All right, so thanks for joining us today. My name is Vinicius and I'm a Cloud Advocate at Microsoft focusing on containers and Kubernetes. And today I'm joined by Tyler from Return 10 Studios. So Tyler, thanks for joining us today. No problem, glad to be here. Awesome, so you wanna introduce yourself to people probably know you from the customer story that was published about the fours of five, but please introduce yourself in your own words. Sure, so I'm a Principal Software Engineering Lead over at Turn 10 Studios. I help build and maintain and run all the cloud services that power all of our ports are rising and our ports and motorsport games. Been at Turn 10 Studios for about eight years and Microsoft for about 19 years. And that's me. That's a long time. I've been at Microsoft for almost 11 and I can imagine how 19 years must feel like. It's flown by. Yes, I can see that. So all right, so let's talk about Forza, right? So Forza, the customer story was published on the public website. You guys are running on AKS on Windows containers. So let's talk a little bit about the history first. So what was the state of Forza prior to AKS and what made you guys choose AKS and continuing on the Windows platform? Sure, so when I joined the team, we were actually running on-prem services talking to an on-prem SQL database. And as our games continue to grow and become bigger and have larger audiences that just really, we weren't able to continue to maintain the services in that fashion. So a few years back, we migrated over to Azure Cloud Services that definitely had some benefits over the on-prem solution. We're able to have elastic scalability and scale up and down. Given right around our launch windows and holidays, we have humongous peaks of users and then that dies down a little bit in between those periods. And so previously we'd have all this hardware for the launch and then we'd still have to pay for it and maintain it, but it wouldn't really be used in between launch and holiday. And so moving to Cloud Services helped us out a lot. And but we really wanted to be on a modern future-looking platform and Cloud Services is just not that anymore. And so early last year, we started looking around to see what's kind of out there. We were looking at Azure Service Fabric for a little bit and then Azure Kubernetes. And just given our timeframe of where we're at with different titles we were working on and different deadlines, we really landed on Azure Kubernetes as the solution for us. It seemed kind of natural, just the large community base around it. At the time, we weren't even positive whether that meant we had to go to Linux because that is the larger community. But as we investigated it, we found that we really wouldn't have to change that much of our logic if we went to Windows containers on AKS. And so being able to stay on Windows and stay on .NET framework, running in IIS, everything that we had been using for the forever, it really allowed our transition to happen very fast and able to get it all up and running and stress it and feel comfortable about it before our Forza Horizon 5 launch last year. Yeah, so the team had a lot of knowledge on Windows already and running on the Cloud Services. So you wanted to continue that knowledge and then if you had to learn something new, it was the Kubernetes portion of that, right? Yeah, exactly. Our team was very new to Kubernetes and Docker. So we had a lot of ramp up there. If we had to move to .NET Core or move to Linux or pick up something else, it probably wouldn't have fit in that timeframe. But the fact that we were able to reuse a lot of what we already knew and just learn those portions around Docker and Kubernetes, it allowed us to really move fast. Yeah, so I was going to actually ask what were the challenges in moving to the AKS platform? I'm assuming that learning curve of Kubernetes was already something that the team saw as a challenge, right? Yeah, I mean, just going from Cloud Services where it kind of packaged it all up for us and it was just one single package. Whereas now as Kubernetes, it's extremely more powerful but with power comes a little more responsibility and learning those differences between services and deployments and pods and nodes and config maps. Yeah, it's a little ramp up, the new area, new technology. The fact that AKS is kind of built as a platform though, we were able to build some great dev tools on top of it that interacted with it that just kind of helped the team out to onboard to it. And then, since we're already in Azure DevOps for our deployments, our deployments are still just one click in ADO. We just had to rework how that release pipeline worked a little bit. And so we were able to reuse a lot of the technology we already knew and just kind of switch out that platform. Great, so you touched on something that is actually true for a lot of our customers, right? Which is the seasonality of how many users you have using your services. So it's holiday, if it's a specific holiday during the year or if it's the end of the year, they will see an increase of number of users and then it will die down after that holiday or that specific date. That is true for you as well. And from reading the customer case on the Microsoft website, we noticed that you had like a million users using the service at the same time for the launch, right? So tell us a little bit more about your architecture and how you guys achieved that one million users concurrently. Yeah, so Fort Horizon 5 was the first time we really, we knew it was a great game. We knew it was gonna be a big launch. And so we set our stress goals ahead of launch to be considerably higher than we'd ever done in the past. And so we actually tested to 3 million concurrent users. And even just the first part, the hard part of there was to be able to simulate those 3 million concurrent users. We actually doubled down on AKS there and wrote our test harness in AKS since we were able to deploy and scale up our clients, which in turn would cause our services to scale up. And that architecture really is spread out to 17 different microservices. And so some of the common ones that are used in our game, the most popular is leaderboards and UGC, so liveries and tombs, those kinds of things, our drive at Tars or auction house. And so all of those are kind of spread out using all different kinds of Azure storage tech. So whether it be table and blob store or SQL managed instance or Cosmos DB. And so having all of those spread out has helped us scale tremendously. On top of that, one of the key things that got us over that hump in stress to get to that 3 million was using the Redis cache in Azure. That allowed us to really kind of bypass some of the lower latency calls were needed and just pull from our local cache. And so yeah, all that in combination was, we went into this knowing it was gonna be our biggest launch ever, but also probably feeling the most comfortable about any of our launches. And as you said, we broke a million concurrent for the first time in our franchise, which was very exciting. And at that time, all 17 microservices were auto scaling with no intervention and work great. That's awesome. Yeah, the auto scaling feature on AKS is something that customers take advantage a lot and just the peace of mind that knowing that you're gonna scale up and down as the load comes and goes. It's really a peace of mind for customers. But like one of the things that we're really interested to hear more about is, it's a Windows platform, right? So you continue on Windows running on AKS. And the question that customers have a lot when using that approach of taking an application that already exists moving to AKS is how much of the architecture needs to be rearchitected, I'm sorry, how much of the application needs to be rearchitected to work properly in Kubernetes and in AKS. So how was that experience for you guys? Yeah, I mean, we were definitely a little concerned given that we have these 17 microservices and the timeframe we had, if we had to rearchitect, any of the services considerably, we would not have hit our deadlines. And in actuality, once we kind of, we migrated two of them to start and wrote this playbook and then we're able to just apply that playbook across the board. And that playbook really just consisted of configuration changes, some certificate changes. And then like how we initialize the service of how we read in that config, how we install certs. And that was really the only change. I mean, in the end, we are still a full .NET Framework service running in IAS on these Windows machines. And so not much else changed down the line, which is what allowed us to move so fast. I see. So it was more like making sure that you were adopting all the microservices and cloud native approach of running an application rather than changing the code of the application itself, essentially. Yeah, I mean, there's no business logic. I mean, even how it was hosted in IAS didn't change. It's really just how it started up and how we deployed it. That's awesome. If you had like one recommendation for customers, like what was the main thing that you and the team learned during the process of this Migrate into IAS? What would be that you would recommend people looking to be aware of what was the major learning for you during this process? Hmm. So we ran into a couple of issues along the way. So one of them was previously our build agents in ADO. We used Microsoft hosted once. We didn't have to worry about it. And it would just do our new get restores and everything would work just fine. Being in the Docker world, every build is on a brand new container. And we ended up having to move to our own hosted agents in that scenario. So that way we could actually use the Docker cache. Without that Docker cache, we were downloading 10 gigabytes of the Windows image each time and our builds would take too long. And so by having our own hosted agents, we're able to reuse the Docker cache and not redownload all of those images, not do new get restores. And there's some great best practices on creating those Docker files to make sure you're able to reuse as many of those layers of the image as possible. So that was key. Using our keep alive, sorry, not keep alive, our health checks and our startup probes. Just so if a pod goes bad or fails to start up, we don't actually put it into rotation. So effectively utilizing those and making sure the service is healthy before it gets put into rotation. Yeah, keeping the image smaller is one of the issues that we talk to customers a lot. It's interesting to see how you approach that. Docker caches for sure something that customers leverage as well. Yep, and now that we are on AKS and we're on a supported platform and everything's working great, it kind of opens up some more possibilities for us in the future. We could move to .NET 6 and .NET Core and move to Windows Nano servers or even move to Linux to get smaller images and pick up some performance gains. So it's not something that we feel like we actually need to do because we're pretty happy with where we're at right now. But it kind of just unlocks that possibility for the future. Yeah, the fact that you have that possibility open, it's already positive, yes. Yep. That's awesome. So anything final for our viewers, anything that they should know about you or the team or fours of five, maybe your avatar so they can play with you. Tyler Hen is my gamer tag. Feel free to friend me and I try and play a lot of Forza Horizon 5 whenever I can. It's one other thing, actually it was a huge improvement in our dev environment. In the old world of being on cloud services, every single deployment had two VMs that had to spin up for it just for redundancy. And so across 17 microservices, there's 34 VMs already. Whereas now in containers and Docker, we're able to actually stuff all those 34 pods onto just like three or four VMs. So it was actually a great cost reduction in our test environment. And then in our production environment, we did actually play it safe and go with one pod per node to start with, just to keep it very similar to how our old architecture was as we were still learning the environment. And now we're actually able to pack some more pods onto nodes and get even cost reduction in our production environment, which has been great. That's awesome. At this plane, what is the configuration you're gonna use and the sizing of the VMs that are going to run your pods and how many pods you're gonna use is something that customers are also interested in learning more about. And usually the recommendation, there's some guidance of course, but usually the recommendation is played safe, make sure you have enough for supporting at least the load that you think it's gonna have, but then keep an eye on all this care as well. And yeah, I think that approach makes a lot of sense and it's good to hear how you play with that. All right, so thanks a lot for your time. I think that's it for today. Thanks for joining us again. Thanks Tyler for the time and we'll see you on the next video. Thanks a lot.


