The ingredients of a good viral video are as such: Passion. Madness. A little bit of marketing skill—it doesn’t hurt if you’re a pro, unless you really make a mess of things. Alternatively, you can just really, really make a mess of things—that’ll get people watching too.

The best viral gaming videos of the year were built by people who at the very least had the first two things down. There were even a few marketing houses that learned from alliwantforxmasisapspGate and produced some excellent, non-exploitative content. But then it wouldn’t be internet video if there weren’t also a few, to use the local parlance, epic fails. Edge-Online’s top ten videos of 2008 pulls from all of these categories.



10. A Real-Life Chainsaw Bayonet?

Nowhere in this terrifying clip is Gears of War mentioned, but it’s the obvious inspiration for this brutal bit of violence against pumpkins. It turns out that attaching a chainsaw to a rifle makes for really awkward chain-sawing—who would’ve thought?—but these guys somehow still have arms, which means they still have arms to make a Rock-It Launcher next year.



9. Pac-Man: The Horror Movie

Several of these “games as movies” videos come out each year, with the best one ever probably being that Minesweeper one. But in 2008, the most impressive production was this horror rendition of Pac-Man, from the point of view of the mercilessly hunted ghosts. It seeks to remind the viewer that it doesn’t actually matter who these ghosts are, but they’re probably just normal folks and in any case, eating someone alive is a brutal and disturbing thing to do regardless of the nature of the conflict. Oh, and it’s funny too.



8. Fox News’ Crazy Mass Effect Sex Rant

The culmination of an inexplicable debate based on pure fallacy, this train wreck of a news segment is worth immortalizing forever. You’ve seen it, but it goes as such: Fox News builds a news segment about the nonexistent explicit sexual content in Mass Effect. It then calls out levelheaded journalist Geoff Keighley on those lies. Keighley explains in no uncertain terms that their assertions are completely mythical, yet after he leaves the roundtable still slams the game for being not rated Adults Only, and for being more awesome than Pac-Man. They go on to complain about the difficulties of being a parent and how hard it is to play Disney Princess: Enchanted Tales. This was a hilarious reminder to gamers that when grandma looks at them she sees alien-humping future people.