaphorgotten: Jon has given us such beautiful similes as claiming that Christopher Belmont "climbs like frickin' Beach Boys on a hot summer Sunday" and describing a certain enemy in Monster Party as starched white pants "walking around like J. Edgar Hoover on a Tuesday afternoon." To say nothing of his analogy for the resilience of the human spirit in his Stairfax Temperatures review:
Jon: Here I am, a whole year later, still trucking along like a sack of potatoes on a long open road, wishing he'd stopped for gas at the last rest stop, and then on the Interstate 12, he gets hijacked and murdered by a bunch of Quaker ghosts!
Most Wonderful Sound: For Jon, it's hearing a bunch of skulls fall in Monster Bash. This is then accompanied by a weird ad for "Mattress World" to hilarious effect. invoked
Negative Continuity: Jon has died at least twice, and come back with no ill effects. Taken Up to Eleven in his review of Nightshade, where Jon shot himself into the surface of the sun and recovered.
Old Shame: Jon hates his video 'Top 10 Overrated Games', and has even taken it off his site.
For some reason he doesn't seem to like his 'Gaming In Public' videos either, and took those off his YouTube Channel.
Jon apparently had a brief foray into flash animation with this video. Given the date of publication Jon could not have been more than sixteen years old at the time of production, but it's interesting to see how he went from a teenager with an odd onion fixation to an adult video-game critic, even moreso because Jon has never mentioned these videos.
He had mentioned it indirectly and in an offhand way, very, very, briefly in one episode of Game Grumps.
'Top 10 Mario Party Minigames', which Jon bashes in an episode of Game Grumps. He realized it was incredibly stupid of him to make a Top 10 List where the vast majority of mini-games are from Mario Party 2.
Pac Man Fever: The whole 'mix-and-match console components' aspect is Played for Laughs regularly whenever Jon tries to put the game in the console. It's not uncommon to see something like Jon trying to stuff a game box into an SNES and then tape a Gamecube controller to the controller port. To play Minecraft. Or to tape an RCA cable to the top of an NES, and then stand the cartridge up and try to stick the console on top of it.
Parrot Pet Position: Jacques spends most of his time onscreen on either one of Jon's shoulders.
Portmanteau Series Nickname: Jon eventually starts pronouncing Dino City as if it were one word (pronounced "Dye-naw-sity")
Precision F-Strike: Nightshade's obtuse gameplay makes Jon snap and start swearing like a gospel singer.
"FUCK you! (wags finger) I AAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNN'T HAVIN' THAT SHIT ♪
Pun: Bubsy? More like DRUGSY! (sniveling laughter)
"Oh no, Atlantis is under attack! Oh the hu-manitee!"
Put on a Bus: Rockington is promptly lost off-screen after his first appearance.
A Rare Sentence: "Am I right now, as of this moment playing as Tim Allen... from Home Improvment...using a Lightsaber Chainsaw to fight a Raptor?"
Ridiculously Cute Critter: Jacques is often seen nuzzling or nibbling Jon, especially when Jon is acting emotional.
Robot Buddy: It isn't clear whether Jacques is a robot or just a very peculiar parrot. Out of universe though, he's just a parrot made to seem like a robot in editing.
He's mentioned being a cyborg before.
Running Gag: Jon often can't figure out how to boot up old games. Taken Up to Eleven in his Dinocity review, where he tries to put it in the wireless router, then puts in the dishwasher (3 times) before figuring out it must be a Super Nintendo game.
And then puts it in upsidedown...
Jon cracking wise about the developer's logo in the credits.
"TDK, that's short for They Don't Kare about their reputation. A little known fact." "Ubisoft, huh? More like U-Betta-Start-A-New-Company-Soft." "Irem. As in, "IRemember them! oh wait, no I don't." "Ah, my favorite publisher: Absolute-LEE copied Sierra's logo!"
Schedule Slip: Initially he uploaded his videos weekly. However, the gap between new videos has gotten bigger and bigger to the point where the series updates monthly these days.
Game Grumps can be blamed for this, just like how all of Egoraptor's animations ground to halt around the same time.
