Web Video / Guru Larry and Wez

"Hello you!"

A New Media enthusiast investigating various computer game controversies, video game ventures and digital disasters that you didn't even realize were a thing, with series such as "Games Yanks Can't Wank", a series about games that were only released in the United Kingdom on their beloved home computers and "Fact Hunt", a series that, of course, details various obscure facts about video games, old and new, as we say: But, hello you! This is the page on Larry Bundy Jr, and we welcome you to it!

Originally making videos on ScrewAttack with his friend Wez, these two guys from The Midlands moved on to YouTube to provide voice-over top-10 countdowns related to popular video games, as well as other gaming-related videos. By the early-to-mid-2010s, Larry would run the channel by himself, though Wez still makes an appearance every now and then. His main channel can be found here.

Larry is one of the few members left on Channel Awesome (along with Doug Walker and Brad Jones) in the wake of Channel Awesome's March-April 2018 controversy, solely out of spite and to watch the drama, although none of his videos were posted to the site since February 2022 before it was closed and made to redirect to the YouTube channel instead in 2023. However, as of February 2024, his channel has finally been removed as a result of the Channel Awesome Website shutting down for reasons unknown.

Tropes:

• Added Alliterative Appeal: Larry is fond of these, dropping a good few of them in the intro most of his videos.
• Artistic License: Guru Larry is said to use "Trap Streets" to make the truths slighty exaggerated.^note Trap Street coming from the act of making a nonexistent or misplaced street on a map to counter plagiarists. This method allowed him to catch WatchMojo copying part of his "Top 10 ACTUAL Worst Selling Consoles" video.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Invoked in the intro to "Games Yanks Can't Wank" when the normally upbeat theme song suddenly takes a shift to a darker tone, courtesy of Narcis Prince:
  Would you like to be my friend
  I don't have many friends
  But what does this have to do with the soooooong?
• Blatant Lies: Larry doesn't know the answer of who were the first YouTubers to get their own television series. It was him and Wez, with their show Reviewmaggedon playing the intro as he asks the question.
• Borrowed Catchphrase: First used by Ashens in his early 2010s Terrible Old Games videos (among others), Larry keeps the tradition alive by using Stuart's "We may never know... (or care)" and "A fitting punishment!" catchphrases even in the 2020s.
• The Cameo:
  • The usual musical intro for "Games Yanks Can't Wank" features the appropriately British Billy Kane, Cammy White, and Narcis Prince.
  • The "Top 5 Hidden Pissed Off Programmer Rants" sub-series of "Fact Hunt" features voice-overs from several other personalities such as Maddox, Lazy Game Reviews, Jim Sterling, TotalBiscuit, and even Duke Nukem himself, Jon St. John.
• Catchphrase
  • Larry likes to start off his videos for real by saying "But... hello you! I'm Guru Larry and I welcome you to Fact Hunt!"
  • "I'll get me coat" whenever some particularly horrible wordplay gets a Lame Pun Reaction.
• Cluster F-Bomb:
  • Wez does this at the start of "Top Ten Overhyped Shite Games":
    Wez: We're not on TV any more, we can say what the fuck we want! Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!
  • The "Top 5 Hidden Pissed Off Programmer Rants" sub-series of "Fact Hunt" also contains a fair share of cussing. Take, for example, this rant against software pirates hidden in the code of the Amiga ECS version of Jurassic Park:
    "MESSAGE TO FAGSHITE AND PARAPLEGIC AND ALL THE OTHER DICKHEADS! BETTER LUCK THIS TIME! TRY AND REMOVE MORE THAT [sic] 20% OF THE PROTECTION THIS TIME YOU USELESS CUNTS! ISN'T IT TIME YOU STOPPED PULLING YOUR DICKS AND LEFT YOUR BEDROOMS AND GOT A REAL JOB?"
  • There are two episodes dedicated to cheat codes and pass codes that contain swearing. The first one, "Top 5 Offensive Cheat Codes", focuses on codes that are deliberately put in by game programmers. The second one, "Top 5 Offensive Passcodes (That all Exist Purely by Chance!)", focuses on codes that are generated due to the games' password systems (as opposed to battery backups and save files) that coincidentally form curse words.
• Comically Missing the Point: On a video riffing on DSP's Christmas special, Guru Larry commented how disgusted he was...because Phil didn't get the real Santa Claus for the video.
• Crossover: Has done several joint reviews with Stuart Ashen in which they look at board games based on video games.
• Curse Cut Short:
  • During his retrospective of DuckTales, Larry concedes that the game had a sequel, "but it was a pile of shi-".
  • A visual example from Larry's retrospective of Art Alive; one of the pictures Larry draws with the game includes text saying "ART ALIVE IS SH".
• Didn't Think This Through: In "4 S***y Patents that Ruined Gaming", he talks about two of Sega's patents actually helping their competition: trying to patent the transitions between the point of views in racing games, which they started in Virtua Racing, meant every other developer excluded the transitions, which ended up being a blessing in a genre that requires very precise timing. Additionally, they also patented the levitating arrow that tells you where to go from Crazy Taxi. When they took Fox to court over for using something similar in The Simpsons: Road Rage, other developers decided to use a far more efficient workaround: a glowing line on the maps that showed you the path to your destination.
• The Dog Bites Back: During #ChangeTheChannel, Larry has openly admitted that his reasons for staying on Channel Awesome amounts to being a "Fuck you" to the management ignoring him during his time on the site and wanting to watch the site implode.
• Epic Fail:
  • "5 Hilarious Idiotic Gaming Screw Ups" lists examples from developers, such as a cheat code for Keio Flying Squadron unlocking the full game in the demo and the DRM for Rainbow Six Vegas 2's digital version being so hard to fix that Ubisoft had to use a pirated crack of the game in order to make it playable.
  • "5 Completely Broken, Unbeatable Games, Thanks to Developer Stupidity" once again lists examples from developers, such as Bubble Bobble Revolution missing a boss fight on level 30 and halting any progression, and Electronic Arts telling players to "deal with it" in response to a glitch on the PSP version of Madden 06's Franchise Mode that shuts off the PSP and corrupts its save files whenever an interception is made.
• Everyone Has Standards:
  • At the end of Apaches, there's a list of names of real children who died playing on farms, but Larry stops there as he's not sick enough to joke about that.
  • Even Larry thought EA's treatment of Bullfrog and Peter Molyneux was terrible.
• Fourth Wall Greeting: A common introduction to his videos.