Completely gobsmacked. F***ing hell! What if I can make this massive statue 150 tons disappear? Hey, guys, do you want to see a magic trick? No, we're in the book. Excuse me, do you want to see a magic trick? No. Excuse me, do you want to see a magic trick? Yes, I'm a bit worried. Yes! Over 90,000 people see this statue, the Angel of the North, every day. But what if it wasn't here? Look... But what if I could do it with the real thing? This is Anthony Gormley's iconic Angel of the North. Just one example of the thousands of art projects big and small, supported by the National Lottery over the last 25 years. But imagine if there was no National Lottery. Imagine if arts like this just disappeared. Well, today, I will try and make that a reality for one of the nation's most loved pieces of art.  I've had a stage installed here next to the Angel of the North. So, I found some people off this week. Oh, come on. Put them on a bus, and we drove to the statue. Bye, guys. Through this frame, we have a perfect view of the statue so you can all see it. Can you see it? Yeah. Without the funding, many of our galleries and artworks wouldn't be here today. Now, this camera will not cut away. What you're seeing at home is exactly what you'd be seeing if you were here right now. I want you to concentrate on the Angel of the North and imagine that it does not exist. Luckily, for the last 25 years, the National Lottery has been funding amazing works of art like this. So, next time you fill out one of these, remember, it can lead to lots of this, but can also help fund all of this.


Blue skies provide the perfect setting for a day of parachuting. American soldiers and airmen took flight with their Latvian counterparts at Lille Varde Air Base to do some static line jumping. We're jumping today with all the foreign countries. The reason that's important is we're always working with different units and to know how they operate and how they jump is just better on us, better training for us too. After gearing up on the ground, the C-130 climbs to 1,000 feet and once the jump master gives the signal, it's time for Senior Airman Jordan Thompson's favorite part. I like the falling. It's awesome to be able to look out and see everything and see everybody else. It's fun. A drill and rush. While Senior Airman Thompson, a joint terminal attack controller with the Illinois National Guard, has jumped many times, Exercise Saber Strike marked one personal first. I was excited. I've never been out of the country so this was cool for me to see it. As the jumpers pack up their shoots after another successful day in a new country, the joint training continues on the ground at Saber Strike 15. Air Force Staff Sergeant John Archiquette, Lille Varde, Latvia.


What are the five smallest back rooms levels? When you think of the back rooms, you probably think of a huge expansive place with infinite rooms and hallways and roads and environments. But in this video, I'm gonna be going over five of the smallest and tiniest back rooms levels that you should probably never go to if you have claustrophobia. Let's get into it, shall we? Backroom level 44 is classified as a class three difficulty and is unsafe with a pretty low entity count. And the entities are not the dangerous part of the level. The level is thought to quote, be intrinsically connected with the front rooms or with real life. It looks like a completely bare and empty mall outlet that's kinda run down, but it also kinda looks like a big office space. Only half the lights work, but the half that does work doesn't make that loud buzzing that most of the back rooms levels make, especially level zero. Now the lights do buzz a little bit, but not nearly as loud as the other lights, which is important because that buzz is a huge part of the back rooms and for this level not to have it, it's worth documenting. There are window entities in the darker sections of the levels, but so far nothing bad has happened near them, nothing too bad at least. So they're considered pretty safe. Now all of the active window entities here show moving pictures of real life behind them. So if you look out of them, you'll see kinda like a slide show of real life and that's why this level is connected to reality. There's actually a theory that the windows themselves are some kind of gateway back to the world, but no tests have been done to show it and I'm not trying to jump through a window just because I see the real world. If I've learned one thing, it's to not trust the back rooms. This entire level has been classified as non-Euclidean, meaning that traveling and mapping out and just looking at the level is pretty much impossible since the layouts are always changing and if you walk in one direction, you'll end up in a completely different direction than the way you walked. And on this level specifically, the glitchy non-Euclidean effects get worse the further you get from the level entrance. So where you spawn in on the level won't be too bad, but the further you wander out, the worse this effect will get. So you might not be able to find your way back, just watch out. Like I said earlier, this level is completely empty and barren. There's literally nothing here and that's still true, except there is a weird fluid that's made up of unknown atomic compounds. And this fluid is in a bunch of different rooms on this level and it looks kind of like liquid coal.  It's very viscous and acidic and has the ability to corrode cardboard and wood quickly. And in some cases, it's actually been seen dissolving the walls and ceilings of this level. Yeah, that's pretty weird, I gotta be honest. So it goes without saying that you should avoid it at all costs. Now as far as creatures go on the level, it's actually pretty decently rare to see a creature, but when there is one, it's most likely gonna be a Wrangler. Now Wranglers are these huge things with a bunch of arms that burrow down into the ground and stalk their prey. I've done a full short on them, so I'll link that below. But in the darker parts of the hallways or rooms, there can actually be any entity from the back rooms. It's just that the Wrangler is the most common. Now those window entities that I talked about earlier also have a really, really strange effect because recently there's been multiple witnesses saying that they saw a silhouette figure behind the window pane. It's only showed up when the situation that the wanderer was in was really anxious or tense. And when you look at it, you get really weird feelings of liminality and anxiety. Nobody really knows what this silhouette is or why it's here, but it's thought that it could represent a person's fear about not being in reality. Either way, it's really creepy to just have a random shadow behind a window in the back rooms. I mean, that's creepy. And the entity has sometimes shown that it can talk with a wanderer through short, repeated phrases like he is destroying my home. He is going to bring doom to us all. Only when you escape can you find him. Reality will shatter along with my home. This place has lost its safety. You must stop him before he takes over. So, I mean, that's pretty terrifying to listen to. It's also really vague and no one really knows what it means. And also the context of those phrases doesn't make any sense because there's nothing actually too dangerous about this current level that we can see. I don't know, maybe the shadow could see something we can't. Maybe it's trying to warn you of something. Not sure, man. There's only one outpost here from Meg and they try to study that thick corrosive liquid from earlier and around 20 people live in this outpost. And to enter the level, you can walk through a randomly appearing metal door on level zero and to exit, you can go back through a similar metal door which will lead you this time to level nine or 11. Good stuff. So, Backroom's level 18 is classified as a class one difficulty and is a safe-ish overall level if you do it right. The level looks different to every person who gets to it. Now, even though it looks different, it's still the same theme to everybody because it typically looks like a memory or a set of memories from their life, typically from ages two to five. But the most common description is that it looks like a daycare or a preschool or a babysitter's house or an old bed or a playground. You know, just get stuff. And if you don't have any specific memories of those kind of things, then the level itself will just be a blank void which is kind of sad. Throughout the level, there are always numerous voices that are whispering. There's no body specifically making these voices but you can hear them in your head. They can whisper anything but the main thing they normally whisper are your biggest regrets or your biggest mistake. No one knows how a random Backroom's level can know what your biggest mistake or your biggest regret is but apparently they know everything about you and on top of this, the level can also resurface memories that you literally had forgotten about or had pushed out of your mind like a childhood pet or something like that.  