The Three Dudes (Group)

The Three Dudes (1983-1990, 1992-1997, 2002-2007) were a Californian gaming comedy trio consisting of recurring members Zack Brody, John Hathaway, and Nathan Vai. In their planning stages, they weren't a gaming trio at all. In Nathan's words, "We were a comedy trio that didn't really bring much new to the table". When Zack Brody, the "lead member" of The Three Dudes, had recently gotten a Commodore 64 in late 1982, he sparked a conversation between the members of the Three Dudes. He was very excited and intrigued by the idea of the Commodore 64, a powerful all-in-one machine. This in turn, sparked a conversation about gaming, when John said "Hey, let's record THAT on a VHS, and we'll put our commentary over it!". After spending what equates to $2,000 in today's currency on recording equipment and VHS manufacturing/distribution for their debut (although very short range, only about 300 copies, they weren't sure if the idea would catch on), they started recording for a 4 hour session. After a few sales (Around 25), they paid a local TV channel $100 in modern-day currency to play the first episode of their Ultima I series on air 3 times in one week. After this, their VHS sales EXPLODED, selling them all out within a week, after which they put out a second pressing of 500, which sold out in 2 weeks. After which, they put out one final pressing of 1,000, of which around 900 copies sold. After this, they dedicated to releasing a 4 hour "series part" every month for the next year, until Series 2 started in July 1984 which started the trend of 2 series parts a month. They started out only playing Commodore 64 games, but in 1984, they started additionally playing older Atari 2600 games on rare occasion. It was explained it was so rare for Atari 2600 games to be played on the channel because it was Nathan's, and he didn't like taking it off his TV setup. In September of 1985, around the start of Series 3, they added frequent NES games into their streams, which would continue until their temporary hiatus in 1990 when John Hathaway left to pursue other projects for a year. In around 1987, they upgraded their setup from the original, upgrading the microphone quality, soundproofing the living room it is recorded in, and, by a far extent, upgrading the video quality. Everything was business as usual until June of 1990, when John Hathaway was leaving to pursue a career of comedy writing for a well known comedy sketch show. The remaining members thought about continuing it on with only the two of them, but they decided the time to do it had been long enough anyway, and it'd be "a major dick move" to continue on without him. "It just wouldn't be the same." The duo revealed that they did a 4 hour session in July of 1990 that they planned on releasing as a release without John, but they didn't think it was good enough. In 2002, this was finally released in "The Three Dudes Archives: The Full DVD Collection"

When they returned in 1992, they were met with a boom of sales. Series 9 Part 1 sold 21,000 copies in the first week alone, and what was planned to be a one-time reunion (they planned it to only span 2 series parts) became a regular thing. They frequently covered SNES, Genesis, and 32X games. In 1999, The Three Dudes started releasing their videos over their website on a bi-daily basis, instead of the series part VHS formula. This was well recieved, but as more people started to do let's play videos around 2004, viewership dropped by 30%. They kept onward, but every month it would drop 2% on average, and eventually, on August 8th, 2007, they announced, once and for all, the end of The Three Dudes.

On August 9th, 2017, just over 10 years after their announcement, The Three Dudes announced their return to the platform, uploading videos exclusively on their website to get around Youtube's strict censorship guidelines. Some people were deeply upset with their revival due to the fact that they didn't ask Zack Brody to rejoin, due to an alcohol problem. The third Dude was now Randy Wickarman, a 23-year-old fan of The Three Dudes of which had his own lets play channel called Gaminstar running from 2009-2012, and was a regular member of the comedy troupe Evil Kneevil from 2011-2018. On July 7th, 2018, Zack Brody died from complications relating to liver cancer. He was 59 years old. Following this, John Hathaway left The Three Dudes, leaving Nathan Vai as the only member of The Three Dudes of which was still there. On August 14th, 2019, Nathan Vai died of a pneumonia in a hospital, at age 61. The current members of The Three Dudes are Randy Wickarman, Alexander Vai (Nathan Vai's son), and Aiden Brody (Zack Brody's daughter). The ratings for the new show of which started on September 2nd, 2018, replacing Mark Ronda with Alexander Vai and adding in Aiden Brody to fill in for Nathan Vai have been incredibly low, with many people considering Aiden Brody an incredibly unfunny comedian, with the most praise directed towards Alexander Vai and Randy Wickarman. On July 10th, 2019, Aiden Brody was forced out of the show and replaced with Don Apfel, Randy Wickarman's cousin. The show is set to have its final season in Series 23, ending on February 12th, 2020 with a span of 351 episodes over 37 years, making it the longest-running lets play series of all time.

The reception of The Three Dudes was quite mixed over their runtime. The Three Dudes started out incredibly acclaimed, by 1996 they were considered quite good. Around 2004, the quality of their show had started to deteriorate, and the last straw for most people was the complete removal of Zack Brody, and the fact that the remaining two members of The Three Dudes neglected to say anything. The final episode with Nathan Vai is lost media, it was released on August 4th, 2018 and was taken down on August 13th, 2018 along with many recent Nathan Vai episodes. All but this episode were brought back up on the 14th in remembrance of Nathan, who had been gearing up to leave, and the remaining Dudes wanted a clean slate. Their reasoning for this was due to the fact that they had never saved the episode to their files because they didn't ever think they were going to put it back up, due to the declining ratings and declining viewership.

It is widely speculated that John Hathaway will return one last time for the final 16 episode series, on at least three of the episodes. As the youngest Dude at age 55, he would easily be able to come and join the sessions for at least a couple of episodes. It is widely hoped.