• Harmless Villain: His friend Ashens kills Itsmyyard on the Top Tens.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: invoked The "Top 5 Stupid Things Said by Game Journalists" episode mostly focuses on outlandish journal articles, such as one article confusing the Game Gear as a portable Sega Genesis years before the Sega Nomad was a thing and another proclaiming the PlayStation Vita would win over the Nintendo 3DS.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: The Fact Hunt episode "5 Times Scalpers Totally Screwed Themselves Over" documents how scalpers of things such as the PlayStation 2 and the Super Nintendo Classic Mini were eventually brought down by their own greed, with reasons ranging from "overestimating supply vs. demand or vice versa" to "backing a broken mess and being forced to issue refunds" to "being duped by rumors that it was invaluable in the homebrew community".
• Hurricane of Puns: When looking back at previous entries on the Top Tens, in preparation for #1, every number comes with a pun.
• Konami Code: The Fact Hunt episode "5 Utterly Bizarre Uses of the Konami Code" lists some results if someone inputs the now-ubiquitous cheat code. One of them is instant death for the player character.
• Machinima: Larry and Wez created a Wrestling Machinima video, named WMW Smackfest!.
• Market-Based Title: The Fact Hunt episode "5 Games Renamed for REALLY Stupid Reasons" covers this, from George Lucas forcing Star Fox 64 to be retitled as Lylat Wars in Europe,^note Due to Star Wing, which was the European title for the prequel, sounding like Star Wars. to Activision's UK branch renaming the first Tony Hawk's Pro Skater to Tony Hawk's Skateboarding.^note Because the execs there thought the Brits would mistake it for an ice skating game.
• No Export for You: invoked The point of his shows "Games Yanks Can't Wank" and "Films Yanks Can't Wank", looking at media that was released in the UK but not the USA.
• Nonindicative Name: Larry's internet image is being the one British guy on gaming sites otherwise dominated by Americans. Yet his full name, Larry Bundy Jr., sounds rather stereotypically American to British ears. Furthermore, the addendum to Larry's name is spelled "Jnr" in British English, but he thought the U.S. spelling looked better.
• Oddball in the Series: "The Rise and Demise of Beanie Babies", a toy-based episode coming off the surplus of video game-related videos. It is also bleaker than other videos and does not have a Peter Molyneux jab in it.
• Old Shame: invoked The Fact Hunt episode "5 Angry Programmers (Game Developers) Who Hated Their Own Games" focuses on game developers who hated their own creations. One of them even didn't like video games in general.
• Older Than They Look: Larry is in his late thirties, but easily looks a decade younger.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: EA being on the right side of history when they decided to counter-sue copyright troll Tim Langdell over the use of the word "Edge".
• Once per Episode:
  • A potshot at Peter Molyneux is made in every episode, no exceptions... even when they make the exception by finding something even more stupid. This has been retired.
  • Coming from the UK, at least one European game (port or original) appears in his lists.
• Out of Focus: Wez was this for many years. He wouldn't show up again until 2018.
• Precision F-Strike: Wez drops one during "Top Ten Biggest Rip-Offs in Gaming". It's bleeped out, but it's pretty obvious what he's saying.
• Pun:
  • "Fact Hunt" is a well known Spoonerism for "Fat C*nt" in the UK and Australia.
  • In every episode, at least one is usually horrible. Larry likes to lampshade them with a Beat and a quick "I'll get me coat".
• A Rare Sentence: Larry acknowledges that even he can say something nice about Peter Molyneux at the end of "10 Companies EA Bought, Then DESTROYED!!!" While explaining the circumstances that lead to Electronic Arts acquiring Bullfrog Productions, Larry comments that it was Molyneaux's business savvy that helped fight off EA from acquiring their studios in the first place. When Molyneux left, the company had nobody who could stop them from being bought out.
• Running Gag:
  • Larry has referenced the game "Pinball Construction Set" several times in his videos.
  • His various pot shots to Peter Molyneux.
  • Anytime he speaks the word "Edge", expect a shot at infamous copyright troll Tim Langdell.
  • A clip of DarkSydePhil's infamous "Thank you, you fuckin' worthless humans, for the views."
  • A common recurring gag in Fact Hunt is Larry's avatar trying to make himself visible from the long title covering the screen.
• Self-Deprecation: Larry tends to make fun of the fact a lot of his Fact Hunt videos have clickbaity titles, sometimes after making fun of someone else employing the same technique:
  Larry: But, Hello you! And I welcome you to Fact Hunt. "Five Purposely Broken, Unbeatable Games by Dickish Developers." Yes, I know it's a convoluted name. You try coming up with a more clickbaity title to describe this episode.
• Shoddy Knockoff Product: He reviewed British games that ripped off famous NES titles.
• Shout-Out: Boggle Flash (Ahhhhh!).
• Sound-Effect Bleep: Several times in "Top Ten Awesome Weapons", during the BFG-9000 segment.