So just do your best to ignore that whispering and if you do that, then you're gonna have a pretty fun time reliving your old childhood memories. On the other side of that coin, the level is apparently addictive to some wanderers and they choose to spend all of their time here which technically can work since there's food and stuff in your memories but honestly, I can't say that I blame them for wanting to stay here and live in their childhood memories forever instead of going back out to the Backrooms because it's safer here and it's nostalgic. There's only one entity on the level and it's a plush, sentient, sapient dinosaur that if you find it, it'll lead you to food and water but it's pretty rare to come across. The one outpost here is called The Children and it's a group made up of around 20 to 25 people and the people who are in the group are the ones that stay here forever even though each person sees a different memory, they can all still see each other, which is pretty nice. To enter at this weird core level, well there's no concrete way yet. The only way that might work is if you get a random resurgence or a random recollection of memories from your childhood while being on any other level in the Backrooms. So if you're feeling really nostalgic, you might get sent here. To leave at this level, you can find that plush dino and they'll take you to an exit or you can just walk through wherever you came from or do again, whatever you did to get here since no one knows exactly how to do that. I gotta say this level is pretty creepy but wholesome at the same time since it just replays old childhood memories. It's depressing, but at the same time, it's not, I don't know, I feel like I'd visit this level, not gonna lie. Backrooms level 974 is classified as class one, safe, secure and is devoid of entities except one entity, obviously. The level has several decently sized rooms and they all have this same pink color scheme throughout. There's no doors that lead to the quote, unquote, outside of the level and there's also no windows that look outside where the windows are, there are paintings that would represent what is outside so there's no windows. The level isn't very big and there's only a few rooms that can even be accessed fully. There's a normal size bedroom, a master bedroom, two bathrooms, a living room and a dining room with a kitchen right next to it. The plumbing on this level and electricity both work and there's even a good wifi connection, nice. So wanderers are encouraged to use these amenities because the next levels are not gonna be very safe. I made videos about level 998 and level 999 so if you wanna go check those out, they're pretty crazy. They'll be in the description below. The entire level is decorated with a pastel pink color and there's these characters that are from reality that are on the walls as well, like Senrio and Senex. No clue what those are but cool. There's also some consumable stuff on this level inside of the pantry and the refrigerator. The food is always in good condition as well and it can be eaten and whenever something's taken from the pantry or the fridge, it replaces itself by an unknown means, nice. Obviously the only entity here is named Kitty. Kitty is about 3.2 meters tall or around 10 feet tall and is a humanoid entity with extremely long limbs and they've got no hands or feet so it's just sticks, nice. Kitty's skin is matte black and it kinda looks like leather and there are no visible facial features on Kitty. However, it seems like the entity can hear and smell just like normal people can but it's unknown how. Kitty moves extremely smoothly and quickly, like disturbingly quickly and smoothly and is known to jump scare wanderers who don't know that it lives here but so far Kitty's not shown any aggression towards people yet and just watches wanderers from a distance with kind of a curious attitude. There are no bases here and the only way to enter the level is if the wanderer has quote unquote something cute in their possession when they travel between two different levels and if they do have something cute on them when they travel between two different levels there's a small chance they'll be sent here. To exit this level you have to give Kitty that cute item that you had that brought you here. Once you do you'll wake up on a safe level so make sure you've got cute stuff on you I guess. So to summarize, Kitty's house is a level that's just the inside of a house with a pink theme and cute artwork all over the walls. The level has food and water available and the plumbing and electricity and wifi all work pretty well and it's safe to rest in and the only entity here is Kitty who's a giant slender humanoid that doesn't attack but still looks pretty creepy, nice. So ashes to ashes or level negative 319 is classified as a class five difficulty and is very, very unsafe and unsecure and it's really dangerous because of non-entity hazards. So you don't really have to worry about creatures or stuff like that attacking you. It's the level itself that's gonna attack you. The level takes place inside of a really old and broken down house that's all covered in a thick layer of dust, ash and other kinds of trash and waste. There are three bedrooms in this house, one and a half bathrooms and there's also a basement, an attic, a living room and a dining room as well as a kitchen and office but you can't even get to the basement or attic so that's kinda lame. The temperature inside of this disgusting house is always pretty cold. It stays around 47 degrees Fahrenheit or negative 8.3 degrees Celsius and on top of it being cold it also feels really damp and it smells dank and just awful kind of like mold as you can imagine. Now no one knows what the outside of the house looks like because every exit is sealed with some kind of impenetrable material and from what you'll see in a second you don't really have time to try to exit the house like by going at the door so no one really cares or knows what's outside. When this level was found there was a big note carved into the table in the kitchen that pretty much says who is there and why they think they won't make it out of the level alive. One of the wanderers was 13, one was 16, one was 25 and one was 31 and that 13 and 16 year old were siblings but that note includes some really creepy details and honestly just some terrifying stuff about why this level is dangerous. I'm just gonna read you the last paragraph and it says I do not want to be forgotten so find a way out. This place ages you by one year every five minutes. I timed it. I've been trying to find a way out for six hours now. I watched my sister unalive about 30 minutes ago and she since has crumbled into ash and dust. I'm not too far behind but I'm exhausted. I understand now why my grandfather was tired all the time. I'm going to unalive here. I made my peace with that. I'm too tired to go any further. I guess I wrote this to beg you to find a way out. When you get out of here tell the others not to come to level negative 319. If they happen to find themselves here tell them to find an exit as soon as possible. So yeah, just like that note said this level makes you age one year older every five minutes that passes when you're there. So if you stay in the level for six hours you'd be getting older really, really quickly. And this anomaly is why there's ashes all over the ground because when you unalive you literally disintegrate and fall into ash and add to that ash pile. So that is, that's so creepy. I'm like, wow, that is disturbing. There's also been some researchers that got stuck in this level after that first note was left and they left some information on the walls written in blue crayons. Apparently most people unalive at around age 85 according to this note but one of these explorers colleagues was actually earlier than that and they unalive that age 60 from diabetes which means that this level can make you have illnesses that you'd get normally while aging in real life but you get away faster here because it ages you so much quicker. The researcher who wrote those findings on the wall apparently developed some kind of illness themselves and it was some kind of heart disease because of the rapid aging. Well, you can guess what happened in both of them. The weird thing is that this aging isn't just for humans because it affects entities that are here too. One wanderer went to the bathroom on this level and found an old hound in the bathroom, ran away from it and then the hound started chasing and then just disintegrated because it was so old and he just watched it turn right to dust. So, yeah. Now the first person to ever make it out of this level alive and to escape and stuff was named wanderer BB and apparently he was 14 years old when he got sent here and when he left he was 38 years old because he was trapped in the level for two hours which made him become 24 years older than he was when he got here. He still has no idea how he got to this level but the good news is he does know how he escaped. The way he got out was he went to the upstairs bathroom and found the mirror there and the mirror was covered in dust and ash obviously so he wiped the mirror down, cleaned the ash off and then got no clipped instantly to level zero. He was 24 years older but he was alive which is better than what everybody else could say. There's no way to tell how many wanderers have actually gotten to this level and never escaped because the entry is still unknown like no one knows how you get here but it is imperative and very important that the second you get sent here you run upstairs to that mirror and you hope that it works to send you out because if it doesn't you can age 24 years in two hours so yeah. It's level 8.1 which obviously is a sub-level of level eight. This entry starts with a notice directly from Meg themselves that reads as follows. This page has been partially expunged due to an unexpected, unsystematic total collapse and destruction of level 8.1 because of an inadvertent fusion of this sub-layer and level eight whose effect was firstly witnessed on February 12th, 2013. A separate document is to be shown to the general public that overviews the potential hazards that the collision has consequently caused. These environmental hazards in level eights are only prone to occur near the initial entrance of level 8.1 before it was destroyed, the Meg team. Now since I've read that really fun message let's get into the level explanation but be warned because level 8.1 is a very weird conglomeration sub-level type thing. It's described by wanderers as a really complex system of claustrophobic hallways that kinda look like caves but they're really tiny and you can barely fit through them. This 8.1 area is different than other sub-areas because it doesn't actually seem to be related to level eight at all like not in the physical sense at least. Instead the thought is that they barely are fused together somehow since on rare occasions you can see a connecting hallway from level eight to 8.1 but I'll get into that later. It's really unstable and it's really bad. This partial fusion of level eight and 8.1 also cause very weird auditory hallucinations and visual hallucinations and distortions. These distortions happen on levels eight and 8.1 near where the 8.1 entrance is so Meg advises everyone to avoid any exploration of these distortion areas because they're pretty dangerous and it doesn't really sound that