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Game Sack is a video game-focused Video Review Show hosted by Joe Redifer (and, until April 2019, Dave White) that started on YouTube in April 2011. The usual format is that Joe reviews games based around a general topic like games on a specific console, imports, games he recently beat, remakes, etc. The show differs from most review shows on YouTube in significant ways: Joe is way more positive about gaming than most review shows (though he occasionally won't recommend games), he goes by his real name and doesn't portray a character, and while the show isn't a Mid-Review Sketch Show, episodes do end with a sketch. The sketches reflect the type of home movies Joe and Dave had been making in the decades preceding the show.

The show has a sister series called Playing with Sacks, an edited Let's Play-esque show similar to James & Mike Mondays.

Until 2017, Joe was assisted by Jennifer Pan, usually behind but occasionally in front of the camera. In April 2019, Dave announced that he would be leaving the show as co-host due to personal reasons and time commitments, though he did leave the possibility open for occasional reappearances in the future.


Game Sack features the following tropes:

  • Bait-and-Switch: The ending skit of "Games That Push Hardware Limits" seems like it's going to bring Dave back for a cameo appearance, after Joe remarks how he doesn't want to play Street Fighter: The Movie alone, but then Craig Stadler appears in the bottom-right corner of Joe's TV monitor to challenge him to an unfair match.
  • Bias Steamroller: Averted as Joe will put his biases aside to give a more objective critique. In his "The Best 16-Bit Castlevania" video, he ranks Castlevania: Bloodlines above Super Castlevania IV, despite the latter leaving a better first impression on him. He also dedicated an entire episode to bad Sega Genesis music, despite being a Sega fanboy.
  • Caustic Critic: Generally averted, though Joe will review games he doesn't like here and there.
  • Cool Old Guy: While calling them old is a bit of a stretch, Joe and Dave were already in their late 30s-early 40s when they started the show, much older than the vast majority of gaming YouTubers when starting out. Almost all of their games were collected over the last 30+ years, including many rare games bought when still in print.
  • Commuting on a Bus: Dave after April 2019.
  • Description Porn: When a specific game console is the focus for an episode, Joe will always describe the specs of it.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness: Joe and Dave played up their respective console fandoms more often in early episodes (Joe is a Sega fanboy who owned a Sega Master System in the 1980s, whereas Dave is a diehard Nintendo fan). There was also more toilet humor with stock fart sounds added into the opening title music.
  • Gag Sub: Sometimes done in episodes featuring games that have a lot of Japanese audio, usually in a mondegreen-style to make it sound like the Japanese voices are saying profane things in English.
  • Lesser Star: Dave. If other YouTube shows feature an appearance by Game Sack, it's almost always just Joe, the most notable exception being Retroware.TV's Video Game Years. Joe has also filmed some special episodes on his own and did a few live streams without Dave. Most of the social media named "Game Sack" is Joe, with Dave having his own accounts as "Game Sack Dave".
  • Master of None: This was Joe and Dave's opinion on the Hyperkin Retron 5, a console that could play games from various retro consoles. They found it noticeably inferior to the original consoles in many ways, and encountered various compatibility issues, including games that couldn't even be played. While they still enjoyed playing on it, they concluded it wasn't right for their needs, and would rather just play the games on their original consoles.
  • Mid-Review Sketch Show: Averted; the sketch is typically placed at the end of each video, after the credits.
  • Parody Episode: "Let's Make a YouTube Show", an episode centered around Dave wanting to make his own YouTube channel and Joe showing him the channels of Happy Console Gamer, Game Sack, Metal Jesus Rocks, Classic Game Room, The Irate Gamer, and Angry Video Game Nerd. Every segment features Joe dressed as each channel's host, with Dave appearing in the Game Sack and Metal Jesus segments, and culminates with Dave combining them into the Exasperated Gamer.
  • Pokémon Speak: The skit at the end of "The Nintendo 64DD" video has Joe try to entertain the audience alongside Nintendo 64 Joe, who can only say, "Game Sack!" This is justified in that the game Nintendo 64 Joe was made in relies on pre-recorded voice lines to let him speak at all.
  • Put on a Bus: Dave after April 2019. He stated that him living a couple hours away from Joe, where the episodes are filmed, combined with having a family was too time consuming. He does still make occasional reappearances on the show though, as he and Joe are childhood friends.
  • Reality Is Unrealistic: In "A Very WTF Episode", people in the comments were impressed with how Joe and Dave were able to make the flashback footage look like it came from the 1990s and the makeup and wigs that made them look 15-20 years younger. The flashback footage was actually shot in the '90s and they legitimately were younger.
  • Running Gag:
    • "X MEGA POWER", a spoof of game packaging that touted the size of the game's ROM chips.
    • A clip of Joe saying, "Did you just say tits?" if someone says "titular", originating in the "Games with Female Protagonists" video's closing gag.
    • A sketch premise of Dave doing something like eating or playing a game, Joe approaching, asking what Dave's doing, and stealing whatever is in Dave's hand. Only featured in "A Very WTF Episode", but they filmed different versions of the sketch over a period of thirteen years.
    • Dave stealing Joe's copy of Snatcher in closing segments.
    • Joe yelling "GREENDAWWWWG!" whenever he brings up the obscure Genesis game Greendog: The Beached Surfer Dude!.
    • Whenever a video game designer or composer is mentioned, their picture will briefly appear onscreen.
  • Self-Deprecation: The duo often makes fun of themselves. Dave, in particular, regularly criticized his wooden acting. This reaches its apex in "Let's Make a YouTube Show", which has one of the channels they watch being a worse version of Game Sack, and it's subsequently criticized by them.
  • Sturgeon's Law: An entire video has been dedicated to Genesis games with horrible sound, with Joe attributing this to either a shortage of talented composers or a lack of incentive to learn how to make video game music, due to how new this technology still was at the time. He considers games composed with the GEMS sound engine to be a compounded case of this, with numerous Western titles being released with "that familiar low-quality Genesis sound that people associate with buzzing and farts", consequently cementing "the Genesis' reputation for bad sound". He does list the soundtracks of Comix Zone and Tommy Tallarico as exceptions to the rule, but strictly that.
  • Toilet Humor: In the Working Designs retrospective, Joe points out the odd presence of fart jokes in their earlier translations, and so he makes it a Running Gag throughout the episode.
  • Trolling Creator: invoked Joe has admitted that he occasionally likes to troll a certain portion of his fanbase.
  • Vindicated by History: Invoked several times on the show, where Joe recommends games that once left a bad first impression on him:
    • In the "Video Pinball" episode, Joe admitted that he hated Sonic Spinball when it was first released for its dreary graphics, clunky gameplay, and grating soundtrack, the latter which he still stands by in this video. While he still feels it could have benefited from living up to the standards set by the main games, he nonetheless appreciates the game on its own merits. He even lampshades this in the end of this segment of the video:
      Wow, I never thought the day would come where I'd actually recommend Sonic Spinball, but I am, and you should have it.
    • In "The Best 16-Bit Castlevania" video, Joe initially dismissed Castlevania: Bloodlines for its unfortunate timing, having come out five months after the technically superior Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, and also its atypical take on the series. However, after giving the game a chance, he "began to realize just how truly amazing this game really is", with qualities that aren't noticeable at first, but are nonetheless substantial. What solidified this installment's vindicated status is the end of the video, where Joe set his own Nostalgia Filter aside and ranked Bloodlines above Super Castlevania IV, the latter of which he's praised as a generally flawless experience.
    • "Games that are Better than We Remember" is dedicated to games that were either overlooked or contested at the time of release, but were better received at the time of making the video.

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