Ever since Jack Black announced his new YouTube channel Jablinski Games late last year, fans have been desperate to see the Tenacious D man play through some of his favourite games.
Since launching, we’ve had five videos (one a week), and the channel already has well over 3.5 million subscribers. The only problem is that it isn’t really a video game channel in the way people expected, in that it’s just kind of… not one at all.
That’s not to say the channel isn’t brilliant, IMO. Here’s what we’ve actually seen from Jack’s channel so far: A day at the arcade, some bowling, a trip to the dentist, Jack rapping, Jack eating burgers, and Jack embarrassing his kids.
It’s safe to say it’s not quite what people expected then – though to be fair Mr Black’s first video did claim the channel would be about “games, food, and life”. Nobody can argue we haven’t seen any of the last two of those, even if we haven’t seen so much gaming.
With that in mind, what I can say is that Jack’s latest video is a straight up troll… but I’m okay with it. The clip, titled “We’re FINALLY Gaming” shows a thumbnail which very much implies he’ll be playing through the popular battle royale Fortnite.
I’m sure you’ve already worked out that Jack Black does not play Fortnite in this video. About twenty seconds in, the veil is lifted as Jack explains he still can’t get the Elgato (capture device) to work, but does promise starting next week, the “gaming videos will flow like wine.”
Despite the fact we don’t get to see Jack take on a big modern game like Fortnite, he does sit down and treat us to a little look at the decidedly more retro Vectrex, an old console from the early 80s.
Between this and the videos in which Jack takes his son to arcades to play old pinball machines from the 20’s, I have a feeling our host is trying to use his mainstream appeal to sneakily teach us all about games and consoles we might not know about.
There are millions of people out there you can watch stream a game like Fortnite, so if Jack Black wants to teach me about obscure consoles from the 80s in between hanging out with his kids instead, I’m absolutely okay with that.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.