If you like video game music there’s a good chance you’re familiar with GilvaSunner, a man from The Netherlands whose YouTube channel nearly six and a half thousand high quality uploads of various pieces of video game music (mostly Nintendo). Some time between the release of Super Smash Bros for Nintendo 3DS and Super Smash Bros for Nintendo Wii U, he received two copyright strikes and was forced to stop ripping music until they expired, or lose all of his videos. Following this, he did not upload a video for a year and a half. In his absence, on January 9th, 2016, a channel under the name GiIvaSunner (with a capital I in place of the L) was created by a group of Soundcloud shitposters to post fake video game rips under the guise of the aforementioned Mr. Sunner. The first of these parody rips was one of Battle!(Wild Pokemon) from Pokemon Ruby & Sapphire with the main melody of The Flintstones’ theme, a fun little joke that sounds pretty good. Things soon got out of hand.

My first exposure to the channel was through popular YouTube mash-up artist Triple-Q, in his video announcing the return of his YouTube video after a channel take-down on March 3rd, in which he used the GiIvaSunner version of Sewer Surfin’ from the classic TMNT game Turtles in Time. I was at first taken aback when I clicked the link to the video. Was GilvaSunner back? Was he a shitpost channel now? Regardless, I liked what I heard and for a time, things were good.

On April 6th, the GiIvaSunner channel was taken down for violating the YouTube terms of service. The channel has not yet returned, but was replaced six days later by SiIvaGunner. All seemed to be well for a time, until a group of people who cared a little too much in the comment sections of these videos started organising to dislike bomb any video the channel released using the μ’s song “Snow Halation” from idol anime/game “Love Live”, as they had decided it was “weeb trash”. The jury is out on whether or not they were right about this, but the dislike bombs led to what the channel described as “The Reboot”, in which all of the original running jokes of the channel, such as the Flintstones, Loud Nigra and Snow Halation were replaced with jokes such as themes Family Guy and Simpsons themes, Go My Way (from rival idol anime/games Idolmaster) and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure (which was a big factor, alongside the Super Best Friends in getting me into the series, which I now number among my favourite pieces of media ever. So no matter how much JoJo rips became the butt of a joke later with dozens of low quality Bloody Stream rips, I’ll stay thankful for that). This only served to make people angrier and angrier until the “lore” started. I’m not a fan of the “lore” element of the channel, to me it just got in the way of my dumb video game jokes. After an elaborate ARG involving episodes of The Nutshack, this “lore” ended in was Chad Warden and The Voice Inside Your Head making a deal to return the universe to the way it was at the sacrifice of Snow Halation (I hope it’s clear why I didn’t like this). The ensuing song rearranged the lyrics of the DK Rap to sing “SH! Snow Halation sucks! If you like Snow Halation you should kill yourself”. Which quite understandably annoyed a few people, myself included. It was less the “kill yourself” part and more how condescending it felt. A day later, however, this was released.

I wonder if this video was going to be released regardless of the response to the first. It’s a dumb video. A dumb, dumb video. But I’ll be damned if this isn’t the most emotional shitpost I’ve ever seen. From then until now, we’ve seen the whole Nutshack joke run it’s course, stupid nonsense like Mr Rental threatening to “Ban all mashups” and whatever the hell The Bean was. In the early hours of October 1st, 7 hours ago as of the time of writing, on what was in some time zones September 30th, the air date of The Flintstones’ first episode, SiIvaGunner uploaded his final rip. Battle! (Wild Pokemon) from Pokemon Ruby & Sapphire, updated to include as many running jokes from the channel’s 9 month stream of mostly hourly uploads as possible. Closing the loop.

GiIvaSunner and SiIvaGunner were a somewhat unprecedented musical project on the internet, over a hundred people working together, uploading on the hour. As someone who enjoys video game music and soundcloud shitposts, it was a dream come true. Through every dumb thing the channel’s done I stuck with it, no matter how many times I said “If he does this I’m finished.” And now here we are. 2 channels and over 4000 videos later. It was a gay old time, and without doubt the most impressive undertaking I’ve ever seen on YouTube. You will be missed, SiIvaGunner. The PS Vita’s waiting for you.