Vinny

Vincent "Melpert" Vinesauce (born May 12, 1985) is the creator of the channel and brand, Vinesauce. He is known for his Corruption Videos, Tomodachi Life streams, and Shovelware Showcase. He is from New York City and has a love for pizza and music. He is also known for his ostensibly accurate impressions of famous characters and people, such as Mario, Luigi, Toad, Pee-Wee Herman, Sonic the Hedgehog, Shitty Bender, Homer Simpson, Bob Borglar Belcher, Tinky Winky, David Bowie, Watto, and Jay Leno.

Vinny is the vocalist and lead guitarist of Red Vox, alongside members Mike, Joe, Bill, and Jerrold. Self-described as "not adhering to any one genre," they are often classified as Indie Rock, Alternative Rock, or Psychedelic Rock. In 2018, the band released a 9 minute and 23 second-long single titled "Stranded," which reached #35 in RYM's Top 100 Singles of 2018.^[39] In just a couple more years, Red Vox would reach another new height but this time with their music video for Garbage Land being placed in #54 in RYM's Top 100 Music Videos of 2024 ^[40]

History

The original Vinesauce YouTube page was created on February 20, 2010. Initially, Vinny used the channel to serve small recordings of video game playthroughs and amateur videos. During this time, Vinny became a fan of various video game streams on livestream, a then newly emerging medium. As his favorite streams began to collapse, he had the idea to give streaming a shot himself. All this happened before Twitch was created, so the concept of streaming was still new and more or less undefined. During a Q&A, Vinny explained the beginnings of Vinesauce, as well as how it got its name:

“It all started in a basement a number of years ago. A group of friends was gathered around a television playing one of the GameCube Mario Party games. The mini-game in which vines grow out of the ground and into the sky appeared on screen. A random member of the committee was said to have uttered "Doesn't it look like those vines are growing out of an asshole?" Many jokes and laughs later, "Vinny" became "Vine." At least, that's how the rumor goes. Oh, and for the record, sauce is just a fun word.”

On May 11th, 2010, Vinny launched the Vinesauce website and started his own streams. Within a year, he started to recruit full-time streamers, and would occasionally allow a guest to stream. It was from 2011 to 2013 that he would be joined by several additional streamers, including Joel, Fred, MentalJen, Limes, Darren, Rev, Hootey, and Imakuni. On April 13, 2013, a page for "Vinesauce" was created on TV Tropes.^[41] On January 25, 2014, a Vinesauce Facebook page was created, gained over 2,100 likes in the first four months.

Starting on July 26th, 2014 Vinny, Limes, MentalJen, Imakuni, FearGingers, ALTAKARI, Rev, Hootey, Joel, and Fred took part in running the first ever Vinesauce Charity event with Hootey overseeing and planning it. They managed to raise a final tally of $24,663^[42] shattering their original goal of $5,000. This unexpectedly ended up helping to fund a grant which typically requires individuals donating to at least reach $20,000 to be able to. For many more years they continued to raise money for a number of charities, the majority typically being for Pediatric Cancer Research Foundation Kids, specifically the research and comfort for children suffering from cancer and it's treatment complications. Almost every single year, since then, these charity streams kept on getting bigger and bigger, Leading to a grand total of $1,209,586.67 raised solely for P.C.R.F. Kids which is only one of the many different charities that community had raised money for to show support in these important causes.

• $24,663 was raised in 2014.^[43]
• $56,405 was raised in 2015.^[44]
• $108,209.25 was raised in 2016.^[45]
• $137,337 was raised in 2017.^[46]
• $181,902 was raised in 2018.^[47]
• $210,338.92 was raised in 2019.^[48]
• $256,515 was raised in 2020.^[49]
• $233,166.50 was raised in 2021.^[50]

Interview

From the Interview about Vinny in regards with Vinesauce and Red Vox from the 2017 HEAVY magazine^[51]:

Introduction

"Vinesauce is a couple of things. It’s my online handle and the name of my YouTube and streaming channel. Vinesauce is also a group of streamers that stream mostly within the same community. In the early days of streaming, having a group of streamers was a good way to maintain interest and keep the channel online longer. These days, with the way Twitch is set up, it’s not nearly as important to have a group. Despite us having and enjoying our own autonomy, we do still work together for our annual charity stream."

"Red Vox is a rock band I began with a couple of friends a few years back. I’ve been playing guitar since I was 18, and I love being in a band and writing songs – it keeps me grounded. The success of Vinesauce has had a huge impact on my life, but in the time I was focusing on streaming, I neglected music which was not all that good for me. Red Vox emerged out of a desire to focus my creative energy elsewhere from time-to-time, as well as share some songs with my audience. Some of those songs are about clown vomit, but others are earnest and mean quite a lot to me."

What led to your decision to become a streamer?