fun to me. Now as I said earlier, level 8.1 itself is a mixed jumble of winding hallways that end in dead ends or they loop around and go around each other. The rock that these halls are carved through seems to be made out of a bedrock which is unnaturally durable and hard to break. The bedrock leaks almond water in certain spots but it doesn't just leak almond water it leaks a really weird red liquid that smells terrible that's been described as sulfuric so it smells like sulfur. Nasty. The almond water that leaks through the rocks sometimes makes sinkholes happen or ceilings to collapse because it breaks down the rock over time and these things happen frequently which makes mapping out a safe path in this area almost impossible. The rock hallways also cause those auditory and visual hallucination distortion things that I talked about earlier. Sometimes these things sound like crashing rocks sometimes they sound like shrill whimpering and this whimpering is so distorted and so loud that it causes some people to instantly pass out on hearing it. The frequencies have also broken ceramic objects and can even cause you to have complete derealization after just 10 minutes of exposure. No one knows the source of these sounds but it's assumed that it has something to do with the fusion of level 8.1 and level 8 together and some kind of disembalance thing. The hallways also have a really weird physical anomaly in some areas and will cause pretty gross things to happen, be warned. Like if you touch a wall, you could get sucked into the rocks and instantly just be encased in rock and instantly unalive, grody. There is another part of this sub-level as if it couldn't get any more dangerous and the area is called layer 2. This refers to the actual space between the intersection of level 8 and 8.1, like I mentioned earlier. So this layer 2 is where the two different levels connect together. Those distortions from earlier, specifically the auditory ones are way more noticeable here, way louder and it's unknown why it's so much louder here but it can be assumed that wherever the source is, it's here. Layer 2 actually has longer, skinnier hallways than the rest of level 8.1 or even level 8 and there's no light source here which is the opposite of 8.1, the main area, because there's just some kind of light source through the whole level there. But this area, layer 2, is dark, like real dark. The nasty red sulfur stuff from earlier also leaks way more in this level and it causes pretty deep puddles to form on the floor. The echoing off the walls and the auditory distortions make it impossible to document what kind of entities are here or how many of them there are and there's no info on them literally at all. There's nothing. So who knows what lurks in the shadows, gotcha. Maybe the creepiest part of level 8.1 and layer 2 is that there's been no documented instances of people escaping. So for all we know, people could get trapped there for an eternity in the winding claustrophobic halls. Creepy to think about. Now the way this article's information was apparently gathered was by quote, a method of analog communication via the use of certain devices. Okay then, I like how specific you are. Kind of goofy, but we're vibing. The main theory on there not being any documented escapes is that there's actually another layer called layer 3 outside of the bedrock walls that perhaps has an exit, maybe. Or maybe there isn't this area and people are just doomed to wander the small hallways for an eternity. Nice. Also, there are no bases, entities, entrances, or exits documented. Just letting you know that I did not forget to add them to the video, they just don't exist. So I feel like a sub-level this crazy definitely needs a summary so you can understand it better. So I'm gonna try to simplify it as much as possible. Sub-level 8.1 is somehow barely connected and confused to level 8 through a weird distorted area called layer 2. Level 8.1 has a bunch of paths that cut through bedrock with walls and ceilings and there's really weird audio and physical distortions that occur. Layer 2 also has these weird distortions but they're way louder and more intense and layer 2 is darker than level 8.1 and both areas are extremely unstable. But to get to level 8.1, you would have had to go through layer 2 as kind of like a corridor area. You got it? Does it make sense? Me neither. All I know is that it's terrifying to think that if you come here, you might not be able to escape. Backroom's level negative three or of light and darkness is a very, very dangerous place and dangerous is an understatement. It's classified as a class mirage difficulty for having psychological tor- reality warping geometry and deceptive influences and I'll explain what all that means in a second but pretty much it means that nothing is as it seems. The level is located deep into the backroom somewhere and it physically might be the smallest level ever found cut up into a bunch of parts.  Each of these cubic rooms has four walls except the walls are not just material, they're mirrors. So all four walls and each room you're in will be mirrors and the mirrors are facing inwards towards each other which is creating an infinite reflection on all sides. Now it's not the mirrors themselves that make the level creepy, it's actually what you see in the mirror. When you're in the first cube, you'll see your own reflection, pretty normal and you'll see that for the first few rooms at least. And the good news is you aren't stuck in one room forever but that's also bad news because it just gets worse. Now to exit the rooms, you'll need to look for a part of the mirror that doesn't look completely solid. It kind of looks like it's waving water and then you can just walk directly through it. And if you do walk through the mirror, you'll be sent to an exact copy of that same room except each time you do this, go from one room through the mirror to the next room, you'll notice that the mirror will become more cracked and more imperfect and you'll also notice something creepy looking back at you in the reflection and it's not your own reflection at this point because as you get deeper into this labyrinth of cubic rooms, you'll start to see a more mangled abomination of yourself like a decayed zombie or skeleton looking back at you instead of your normal reflection. Each time the image will get more and more distorted and gross and ugh. Kind of like you're looking into a fun house mirror from a carnival except it's way creepier and creepier. It also doesn't really make any sense that you can see your reflection because there's no light in the cube rooms. Instead, the light comes from the reflection itself and since there's just infinite reflections, you can hardly tell where anything is. It's hard to find any depth perception.  So yeah, that's not fun. You'll eventually get so far deep into these small cubic rooms and these mirrors to the point where the reflections of you aren't even reflections. They act like their own entity and kind of move on their own. They almost kind of shadow what you do except they don't move exactly when you move and they look gross and disgusting and they seem to just move around behind the mirror as they will. Of course, at first you'll think that this is because you're going crazy or losing your mind and you won't think anything of it but as you keep going deeper and deeper you'll start to accept that they're not your reflection and that they're trying to hurt you and at that point these reflections will start to talk to you and verbally talk to you. They'll sling insults at you, they'll give you false information, they'll scream at the top of their lungs and keep in mind, this whole time you'll be trapped in different rooms with each wall being a mirror so it's not like you can go anywhere and sometimes these entities in the mirror will even convince the wanderer to walk to places in the floor that aren't solid and can be fallen through.  You'll land in another mirror room with more reflections. If you don't find the exit to the level then you could be stuck in this infinite loop of small mirrored room with monsters looking back at you from the mirrors. So you're probably gonna want to listen to the exit section. Now this is a quote from a wanderer that came here that they jotted down in a journal. The voice beckoned me to free it, repeatedly and desperately telling me, please you're making a mistake, don't just sit there, let me out of this prison, don't end up like me. When I opened my eyes, I saw my reflection persistently slamming her blood fist into the wall to my left. The glass was cracking more with each successive punch and I stumbled back in fear, unprepared to confront whatever could step through that wall once it broke. However, I must have backed up too much such that I went through the wall into the same room in fact, though my rogue reflection was gone. My nightmares are not in there unfortunately. All around me I saw some mirror walls gradually fracturing. Even when my reflections on those walls displayed my same panicked expressions and conformed to match every move I made. What an adrenaline rush. I traversed this maze of mirrors for what seemed to be several minutes, running towards mirrors that lack visible cracks and just closing my eyes before I made impact. Was I escaping my own self or was it something else? So yeah, as you can see, this person is crazy. They're running away from their own reflection and this will happen the deeper you get to this level. To enter, you have to walk through a mirror that's not made out of glass on level 365 and to exit, it's pretty hard. You have to find something to break the mirror that you're staring at and hope that behind the mirror is a tiled bathroom or tiled room behind it. And if you see that tiled room, it'll be some kind of bathroom in a random backroom's level. And if you're planning on walking through it, you better hurry because the mirrors heal and fix themselves. So you have to be careful when breaking them because you don't want to hurt yourself and you don't want to be trapped. Just make sure you jump through it after you break it. Because the mirrors can lead to nothing, just a blank void. And if you go through that, ha, no one knows where you go. So that's fun.