• Spin-Off: Kickstarter-related videos by Dan Ibbertson of Slopes Game Room are sporadically uploaded whenever Larry is unable to post a Fact Hunt for the week.
• Take That!:
  • Done once a video to Peter Molyneux. Larry will find a way to poke fun at Molyneux in each "Fact Hunt" video, even when he's cutting him some slack by finding something so stupid that it makes him look good in comparison. "5 Times Peter Molyneux Was an Asshole" is an entire video justifying why Larry takes a shot at him in every video, but proving exactly why he's a target. "Top 5 Game Developer Meltdowns" has its intro compilation consist of games that Molyneux had a hand in developing.
  • Larry mocks the constant bizarre revisions to the Star Wars movies during his "5 Update Patches that DESTROYED Games" video.
  ...and not long after that, the developer studio pulled back the update and rolled the game back to the previous version. If only they would do that with some of the movies too!
  • Tim Langdell and Ocean Software are frequently called out by Larry.
  • Another frequent punching bag is DarkSydePhil.
  • Larry isn't very fond of PatTheNESPunk.
  • Larry is amongst the many who like mocking Chris-Chan, having even interviewed Chris for a video.
• Troll: His reasons for staying on Channel Awesome pretty much amounts to him being this.
• Unexpectedly Dark Episode: "5 Mascots Cancelled For Incredibly Messed Up Reasons" was first released on April Fools' Day 2017, and many viewers would have expected stories of amusing incompetence. Instead, the video reveals that three mascots were canceled due to tragedies.^note Sony's Captain Blasto due to both the game's director and his voice actor being murdered in 1998, Beam Software's Horace due to his creator suddenly going off the map after a respiratory emergency, and Domino's Pizza's Noid due to an incident where a mentally unstable man named invoked Kenneth Noid held a local Domino's hostage because he assumed the Noid commercials were specifically mocking him.
• Video Review Show: Reviewing the gory kid's 1970s PSAs such as Apaches and The Finishing Line.
• Viewers Are Morons: Discussed with the "4 Games Changed Because Publishers Think Americans are Stupid" episode of Fact Hunt. He also pointed out the irony of Eidos assuming that Americans couldn't pronounce "Laura" by showcasing some comments from the "5 Totally Messed Up Influences of Video Game Mascots" episode that proved the opposite - that Americans can pronounce "Laura" and (mis)pronounced "Lara" as "Laura" anyway - and suggested that the people responsible couldn't comprehend the notion that there are people in U.S. named Laura.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: Each entry in the "The Untold Rise and Fall Stories of 3 YouTube Gaming Channels" episode ends with the current status of the channels. Alex from Gamelife in particular died of third-degree bowl cuts.
• While Rome Burns: Larry's other reason for staying with Channel Awesome other than spite for the management for ignoring him: to watch the site implode.

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