Serious Business: Some of the fatal obstacles in Bubsy are less than plausible.
"No, you'e right, I forgot. Gumball machines are the cause of 200K deaths per year, it's... it's serious."
Jon: Oh Jacques, you can't play! You don't have hands! *Rim Shots are repeated over and over until they turn into a drum solo*
Or another fantastic example from his recent Nightshade video:
Jon: (Trying to pick up a crowbar) A don't do it, and B don't do it, so what do it? This controller only got twoit... dem buttons... *beat, followed by incredibly sped-up Super Mario World music with the subtitle 'THAT WAS A JOKE, thx 4 COMIN'*
Spinning Newspaper: In reaction to Bubsy having damage dealt by falling too far without gliding.
JONTRON QUITS "Falling damage in a platformer? There are some things no man should have to see. Nice tits btw" says a melancholy JonTron
Stylistic Suck: Anytime Jon sings badly. According to Game Grumps, Jon's trained in Musical Theater, and when he sings properly he's actually pretty good.
Surprise Creepy: The Dino City review ends with a lengthy scene of Jon singing "Firework" out of nowhere. And then suddenly...
DEATH COMES TO US ALL!
Surreal Humor: Especially in the end of the Nightshade video.
Take That: In his review of Sonic Colors (even though he ultimately gave the game a score of "A/5"), he mentions that a crucial matter in determining whether or not the game will be good is that the Wii may not have enough Blast Processing to run it. For those without context, "Blast Processing" is an utterly meaningless term invented by Sega in the early nineties to promote the Sega Genesis and Sonic the Hedgehog, claiming technical superiority over the Super Nintendo. Jon takes cracks at Sonic Team regularly, but seemingly all in good fun.
Home Improvement begins "with you standing around like a idiot watching Tim Allen use what he read in a book was "humor." (cue grunt)
Tantrum Throwing: Nightshade concluded with Jon hurling the cartridge against his garage wall, hitting it with a viking mallet (which broke), and then holding the broken handle like a mic while singing into it.
And then he flies into the sun.
Tempting Fate: During a ranked game of League of Legends.
Jon: I don't think anyone is going to need my Wish.
An ally has been slain.
Jon (Laughing): Are you kidding me?! You make me look like a jackass?!
Jontron: Oh... this is gonna be one of those days, isn't it...
A more generalized version would be "Ooooh noooo."
Top Ten List: Though he sometimes does six when he can't think of ten.
Unexplained Recovery: In the Star Fox Adventures episode, Jacques dies in a fiery, bloody explosion. A few minutes later, he's back to normal, as if nothing had happened.
Jon (casually): Oh hey, Jacques. I thought you died.
Bubsy causes him to fling the controller in disgust and start singing "Deck the Halls", except that his lyrics go, "THAT'S THE WAY WE WASH OUR HANDS! FAH LA LA LA LAAA...!!"
(at Tim Allen's drill weapon) "Whoa, whoa, I don't remember ordering any jalapeņos on THIS pizza!"
Jon reaffirming his mission in the Star Fox Adventures video.
"I'm here to shed light on the betrayed heart of every man, women and child that have been brushed under the rug like last week's sawdust!"
"As high as Madonna's tits!", and "As hard as gravy train tits!"
"This bear's got the moves of Muhammed Ali...and the butt of Bea Arthur."
The final entry in Game Grumps's Donkey Kong Country 2 series. It got a little passionate.
So does Fox's Item Get. As it happens, Fox picked up a furry critter, but the polygons resemble a severed head.
Nightshade's puns causes him to retch offscreen.
What Could Have Been Jon theorizes that due to the level design and trailer of Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts, that it originally was going to be Banjo Threeie at some point. And says it could have been a pretty solid game, even if it didn't live up to the originals.
Though composer Grant Kirkhope possibly Jossed this theory when he appeared on Game Grumps.
Jacques was originally going to be a 'jive black man' but Jon changed it at the last second to a cyborg.
, where he casts League of Legends games with all his characteristic energy.In the summer of 2012, Jon started a new YouTube channel with Egoraptor, called Game Grumps, wherein they play games and hang out.Not to be confused with Proton Jon.
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