FormBX257 was one of the first people to talk about G.I. Joe on YouTube. He inspired a community of G.I. Joe fans. He's the reason I am here. He started Cobra Convergence with me and Timmer. Two years ago, Kevin posted his last review. No one has heard from him since. We hope he is well and we hope he will return. Today, we honor our friend. Hello everybody, hooded Cobra Commander 788 here. We are in Cobra Convergence 7. It's the 7th year of G.I. Joe fans coming together to talk about Cobra. You can find information about it on my website, hdc7aa.com. Cobra Convergence started in 2016 with a collaboration between me and Timmer from Half the Battle and FormBX257. And for the first few years of the event, we were all in it. Kevin had taken a couple breaks from making YouTube videos, but in April of 2021, he had returned. And in May of 2021, he posted a review of the 1989 Mudfighter. That was his last review. Without warning or explanation, he disappeared and nobody's heard from him since. I tried to reach out to him, but I didn't hear back. I don't know if he's okay or if he needs help or if he just moved on with his life. Whatever the reason, we still miss him and think of him often. The last Cobra Convergence video from FormBX257 was the 1992 Cobra Eels in Cobra Convergence 4. And that's the figure we are reviewing today. And I've asked some people to join me in honor of the grandfather of G.I. Joe YouTube reviews. HCC788 and CC7 present the Cobra Eels. This is the Cobra Eels, the Cobra Underwater Specialist from 1992. This figure was available in 1992 only. It was discontinued for 1993. This is version 2 of the Cobra Eels. This version of the eel was designed by Kurt Groen for Hasbro and sculpted by Paul Sorton. How many versions of the Cobra Eels existed in the vintage era? More than you may think, the Eels were the root of several branches of Cobra Specialists. To talk about the vintage versions of the Cobra Eels, this is Mike from What's on Joe Mind. Hey, this is Mike from What's on Joe Mind. Since my photo area is a bit destroyed right now, we're going to take a virtual look at the Cobra Eel family. Here's the original Cobra Eel from 1985, designed by the legendary Ron Rudette. He's a full-on classic in his gray, black, and red wetsuit with black dive gear. He's one of the best figures of a fantastic year of G.I. Joe figure designs. Our first eel in Snake's clothing is also from 1985. It's the original Snow Serpent. On their file cards, Snow Serpents are described as, quote, the Arctic branch of the Cobra Eels. Eel training is a prerequisite to Snow Serpent training. That makes a lot of sense. You'd want an Arctic environmental specialist to have basic dive skills. There's water everywhere. Our second example also arrived in 1985, as the Lamprey, the pilot of the Cobra Moray Hydrofoil, was revealed to be an offshoot of the Eels. The Lamprey file card states, quote, to qualify for Lamprey training, and it must be a Cobra trooper in top physical condition who has completed his eel training and been operational as an eel for at least a year. In 1987, the Eels enter Cobra Lore again. Piloting the Cobra Sea Ray requires one to be an eel, as the Sea Slugs file card explains that, quote, Sea Slugs are chosen from the ranks of Eels. This is especially notable since the Cobra Eel was not available in stores in 1987. This continued at the end of 1986. 1987 also saw the release of the Ice Viper, the driver of the Cobra Wolf. He's also related to the Eels, because Ice Vipers are, again, according to their file card, quote, the mechanized branch of the Snow Serpents, both of which must first qualify as Cobra Eels. 1988's Hydro Viper is the Demon of the Deep, but first, that's right, he's a Cobra Eel. The Hydro Viper file card states that they, quote, are qualified Eels Cobra Frogmen who volunteered to be surgically altered to withstand nitrogen narcosis and other side effects of deep diving. Ouch. The second version of the Snow Serpent was released in 1991, and its file card still referred to them as, quote, Cold Environment Specialists of the Eels. Remember, this is a full five years after the last time Eels were sold at retail in 1986. Finally, in 1992, today's subject, the second version of the Cobra Eel was released.   Yes, we do. Yes, we do. In 1993, a third Cobra Eel would be released as part of the Battlecore line. That figure used the same mold as version two, but was a little bit more purple and had different accessories. He was not released with Chompy, the Robot Shark, so we don't like him nearly as much, and we're not going to talk about him anymore. There were other Cobra Water Specialists and divers, but their files don't make any mention of them being related to the Cobra Eel Core. Here's a last quick look at the full family tree for today's subject, Cobra Eels, version two. Since so many Cobra units came from the Eels, they are probably the most important branch of Cobra. All troops start as vipers, but Eel training is required to advance to more elite teams. The only group that could claim to be equally important would be the Crimson Guard. GI Joe had some counterparts to the Eels, guys who worked underwater, and mostly they were versions of Deep Six and Wetsuit, but the first one was Torpedo from 1983. He was a Navy SEAL in a black and gray diving suit. Torpedo was followed up in 1984 by Deep Six, version one, the driver of the Shark flying submarine. He was in a mechanical Deep Sea diving suit. In 1986, there was Wetsuit, version one, another Navy SEAL in a diving suit and scuba gear. Also in 1986, there was a second version of Wetsuit released as part of the Special Mission Brazil set. It was the same figure in different colors. In 1989, we got Deep Six, version two. He was no longer a vehicle driver and he had a better looking Deep Sea diving suit. In 1992, the same year the Eel version two was released, we got Wetsuit, version three, the Navy SEAL in an updated and I will say better looking diving suit. Also in 1992, there was Deep Six, version three from the Eco Warriors subset. He was the deep water specialist. He had a colorful diving suit and this was a man with a porpoise. In 1993, there was a Wetsuit version four in the battle core set that was the same as version three but in different colors. There was also a 1993 Deep Six version four that was the male away version that was the same as version two but in different colors. Finally in 1994, there was Shipwreck version two. Version one of Shipwreck from 1985 was a sailor but version two was a Navy SEAL in a diving suit. I hear he was quite the stinky diver. There's an outlier in all of these enemies of the Cobra Eel undertow from 1990, Destro's Frogman. This wasn't a Joe character but this could have been an enemy of the Eel. Destro sometimes worked with Cobra and sometimes worked against them. To talk about the card back for this figure here is Snoova's Corner Cafe. Hey everybody, it's Dave from Snoova's Corner Cafe here. I'm gonna walk you through the card back here for the Eel version two. So let's take a look at it. Alright, first of all we got this red background here. It was something they were doing in the 90s. This indicates that he is a bad guy. The blue would be for the Joe characters and such. We got the number 12 here. You can't see it, mine's a little peeled off but he's number 12 in the 1992 series. We got that the shark shoots torpedo and battle stand included. Got this card art here with the Eel with his trident gun and the robotic shark. Art work was probably done by Hector Guerrero. Over here we got instructions for how to fire the torpedo out of the shark's mouth and also how to use the battle stand if you couldn't figure that one out. Flipping over to the back here. We got the cross sell of all the figures that were coming out this year. Got watched the new adventures of G.I. Joe here for the new cartoon series. We got ads for the drug elimination force, eco warriors and ninja force. Got a 90s style flag point there and a 90s style file card. We now had the little picture up here. We had the picture here with the diagram of different accessories and features that he had. I do want to add one interesting fact here is that he's got some extra details on the face and if you look at the figure here, he is missing it. You can see where the grooves are there but they are unpainted. The card art, you can see where it looks like they had black lines there done. I kind of wish they would have added that. I think it would have been a cool addition to the figures look. So that is your card back there. These 90s file cards had a numbered list of descriptions of the features and accessories so I will refer to this list when describing those features and accessories. Let's look at those accessories and I'm not going to start with the obvious one that you're staring at right now. I'm going to start with the Trident Spear Gun. This is in yellow plastic. It has a three prong Trident Spear which is why it's called a Trident. It has a pistol grip. This grip fits very tightly in my figure's hand so I'm not going to put it in his hand because I don't want to risk breaking the thumb. It has a very short shoulder stock. The file card calls this a nautical spear gun with three prong hole puncturing spear. You probably immediately thought of the Trident Spear Gun that came with the 1986 Dreadnock Monkey Wrench There are obvious similarities but this does not appear to be an adaptation of Monkey Wrench's spear gun. The details are totally different. This appears to be a totally new mold. The next accessory we're going to look at is not that one. We are going to look at the swim fins. These swim fins are in silver plastic. They have foot pegs so they will fit on the feet of the action figure. They have a ridge pattern on the flipper. The file card calls these stabilizer foot fins for power swimming. These swim fins are reissued from the swim fins that came with 1990 undertow. That's the same accessory but in a different color. These flippers were also issued in yellow for the 1993 Eels Version 3 and in black for the 1994 Shipwreck Version 2. Both of these swim fins are the same. There's not a left or right one so it doesn't matter which foot you put them on. I don't mind the reuse of an accessory like this. It's generic enough that any design will look similar. There's no reason to spend the time and money designing new swim fins when that effort could go toward something more important. The next accessory is not that one. It is the figure stand. This is a standard black figure stand with a single foot peg to fit on the action figure's feet. This is a nice bonus with 90s figures. 80s figures did not include figure stands and 90s figures did. In this case the figure stands very well on the swim fins so you don't really need the figure stand. So you could give this to someone else. And now the moment you've all been waiting for. The shark and the torpedo. The shark is in silver plastic. The torpedo is in yellow plastic. It is a robot shark that shoots a torpedo out of its mouth. It also has a back peg so it can fit on the figure's back. The file card calls the shark a torpedo launching robot shark slash scuba pack. And the torpedo is a silent running high impact torpedo. Since this is a scuba pack can the eel breathe underwater without it? The card implies that he can. Since it attaches to the back of the figure you could imagine it propelling him through the water. This is a unique take on the 90s spring loaded missile launcher trend. The robot shark has a jaw and a dorsal fin and a tail that can be removed. The jaw and the tail are articulated. As you can see the robot shark has a single yellow torpedo in his jaw.  