Web Video / RndStranger

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RndStranger is a YouTuber known for his Famidaily series, in which he gave summaries for every game released to the Famicom in Japan, along with his opinions on said games, daily from 2021 to 2023. Since its conclusion, his mission has been to continue reviewing game consoles and video games exclusively in Japan to show the history behind them to people not native to Japan.

RndStranger's series provide examples of:

• Berserk Button: RndStranger has many pet peeves with regards to Famicom games:
  • Micronics, the contract developer infamous for their incompetent programming, especially their ports of games for developers like Capcom.
  • As a board game enthusiast, RndStranger has a deep disdain for Roll-and-Move games with minimal player agency, and is very disappointed that the majority of video board games on the Famicom are of the sugoroku^note lit. "Pair of Sixes", referring to the two six-sided dice typical of these games. Most of the time here, the term is shorthand for e-sugoroku ("picture sugoroku"), as opposed to ban-sugoroku ("board sugoroku") which are a different class of game closer to Backgammon. Roll-and-Move subgenre. Along with hating the luck-based outcome, he also hates that sugoroku-style games influenced what people thought board gaming as a hobby was for decades, as he explained when covering Yuuyuu Jinsei on the PC Engine.
• Content Warnings:
  • If a game contains potentially seizure-inducing effects that can't be edited out, RndStranger makes sure to include one of these.
  • The Famidaily episode on Tashiro Masashi no Princess ga Ippai has one of these as well, given that it begins with a discussion of how the game's namesake, Japanese musician Masashi Tashiro, is now infamous for having been arrested and reported repeatedly for sexual voyeurism ^note such as pointing cameras up skirts on the Tokyo Subway and looking into bathrooms and drug possession, which makes the fact that the game's princesses are based on the likenesses of real elementary schoolgirls selected by Tashiro and the game's developers much Harsher in Hindsight. This association, along with its general bad quality, make RndStranger rate the game among the worst the Famicom has to offer.
• Curse Cut Short: Does this twice in his video on Spectral Tower. Early on, he says that Idea Factory has a nickname, "Idea Fu-", which he says he shouldn't say out loud. At the end of the video, he says, "It's games like this why Idea Factory is known as Idea Fu-"
• Deadpan Snarker: RndStranger occasionally indulges in this. For example, in his review of "A Baseball Video Game So Bad, It Destroys Your Console," he sarcastically says that Goro allowing one of the best batters to get two runs off of him in six innings is a "dismal" performance that warrants him being demoted to the minor league. He later says that Goro throwing his ball as hard as possible against Gibson Jr. because he's too injured to have proper control of the ball is "something that definitely won't aggravate the injury," adding that it gives Goro's team a "narrow victory" with a score of 16-6.
• Delayed Reaction: Happens during his review of J-League Winning Goal when he realized that the first published game by Electronic Arts on the Famicom was also the second-to-last game on the Famicom.
  "This is the last Famicom game by Electronic Arts. They burst onto the platform in 1994 with J-League Winning Soc... wait a second..."
• "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: The opening and closing themes were composed using the Ikinari Musician music creation cartridge for the Famicom. The Year of FDS also has an ending tune composed from a different music creator, Family Composer.
• Fake-Out Fade-Out: He did this in his review of Power League III, due to there being so many nearly-identical Baseball games on the PC Engine.
  "Power League III is the third entry in the Power League series of baseball games."
  [ending card]
  "...okay, okay, I've got a little bit more to say."
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: In his review of "A Baseball Video Game So Bad, It Destroys Your Console," RndStranger mentions that the story mode of the game in question puts you in the middle of a game and requires you to fulfill a goal before moving on to the next scene, but the story doesn't acknowledge how things went for the player. For example, the player might be 12 points ahead at the end of the game section, but the story scene may claim that the protagonists are behind, or Goro will be at bat at the beginning of the next inning even if he was last in the previous inning.
• Guide Dang It!: RndStranger runs into a few games that don't have very useful instruction manuals, leaving him to poke around and hope he can figure things out. Notably, he complains that the manual for Spectral Tower fails to explain the basic gameplay, so you have to rely on the strategy guide, which has glaring omissions, to learn about the basic mechanics.
• Heh Heh, You Said "X":
  • The episode on Booby Kids starts with a comment of "Alright, get the snickering out of the way" and a clarification that "booby" refers to booby traps, not wading birds.
  • He admits in his "All* Sega in a Day" video that reviewing the game Dragon Wang gives anybody a great excuse to say Dragon Wang a lot.
• Low-Tier Letdown: invoked RndStranger says that Spectral Tower is extraordinarily bad about this, with the vast majority of the game's classes being "garbage" and unlikely to beat the game.
• Marathon Level: In the video about Spectral Tower, he says that after the 10-floor Goblin Tower, the 20-story Thieves' Tower and the 100-story Queen's Tower, you unlock the Spectral Tower, which has 1,000 floors. After completing the Spectral Tower, you unlock the final tower, which has 10,000 floors.
• Mood Whiplash: 1993 for the Famicom gets introduced with a jarringly grim simile.
  "If 1992 was the Famicom's twilight years, 1993 is the Famicom lying on a hospital gurney in a coma with a grim-faced doctor telling the family that it won't be much longer now."
• No Export for You: Invoked often, since most games released on the Famicom never left Japan. Inversely, he also has a special six-hour video briefly reviewing every game on the NES that was not released in Japan.
• Not Hyperbole:
  • RndStranger's claims that Mindseeker requires the player to be psychic are not exaggerated. It was made in collaboration with a "real life psychic" and actually does expect the player to perform some common displays of psychic powers before it lets them continue.
  • When discussing World Beach Volley, he said the ball was going half the speed of sound. In the ending card, he showed the math he did to back up that claim.
• Relax-o-Vision: When forced to talk about real-world Serial Killer Tsutomu Miyazaki when discussing Hisou Kihei Χserd due to the infamy of the invokedDummied Out poem about him inside the ROM, he placed pet photos submitted by his viewers on screen instead of anything relevant to the topic that he was uncomfortable discussing.
• Running Gag: Every time a Dragon Ball game is covered, a different incorrect summary of the series' plot is given in which it is mashed up with the plot of another popular anime.
• Sexy Packaging: RndStranger notices that otherwise unremarkable games are often more expensive on the second-hand market than expected if they have a cute girl on the packaging.
• Shown Their Work: Despite covering more than a thousand games (daily for Famidaily and the Epochs, three times a week for the Year of FDS and PC Engine Power), many videos contain a great deal of background information on the games, much of which has never been reported in English-language sources. And of course, collecting every Famicom cartridge takes a lot of time and money.
• The Stinger: Starting with the review of Tatakai no Banka/Trojan, every video has a closing remark in the end card.