"Streaming was a relatively new medium in 2010. The largest audience I had seen for non-esports live streams was about 250. I was watching Monster Hunter Tri streams on Livestream around then and was fascinated by the instant audience feedback and interaction. I always had this weird desire to be a radio host of sorts, especially after listening to Art Bell on Coast to Coast AM for years. So, during my time watching these streams, I had a dream that I streamed Chrono Trigger (an actual dream by the way, not an idealistic one). When I woke up, I made an account on Livestream and streamed Chrono Trigger. My audio setup was terrible, and I had no idea what I was doing, but I enjoyed it enough to keep going and learned more along the way."

What are your favourite games to stream, and why?

"I always like the classic Mario, Zelda and Metroid trio when it comes to streaming. I grew up with those games, and it’s fun to share my nostalgia of them with the audience. I also like streaming RPGs like Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy IX and Skies of Arcadia. Knowing there are people watching who have never played them makes it even better for me, and I tend to go into detail when explaining the intricacies of the story and idiosyncrasies of the characters. Of course, streaming awful games is just as gratifying for me. The viewers love them and enjoy seeing me suffer through them. Bad games are easy targets for my commentary, as well."

On the flipside, you play a lot of ‘so bad, it’s good’ games. What is your Holy Trio of terrible games?

"If I had to pick a Holy Trio of terrible games, I’d start with Limbo of the Lost: a game that stole so many of its assets that it had to be recalled after release. The voice acting is hilariously bad as well, so there’s never a dull moment… Actually, there are mostly dull moments, but the game rewards you well if you stick with it. Action 52 is another major offender. It was a $200 NES release boasting 52 games in one cartridge. Seems like a good deal except all the games are broken, under developed, make no sense, or a combination of all three. I frequently reference Action 52 when playing any large collection of games. Recently, I played an old DOS game called Wacky Funsters, a game that is anything but fun. It fancies itself a comedy game, but most of the ‘jokes’ fall flat and just comes across as a vanity project for the creator. The games in it are also laughably bad clones of classic arcade games, but with a wacky premise. It’s just an overall really painful game, and its sequel was just as bad. There are plenty more, but those are some of the worst of the worst."

Do you see Red Vox as intertwined with Vinesauce and its sense of humour, or as its own, entirely separate entity?

“Red Vox is mostly a separate entity from Vinesauce. The streaming is me improvising nonsense while playing games live. The music is well thought-out in advance. One song could gestate for weeks before we’re happy enough with it to record it, and that’s just the music. Lyrics can sometimes take longer. The closest to the Vinesauce sense of humour we’ve come as a band was our 5-song EP Blood Bagel. After our first album, which was mostly serious, we wanted to have some fun and do dumb shit. So, we recorded an old song called ‘Fuck; and the rest went from there. It’s a somewhat conceptual comedy album about vomit in a ball pit, butts, and being tired of love.”

What are Red Vox’s musical inspirations?

“Musically, Red Vox pretty clearly has the DNA of early 90’s rock. There’s also a health dose of psychedelic rock in there. Bands like Radiohead, Queens of the Stone Age, Nirvana, Wilco and Pink Floyd immediately come to mind when I try to classify our sound. Our upcoming album, Another Light, definitely has a lot of more Radiohead influence as I was listening to a ton of Moon Shaped Pool. I’d also like to think that we’ve found a bit of our own sound on Another Light. Our first album, What Could Go Wrong, was us dipping our feet back in the water. That album was mix of old songs and new songs, some dating back ten years. For the new record, almost every song is brand new except ‘Reno’, which was completely reworked. There’s was a lot of musical variety on What Could Go Wrong. ‘There She Goes’ was influenced by The Cars, ‘Job in The City’ was our attempt at the Talking Heads style, ‘Atom Bomb’ was a combo of Tame Impala and Nirvana, etc. For Another Light, there’s variety, but also I think a more recognizably cohesive glue holding the songs together. The songs will sound like they’re part of the same album. Lyrically there’s also a core concept that shows up in each of the songs.”

What are your dreams, as in, what would you like to achieve in the future.

“‘Dreams for the future’ is usually interpreted as some external thing that could be achieved to bring happiness. I think I’m learning that no matter the level of material success or popularity, you still have to find your own happiness and be able to live with yourself when you’re not being showered with praise. I’ve achieved a lot of the things I set out to do, and many more good things happened without any planning or expectation. That said, the thing I want most is to be able to live fully moment-to-moment, and to be fully present and cognisant of my decisions more often. It may come across as hippy, new age nonsense, but from that state, a lot more opens up. Quelling inner turmoil is a good start if you want to spread that outward and change external shit. Or something like that. Okay, fine, here’s a more concrete answer: I’d like to continue streaming the games I like how I want to stream them with no interference from the services I stream them on. I’d also like to continue the success of the charity stream and raise even more money next year. Finally, it would be great if even more people connected with our new Red Vox album. I think Another Light says of a lot of important stuff for me and I hope it resonates with other people, as well. Of course, my most important dream for the future is that Metroid Prime 4 is an incredible, mind blowing game that makes it worth the wait.”