To talk to us about the eels robot shark is someone who knows a lot about it. This is Jason from the Order of Battle podcast. Hey Hooded Cobra Commander, this is Jason from Order of Battle podcast. Or Cesar Mu on Instagram and Twitter. It's been an excellent Cobra Convergence this year. Hey I wanted to take a moment and help with the robot shark that came with the 92 eels. This shark joins the pantheon of perfect pets. Junkyard, Freedom, Clyde, Max, Order and all the others. But unlike any of the other pets including the Barracuda and the Devil Ray, the shark can also peg in as a backpack. This duality alone makes it my favorite troop builder of the entire GI Joe line. You know there are two versions of the robot shark? Hasbro and Fun School, India and Russia. The US Hasbro sharks are extremely prevalent as are the Russian Fun School. This is recognized by how much harder it is to find an India cardback than a Russian cardback, but certainly not impossible and the Fun School shark is not rare. The main thing to understand about the sharks is how to tell the difference between Hasbro and Fun School. First, Hasbro's gray body plastic is a bit shinier but with age, discoloring, dirtiness, it may be hard to tell even in hand. It is near impossible online the way most people take photos. Now the Hasbro missiles just like the eels gun are a much more obvious neon-y yellow. The main and accurate way to tell the difference between a Fun School shark and a Hasbro shark is to get them in hand and feel the rigidity of the fins. So get your hands on the dorsal fin, the two pectoral fins and the elusive tail fin. Hasbro's fins are flexible though not gummy. Fun School are inflexible and quite rigid. The only reproduction fins I've seen so far are a flat gray similar to the Fun School. They are rigid as one might expect but a little less than a Fun School and clearly at least in hand different from the Hasbro or the Fun School. All of the technical readout aside I love to troop build the shark. I like the eels version 2 but I specifically troop build the shark itself. At this point I have 117 completed sharks and 19 incomplete ones. That is growing. It's a fun pet that is functional with the eels version 1, version 2, the eels version 3 and that beautiful baby blue Fun School eel. Finding a unique and weird troop builder is always going to be hard to store but it's satisfying especially as the people in our community start to know and help you with your particular oddity. So thanks Hooded Cobra Commander for letting me spotlight my love of the sharks, send me all your extras and for allowing me to help with Cobra Convergence 7. Let's demonstrate how to operate the robot shark torpedo launcher. You just lift the articulated jaw. There is a torpedo launcher barrel inside. You just press the torpedo into the barrel with the notch side up. Press it back until it clicks. The trigger is the small fin between the dorsal fin and the tail. You're going to press down on that to fire. Let's take aim at Dr. Mayan Bender.  Just aim the torpedo pressed down on the fin to fire. That's a second week in a row that a figure has been taken out by his own weapon but Cobra is not very concerned with the safety of their own guys. And now let's demonstrate him jumping the shark. Eel version 2 does not have traditional scuba tanks or hoses which version 1 had with intricate detail. What it does have is a robot shark that shoots a torpedo and that shark has a backpack so you can use it as a sci-fi scuba tank with extra awesome and it could propel him through the water. I'm Kevin from Peg Warmers and I'm excited to be collabing with Putty Cobra Commander on this video and all the rest of the Cobra Convergence people participating in this video. Let's take a look at the articulation on Cobra Eels. He had the articulation that was standard on GI Joes in 1992. He could turn his head from left to right and look up and down. He could lift his arm at the shoulder and swivel it all the way around. He had a hinge at the elbow so he could bend it about 90 degrees. He had a swivel at the bicep so he could swivel it all the way around. This is an O-ring figure meaning that he had a rubber O-ring holding the figure together inside that allowed him to move around a bit. He could move his legs apart so far. He could move his hips about 90 degrees and bend the knees about 90 degrees. Let's look at the sculpted design and color of Eels version 2. As mentioned, this entire mold was reused for 1993 Eels version 3. 1985 Eels version 1 is relatively subdued with gray, black, and dark red. Version 1 was also sharply detailed and had a lot of appropriate accessories. Version 2 is brightly colored and the details are wild. Looking at the head, he has a yellow helmet that covers his entire head. He has two fins on top of the helmet. He has a wide protruding red visor and he has vents on the side of the helmet. Those look like gills. In fact, they're supposed to be gills. He has a blue neck. On its own, this head sculpt isn't too bad but the head is kind of small. The version 1 figure had a larger head because he was wearing a helmet. Version 2 is also wearing a helmet but his head is tiny. The head on version 2 is also much less detailed than version 1. According to Dan Kling and Smith's book, Kurt Groin designed this helmet to be a rebreather with gills. The file card points to the chest and not the helmet as the breathing apparatus. That may have been a mistake. The fins on the top of this helmet may look a little odd but there's another figure with a similar look. The 1991 Toxoviper version 2. Looking at the chest, he has a yellow vest on the upper chest. The vest has a hatch pattern on the front and the back. The file card calls this a coral proof anti-spear chest protector. That chest protector has some raised piping around the arms and the neck. It has some raised panels over the shoulders and around the upper back. The file card calls this a sophisticated all-encompassing breathing apparatus. Again, I think that description is supposed to point to the helmet but the file card does point to the chest. On the abdomen, he has blue all the way around the front and the back. It has minimal detail but it does have sculpted abs. His abdominal muscles are so cut, you can see them through the wetsuit. His arms feature long blue sleeves. He has a red cobra emblem on the right upper arm. On the outside upper arms, he has yellow spiked fins. He has yellow spiked fins on his forearms as well. And yellow bands around his wrists. And he has blue gloves. That's a bit different from the file card where it shows he's wearing no gloves. The waist piece is blue. I'm assuming all of this blue is the wetsuit. He has a yellow belt with a circular belt buckle. And on his hips, he has yellow pointed fins. His legs are mostly blue. Again, I believe the blue is the wetsuit. On the outside upper legs, he has ridged yellow fins. And he has large yellow fins on the outside of the lower legs. He has yellow bands around his shins and ankles. And he has blue boots. The file card calls these ridged fins whole slashing wetsuit fins. Besides being brightly colored, he's also very simply colored. There are only three colors on this figure. The shark and the flippers add some color interest. The spear gun would help if it weren't yellow. There's already yellow on the figure. Maybe if this were a different color, it would have added a bit more depth. Between the whole piercing spear and the whole slashing wetsuit fins, it's clear this eel's job is sinking ships. Sharp hips sink ships. Now we hear from one of the first Cobra Convergence Timmer from Half the Battle. Okay, so the yellow on this figure is absolutely awful. It's just so garish. But you know what? Other than complain about it, I did something about it. So meet Timmer's eel version too. This figure was released by me just now with no original body parts. And doesn't it look much more handsome? This is the toy we could have had people. Just compare and contrast. It's clear which one you would be proud to bring home to your mother. Now please enjoy the rest of the review. Let's take a look at the Cobra Eels file card. It's printed on the back of the card on which the figure is packaged. This is a 90s style file card so it is rectangular with rounded corners. There's a copy of the artwork from the front of the card with a list of those features and accessories. There's a close-up portrait of the eels here. His codename is Eels Plural and they are the Cobra Underwater Demolitions. There is a Cobra the Enemy graphic here that fills up some of this blank space. It says vehicle specially Cobra Rat Pilot. Really the Cobra Rat. One of the worst vehicles ever made in the GI Joe toy line. That vehicle did not come with an action figure driver. But I guess the Cobra Eels is supposed to drive it. It should be the Cobra Eels. He's going to need the scuba tank because the only thing the Cobra Rat can do on the water is sink. There's a quote here. It says we're the soggy savage. You know what? I think that should be read with a pirate voice. We're the soggy saboteurs of the sea. We're Cobra Eels. We're wet and wild. It's Eels gone wild. This sounds like an ad for a water park. This paragraph says the Cobra Underwater Demolition Specialists have come a long way since the days when they were trained in shark-infested waters to prove their worth. Eels must now be proficient with sophisticated electronic detection gear, the latest in plastic explosives, and state-of-the-art closed-circuit self-contained breathing systems. Of course, failure to pass the high-tech courses could result in a disciplinary dip in the shark tank. And we're not talking about the mechanical sharks. We're talking about real, live, hungry ones. Eels are also outfitted with razor-sharp fins on their suits so they can rip through the thickest hulls. Again, the final card emphasizes their job is to sink ships by cutting through their hulls. G.I. Joe can send devil fishes and the USS flag, and I guess the Cobra Eels is supposed to swim under them and cut them up. Looking at how the Cobra Eel was used in G.I. Joe media in the animated series, he didn't have as many appearances as you would think. There were some Cobra Frogmen in the 1983 mass-device miniseries Part 3, but they didn't look like Eels and they weren't identified as Eels. The first appearance was very briefly in the episode Cobra Stops the World. They fought torpedo and deep-six outside Cobra's sunken base. They used a sonic weapon that appears to be more annoying than deadly. The Eel got the most screen time in the episode The Germ. In that episode, a crimson guardsman steals a top-secret bacteria from a lab. A conflict within Cobra causes the bacteria to mutate into a giant germ. Cobra Troopers put on Eels uniforms to escape the germ in the water. This is surprising. It implies that the Eels uniform is just standard scuba gear that any trooper would wear for an underwater mission. The Eels sort of appeared in the Deke era of the animated series in the episode Messenger from the Deep. They attack Wetsuit using some underwater jet skis. Wetsuit identifies them as Eels, but they are not. They are sludge vipers. Maybe they didn't have the Eels version 2 model at the time they made that episode, so they used one that was similar. They appeared for a couple seconds in the episode Metal Heads Reunion, but I can't tell if they were figure accurate or if they were still using the sludge viper model sheets. In the G.I. Joe comic book series published by Marvel Comics, they first appeared in issue number 47. They piloted the Cobra Hydro Sled and fought Storm Shadow on the Cobra Moray. The lamprey first appeared in issue number 40 piloting the Moray Hydrofoil. The file card for the lamprey says they are first Eels. So is that the first appearance of the Eels? In issue number 53, they participated in the attack on G.I. Joe's secret headquarters, The Pit. They beat up Flint. The version 2 uniform first appeared in issue number 130. A squad of Eels were taken out by Ninja Force. Eels have bad luck with Ninjas. They appeared again in issue number 137, where they were guarding the Silent Castle. A couple of them were