Giant Bomb


It's a website about video games!
—Jeff Gerstmann
...charmingly garrulous...
—The New Yorker

On his blog on March 5, 2008, and again on a broadcast of X-Play, Jeff Gerstmann, best known for his role in the Kane and Lynch debacle at Gamespot in 2007 (long story short: he was fired, essentially for giving an overly negative review to a game heavily featured in Gamespot advertising), revealed that he and Ryan Davis (an editor who had resigned in the aftermath of said debacle) had joined forces to create a new gaming Web site called Giant Bomb. Vinny Caravella and Brad Shoemaker, two other resigning Gamespot editors, joined them soon afterward. The site started as a simple blog while the actual layout was being constructed. It is now, in addition to featuring reviews and industry news, a wiki for anything related to gaming.

Giant Bomb had several sister sites that serve similar purposes including Screened for movies, Anime Vice for anime and manga, and Comic vine for comic books. As well as Tested which is not a media site but rather a foundry for technology inclined news. These websites, including Giant Bomb, were collected under the Whiskey Media banner. In March 2012, the Whiskey Media sites were sold to various companies, with Giant Bomb (and Comic Vine) being sold to CBS Interactive. The staff and site stay the same, only the owner is different.

The website can be found here.

Not related to Big Bulky Bomb.

Giant Bomb provides examples of the following tropes:
  • American Accents: The Bombcast notably contains a strong variety of US accents: Ryan and Jeff sport Northern California accents, Brad's legendary smooth voice is of an Appalachian accent, and Vinny carries a Long Island/New Yorker accent.
  • Berserk Button: Jeff went on an especially enraged rant during the Quick Look of Broken Steel, specifically about the ending of Fallout 3.
    • Net-speak used in games or real life tend to set them off. For the win indeed.
    • Exhibiting characteristics of The Stoner is a surefire way to get on their bad side.
  • Buffy-Speak: In the titles of a few of their features, most notably "The We Just Thought To Do This Live Show" and "Video Thing".
  • Butt Monkey: Brad Shoemaker, especially in the video for the NintendoDSi XL.
  • Shoemaker takes off his blindfold and sees that Jeff and Ryan have made off with all of his things, including his wallet and the keys to his car.*

Shoemaker: "Awwwww, not again..."

*Jeff axe-kicks a shipping crate and smashes the top in*
Dave: I hope that totally wasn't something, what if somebody, this is why we don't have pretty things...
Jeff: I...well...
Ryan: And that didn't really help our cause any!
Jeff: This is their fault for sending us a f-f-FUCKING CRATE! *Jeff smashes it again*

Ryan: I'm gonna put [my hands] in glue then put broken glass on the tops of my hands so that we can fight about Giantbomb's--
Patrick: Game of the Year: Catherine!
Jeff: "Fuck, *incoherent yelling*, goddamnit."
Ryan: "--Top 10 Games of 2011. It's gonna be something fierce."
Brad: "Not game of the year: Track Mania."
Jeff: "Uhhh."
Vinny: "Wearin' my Dark Souls shirt."
Ryan: "We'll see you guys soon."
Jeff: "Burn in your Dark Souls shirt."

  • Name's the Same: Tested's Will Smith, who sometimes pops up on the Giant Bombcast, is in no way related to the actor. Not that this hasn't stopped Ryan Davis from joking that they're the same person.
  • Overly Long Gag: While Game Room in and of itself could be a considered an Overly Long Gag orchestrated by Microsoft to rob Jeff Gerstmann of all his money, the Game Room Quick Look for the week of 12/22/10 ends with a series of elaborate jokes about the game Venetian Blinds.
  • Pretentious Latin Motto: "Colluctatio Cervus Reperio Excellantia" for the 2010 Game of the Year stuff. It means something like "Find the Excellence in the Wrestling Deer" (in reference to Luchadeer).
  • Running Gag: Starting from the Persona 4 Endurance Run, all protagonists in Quick Looks of Shin Megami Tensei games are named variations of "Charlie Tunoku" (Charie Tuna, Chuck Tuna and Charlene, to name a few).
    • Brad's tendency to die whenever he's on camera.
    • Jeff searching for "broken avatars" in Game Room. One time, there were even two at once!
    • For the Chrono Trigger Endurance Run, when given the chance to rename characters, Ryan simply changes the first letter of the name to B. This leads to names like Brono, Bobo and Brog.
    • Due to an incident while playing Daggerfall in which nearly a half-hour spent in the character creator was lost due to them forgetting that autosave hadn't been invented yet, Vinny constantly implores Dave to save the game whenever they are recording a Quick Look or a Random PC Game video.
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here: While doing a Quick Look for Jurassic: The Hunted, Ryan got so disgusted with the line "What the Foxtrot is going on here?" that he left in the middle of it all and had Brad take his place.
    • In the second episode of the NintenDownload X-press, Jeff tricks Vinny and Brad into guesting by making them think they were recording a Bombcast. When they realize they've been duped, they angrily storm out of the podcast room, leaving Jeff sad and alone.
  • Spin-Off: All aboard the NintenDownload X-press! Created when the Nintendo downloads section of the Bombcast was canceled, the NDX is the underground podcast that sticks it to the man as Jeff Gerstmann brings the thunder as he reads the descriptions of Nintendo's download only titles!
  • Too Dumb to Live: In the Persona 4 Endurance Run, they decided to auto-fight against high-evasion enemies with Hama. They got hit by one, and lost an hour of grinding.
  • Video Game Movies Suck: Ryan Davis' This Ain't No Game segment explores many of the most terrible video game to film adaptations.
  • Vitriolic Best Buds: The Quick Look of New Super Mario Bros. Wii by Jeff, Ryan, Vinny, and Brad is spent by them raging at each other for getting each other killed.

Duder, it's over!

  1. ↑ (whose Gamespot review of The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess is the Trope Namer)
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