Trivia

• In a Red Vox AMA hosted on July 21, 2016 Vinny said his favorite food was chicken tendies.^[52]
  • His real favorite food is pizza.
  • The only pizza he doesn't like is pineapple (strange to him, despite its memetic nature) and one horrendous bacon pizza he had in Pennsylvania, which may have been 'bootleg bacon'.^{[citation needed]}
• He isn't ULTIMATE PSYCHO BANANAS about pasta, like his "last name" may suggest.
• Chrono Trigger was the first game that Vinny streamed.
• In 2016, Vinny released his first album with the band Red Vox.
• Vinny's Active Worlds video went viral after a number of clickbait articles stated that an ancient AI had come to life in an abandoned virtual chat client from the 90s.^[53][54]
• Ralph Bluetawn is by Vinny's own admission, not a 100% original character. However, he still loves pizza, beer, women and has yet to find the buvvins.
• Vinny, Criken, and Cr1TiKaL once created an erotic novel by each saying a single word at a time until a "story" was formed. To this day it's widely regarded as a cr1tical and commercial success failure.^[55] Vinny then attempted to recreate the scenario, but with Jerma instead of Cr1tiKal, a few years later— with similiar mixed results.^[56]
• Vinny was raised Catholic, having spent 16 years of his life in Catholic school, but left the faith after facing "a lot of hypocrisy" and "asking the wrong questions." Since then, he has been known to be critical of religion, in particular religious views being presented as fact (as shown in his streams of The Zoo Race and the GBA version of The Bible Game). However, he claims to still believe in God and engages in different spiritual practices such as meditation.^{[citation needed]}
  • Ironically, despite his upbringing, he is very adept at conjuring Satan during his various game corruptions.
• A common complaint about Vincent is that he mostly plays babby games, instead of schüt games. He has addressed this issue, and since then, has been playing more schüt games, like Wolfenstein: The New Order, and its expansion, Wolfenstein: The Old Blood.
• After quitting his editing job at a television station around the beginning of 2014, he launched a Patreon to secure his financial situation. After feeling guilty about it and knowing he'd not need it, he canceled it after the first payment. He'd donate the money during the first charity stream to PCRF.^[57]
• Vinny received two red dildos ('red cocks') in the mail from one of his stream mods (Gearomatic) around early March and joked about raffling them in his stream of Minecraft.^{[citation needed]} The same two red dildos were later used in one of his "PLUG AND PLAgue" videos where he used them to perform actions in the motion controlled plug-and-play game.^[58]
• According to eyewitness account from Imakuni, contrary to popular belief, Vinny smells like a "Man with good hygiene", and does not smell like pizza. Some fans theorize Vinny may have washed his natural pizza smell off prior to Imakuni's arrival, and these results are currently inconclusive as of now.^{[citation needed]}
• Vinny is known for having a passive ability which causes games to glitch for no apparent reason. Examples include clipping through a wall on his first try in Sonic 3,^[59] seemingly corrupting a ROM in the Sony Marzio Collection,^[60] and many moments in his Skyrim Switch series.
• Since the chat corrects Vinny whenever he makes a mistake, he often calls them "Chatyot", a play on them calling him "Binyot" and/or "Brainyot".
• Vinny was an English major. In his Metroid Prime 2: Echoes stream on June 18, 2018, Vinny lectured his viewers on when to pronounce the word 'the' as "thee" or "thuh."
• He once stated that his favorite video on the internet was when DJ Khaled could not make it past wing #2 on Hot Ones and promptly explaining that quitting is in fact, winning.^{[citation needed]}
• He can dislocate his shoulder on purpose.^[61]
• Vinny formerly used Chatango for chat rooms in addition to Twitch.^{[citation needed]}
• He has become aware of his various aliases listed on this very Wiki page.^[19]
• His first Tears of the Kingdom stream (which came out on his birthday), currently holds the record for longest stream in Vinesauce history with a total of 8:02:59, surpassing part 4 of his Breath of the Wild stream with 7:02:01. ^[62]
• His main highlight channel on Youtube has historically reached to 1 million subscribers on June 2, 2023. With this accomplishment, Vinny will soon be rewarded with a Golden Play Button (which he could later melt it into a dildo). ^[63]
• Both Joel and Vinny have been featured as background easter eggs in the Australian preschool cartoon "Bluey".^[64]
• Vinny in the game Thief Simulator is named after him.^[65]

External links

• Vinny on the Vinebooru
• Vinesauce on Twitch
• VinnyVinesauce on Twitter

YouTube

• Vinesauce on YouTube
• Vinesauce: The Full Sauce on YouTube
• Vinesauce: The Extra Sauce on YouTube
• Vinesauce: Twitch Clips on YouTube

References

v • d • e Vinesauce - The Sauciest Streams on the Net Content Creators Vinny & Friends Vinny Joel Limealicious Imakuni Rev ALTAKARI Darren Red Vox Jabroni_Mike Hootey Cr1TiKaL Criken Jerma985 A Jolly Wangcore Liam Triforce SimpleFlips Associates Captain Southbird JohnnyMonke SuperWiiBros08 Vappyvap88 Games Repainted Other MentalJen Fred Bran FearGingers StudyGuy GeePM KY Stream Content Large Categories Memes Iconic Streams Charity Events Noteworthy Games Vinesauce Themed Games Fan Animations Misc.