killed by Destro and the Baroness. In issue number 140, they patrolled the sewers of Millville and encountered a Joe infiltration team there. The Eels were never major players in Cobra as far as media was concerned. In the later years, they got lost in the mix of the many specialized vipers. A lot of those vipers would have started as Eels. Looking at the Cobra Eels overall, the Eels version 1 is my favorite army builder. I think it looks great. The colors go really well together. There's a lot of great detail and the accessories are intricate. I think it looks really good with the Cobra watercraft that were available at the time. In comparison, Eels version 2 is plain. Of course, I'm not a fan of the bright colors, but ignoring that, the design is simplified. It's surprisingly plain for a figure that calls itself the Eels. Change appears to be an intentional departure from version 1. This figure was not likely to get all the intricate paint, so it's better to smooth out the details than add a bunch of details that would be unpainted. The blue on the figure is good. It's a return to Cobra blue. If the yellow on the figure had been gray instead, we would have a reasonable successor to the 1985 version 1. The accessories are not especially noteworthy except for the robot shark. The shark is special. It may be the most memorable missile launcher from the 1990s. It's a robot shark that shoots a missile out of its mouth. Of course, it's absurd. Even giving Cobra the leeway to lean into sci-fi more than GI Joe, this is over the top. If you are trying to think of the most awesomest thing in a nine-year-old's mind, you might come up with a robot shark that shoots a torpedo out of its mouth. It can also be attached as a backpack, so it can be used as a scuba tank and an underwater vehicle. This is not in my wheelhouse. I am not a 90s guy. I will always love the 1985 Eels version 1, and this figure could not be more different. But robot shark. Therefore, all contrary arguments are invalid. For some additional thoughts on the Cobra Eel, here is codename New 2 Vero 2. Thanks, HCC788. And wow, I'm one of those guys who has been part of Cobra Convergence since Cobra Convergence 3. And I am so excited to see how much Cobra Convergence has grown over the years. Of course, all thanks to HCC788. And of course, all of you. Without you guys, none of this would be possible. And every year, we have a new content creator. Now, even though I'm known mostly for doing the comic side of our fandom, I often do mythos as far as, like, let's say, for a classified figure. I'll go through the entire mythos and history of that character. And it's been a big hit with a lot of the fans. And I love doing that. Now, with the Cobra Eel, it's kind of interesting. Now, when you look at the Rose Gallery of Cobra characters, it's often... This is the whole notion. You have a home run often followed by a bunch. And some people may think that when you look at the Eel version 2. But no, that's not the case at all. And that's the beauty with Cobra in itself, is that you have an entire gallery of various types of troops, all with different specialties and different versions. So it's always an endless supply. So I wanted to point out these. Again, I would like to thank Gary, who helped me save this moray from the dumpster. That's right. The moray was kind enough to hook me up with basically a moray that has seen better days. And thanks to 3D printing, we brought this beautiful boat back from the dead. Now, in an earlier video, I talked about black major figures. And you could see with the Cobra Eel version 1, where that is a added wonderful feature. As you could have different color combinations. This one I think is more like a Python patrol Cobra Eel. But again, I'm going to be honest with black major figures, you could feel that they're cheap and they don't have a good record as far as durability. And because of the cheaper resin that they use, it'll often fall apart, especially when you have to swap in that O-ring.  We don't talk anymore, fall out from that video that we did earlier. But nonetheless, if you're able to, these are really good options to just add to your little splash to your diorama. Since guys like AC788 and shortly after me have been serving this community for a very long time, there are a few things one gets to notice and trends we picked up during the course of all these years. For example, Gen X, mostly the 82 to 89 type of fan base, they're more interested in the grounded military, all that stuff. But then we have another group of fans and those are the millennials, the 90s guys. And I think no figure is a perfect example of that divide than the Cobra Eel version 2. Now for Pete's sake, it has a freaking shark that it uses as a bazooka that comes with it.  And even for us Gen Xers, we can appreciate that and kind of overlook the neon yellow and blue combination. I mean the fact that you have a shark as its major accessory and that's what this action figure is mostly known for.  For some reason that's the other problem with the Cobra Eel version 2. It's often overlooked. I mean you have a version 1 that's such an icon, and then it kind of like if it wasn't for that freaking shark, nobody would pay attention to this figure. As a matter of fact, they released it in 93 without the shark and no one to little fanfare sadly. But I think that's what makes this action figure really important because it is a clear line in the sand of the Gen X and the Millennial fan base. But at the same time, it is a figure that even Gen Xers can appreciate because of that freaking shark. Back to you HCC788, thanks. I'd like to say a few words about our friend Kevin from BX257. Kevin, if you ever see this, I hope you're well. I hope you return to us someday. We miss you. You started all this. You inspired all of this. You were doing GI Joe on YouTube before any of us jumped on and started following in your footsteps. So thank you, thank you for being such a good friend and collaborator. I sincerely hope you're doing well and I hope to hear from you again someday. Now a few of my friends would like to talk about Kevin. Hey, hey! Well, what can I say about Kevin? He's always made some great content and he was one of the original Cobra Convergence. We had a blast working with him every single time, so I'm very grateful we got the opportunity to do stuff together. And when I first started making videos, he was one of the first persons on the Yo Joe forums to say something nice saying that he wished he could be as funny as me, which was a huge surprise and a huge compliment to me. And I've always been grateful for that.  And we are eternally grateful for him pepping away. Thank you, Kevin, wherever you are out there. We are ready for your triumphant return, if ever you choose to make it. Yo Joe and Cobra! I'm Kevin from Peg Warmers and I just wanted to say a few things about FormBX257. He was a trailblazer. He was one of the first people to do GI Joe reviews and even really toy reviews on YouTube. It just wasn't the common thing that it is now for adult men to be looking back at their childhood with the rose-colored glasses and kind of analyzing the things they grew up with. He did a great job. I always loved his backdrop with all the different card backs. He had a very straightforward and succinct delivery. That was awesome. And I wish Kevin well. I hope whatever he's doing brings him happiness. And I'd love to see another video pop up on his channel someday. Thanks, AC788. Now, I'm not going to speak from a script or anything. I'm talking straight from the heart because that's how much FormBX257 means to me and where I am as far as my fandom. Kevin was an absolute mentor. He was so gracious in giving his time, his knowledge. It wasn't about me or how many views I get. The bottom line is GI Joe is about a group of people working together on various backgrounds and skill sets to achieve a common goal. That is it. I've made so many friends just being a part of this community. The few of us content creators that you see here, the OG guys were such a small, tight-knit group. And that's something you cannot put a price down. So this is actually bittersweet because as of right now, you know, we've never heard... I like to think he's retired somewhere, but the fact of the matter is, you know, we came out of the COVID and stuff. We don't know. And I just want Kevin to know that he's had such an impact on me. He showed me kindness, compassion, and he's just a wonderful guy. And I think all of you, if you watch this and you're on Facebook and you started a group, take your time to acknowledge Kevin's contribution because there wouldn't be a GI Joe today. If Kevin wasn't the one holding the spark because when nobody gave, GI Joe was dead in the waters and Kevin started doing his content. We don't know how much time we have on this earth. It could be gone tomorrow. So make it a point to let the people know how much you care about them, how much they mean to you, and look outward, not inward. You know, praise somebody else. Tell somebody else that, you know, they're worth a lot. They mean a lot because you have no idea what that person is going through and how much that response and feedback is uplifting. 9 out of 10, you've watched his videos and yes, he is an Asian-Canadian, but the most important thing, he's a Joe fan and he's a damn knowledgeable and excellent Joe fan. He's one of the top five Joe fans of all Joe fandom. But Kevin, I just want you to know that wherever you are, thank you. Thank you for being nice to me. I know, I just want you to know that we miss you and wherever you are, we just hope that you're happy and you're doing well. Kevin, form BX257, what can I say? We miss seeing you around. We just hope that all is well with you. We hope that you're happy and healthy and just taking a break from the G.I. Joe world and we just hope to see you back soon. If not, we just again, we just hope all is well and just take care. Thank you. Hey there, Zirani here. I just wanted to say when we're not drinking grape soda or listening to cold slither, us dreadknocks like to watch Kevin's videos. Greetings, Joe Fan84 here. Just going to talk a little bit about form BX257. I had stumbled upon his channel a few years ago and I restarted collecting G.I. Joe again. I'm more of a modern collector and they don't make many modern vehicles, so I started watching him and he does really excellent reviews on the vehicles and he has a segment on his channel and he shows if a modern figure can fit in the vehicle or not and that's really helpful. We haven't heard from him for a couple of years now and hopefully him and his family are happy, healthy and safe. Take care. That was our review of the 1992 Cobra Eels version 2. I hope you enjoyed it. Kevin, if you ever see this, please reach out. We would love to hear from you. We have a lot more Cobra convergence going on this month. The presenters coming up this week include Action Robot Punch, Audible Interlude, the Order of Battle podcast, Yorktown Joe, the Joe on Joe podcast, My Side of the Laundry Room, Rob Vegas, the Photo Viper, G.I. Joeberg and Redface44Reviews. Make sure you check out the full calendar at HCC788.com and find out how you can participate and join the convergence. Please give this video a thumbs up on YouTube, subscribe to the YouTube channel. You can find me on social media, on Facebook and Twitter. If you'd like to help out the channel, Patreon is a great way to do it. You can get some special perks and you can get your name in videos like the names you see scrolling on the screen right now. I'll see you next time for more Cobra Convergence. Until then, remember only Cobra is Cobra. That's all the time I have right now. Please check out my Facebook page for more information and behind the scenes photos for these reviews. Thank you for watching this video and stay tuned for next time to see another 1980s G.I. Joe Tour Review. See you then.


What is going on guys, welcome back to the channel critical overload here So I'm talking about Buffy the vampire slayer in this video here today We're gonna be ranking the finalists from best to worst just in my opinion best to worst But we have so many strong finalists and I want to say that I'd love to hear from you guys in the comment section What your rankings are if they line up with mine after this video So with the finalists, we know we have prophecy girl becoming part two graduation day part two Restless the gift grave and then chosen. Yeah chosen. So going on again from best to worst I'm gonna start off with the gift gift. The gift is my favorite I think it actually regardless of it being my favorite is also the strongest Thing as a finale for this series This is a finale that just truly caps off the title of slayer for Buffy and highlights How much she has grown since high school when we first see her trying to run from there's from those slayer duties That she never asked to have Buffy had spent the season taking care of her newly the newly introduced sister Dawn She was dealing with Joyce's tumor and death and coping with that death while still staying strong for dawn Relationship drama in the mix and then of course figuring out how to defeat a hell god named glory The gift just brings a lot of closure to other several arcs connected to glory while also allowing Buffy to commit the most Selfless act she had at this stage by letting herself die to save the world It's a moment that just acts as an eye-opener For Buffy and the viewer when she's having this flashback moment and realizes what the guide meant the guy that that was the first Slayer that took shape of the first layer when she discovers death is her gift It's a moment that really brings a smile to my face Even though I was sad to lose her all the emotional highs combined with Gaelish top two performance on top of that That ledge with dawn the score the iconic monologue about living makes this the strongest finale for me that one could Argue wasn't appropriate in for the series truly. It's just a beautiful thing that in that truly highlights What her role as a slayer really meant and how she has grown so much to accept it It's a great beautiful finale next on my list of number two is becoming part two This at the time also included one of Buffy's most iconic selfless acts and so much more Buffy was a 17 year old girl who had to sacrifice her first loving angel in order to save the world Prior to this becoming resolved so many threads that were dangled throughout the series such as Joyce being curious about Buffy's behaviors Which lead to her coming out seen as the slayer, which is one of the more iconic monologues from Buffy in the season She has so many the love triangle with Spike drew an angel then the schoolbies counter triangle in a way of willow Oz Zander it also begins newer prolonged threads that's that developed throughout the series such as willows dealing in Magic becoming a witch the elements of foreshadowing future events related to spike such as the dialogue bit when he teams up with Buffy I want to save the world and he actually of course ends up teaming with Buffy for his own selfish gains at the time That slowly progresses into more genuine stuff as the show went on and he's teaming with them joining the schoolbies The stakes were surely high with the finale No pun intended and Buffy just rolls to the occasion when Sunnydale needed her the most the battle between her and Angel is also so emotionally draining and then the transition between that and willow trying to restore his soul It just has you on the edge of your seat throughout that whole exchange plus gallery displays Buffy's vulnerable side so well in those moments I love becoming part two. I'm gonna put it at number two I also think it's in one of the more important finales graduation day part two is gonna come in at number three This is our conclusion of the high school era for Buffy the mayor's ascension faith was placed in her coma angel left Sunnydale Sunnydale High was destroyed so much more Graduation day for part two for me is the end of the schoolbies as we had come to know them We know Cordega left the series for good after this, but was still very much more important to the narrative in Angel We lost Wesley the episode was an effective way to close the door on the current norm for the series before it became About young adult struggles mind you It is pretty rewarding to also have the season in on their graduation day when the characters hype it up throughout the season Number four for me is prophecy girl prophecy girl is fourth And we know this was the season finale of season one for many newcomers what I hear from them comment about this episode is how great This episode is in comparison to the rest of the season which had the monster of the week format They don't disappear from that format completely in season two, but it was more so prevalent in season one I'll say prophecy girl is the sign of potential that the show demonstrated It could have then it completely Demonstrates that in full effect and even more so strongly going forward from there Prophecy girl puts an end to our first big bad in the master Buffy has her first iconic monologue that tremendously reminds the audience that this is just a kid being asked to juggle so much Responsibility that she did not ask for the almighty hell mouth is displayed in some capacity for the first time Xander's crush on Buffy is somewhat resolved but built into his personality towards Buffy going forward Chosen is gonna come in at number five on my list And I probably don't even need to say anything for the diehard fans out there like myself who understand How truly well crafted this series for now is and how it holds up still to this day You have moments from season two foreshadowing being fulfilled here with spike sacrificing himself to save the world Spikes exit while burning within the hell mouth is still one of the most satisfying things I've ever witnessed in the series because the character was so well written and was given the most appropriate send-off While showcasing that the character had truly changed for the better the callbacks to season one Parts of the slayers going down to fight the Turrican the final fight score Spiking Buffy's hands burning as the as he decides to sacrifice himself and the iconic monologue that is tied to the greatest Greatest payoff this year's could end with you have Buffy someone who has spent so much time feeling like she's in the fight against evil alone And then now six seven years later She's no longer alone when every potential slayer in the world is activated Thanks to willow the graphics of the sun obliterating the first army of Turrican is still some of the best CGI work I've seen in a series for now It's just sadly also riddled with logical fallacies and a few plot holes that pushed it down this far on my ranking and it can feel rushed at times There are some other things that don't make sense as far like the Turrican army compared to how we saw the Turrican presented prior But coming in number six for me is grave and what an absolute banger of an episode this was And you all know the scene that shattered the hearts of every fan in regards to a certain crayon and a kindergarten memory Xander and willow's relationship prior to meeting Buffy has always been talked about and they were seen to reflect on it Very fondly throughout the series But to use that as a source of weakness on dark willow was absolutely brilliant It adds a lot more weight to those moments that they shared prior when they reminisce on their childhood youth Willow was prepared to make her pain the entire world's pain and her bestest friend of all Xander Harris Saved a day with a simple childhood memory Spike and willow commit some of the most unforgivable acts this season and they both get a former redemption later on in the series finale grave to me is the ideal cherry on top of a season where it seemed the villain this time was life and the Struggles that can come with it and I know season 6 is considered the depression era But grave was such a wonderful episode last on my list is going to be that episode restless from season 4 There are no bad. Well, actually there are bad episodes in Buffy I just don't think any of the final is are actually bad episodes when it comes to the rest compared to restless though It's not as energetic You have a lot of nice foreshadowing and different representations during this during the trios dreaming Dreaming's dreams that they have sequences when they're being stalked by Sienna Who we know is the first layer the spirit first layer who's not happy about the ritual? They just did to defeat Adam the episode prior with the initiative I just think that that episode could have been done a different way prior and the episode with Adam being defeated Could have been the season finale, but let me know what you guys think about all this down in the comments Below if you haven't already of course make sure you subscribe turn on post notification that you never miss a video in the description I will have a link to all my social media accounts. I am on Facebook Twitter and Instagram You can message me there of course to let me know if there are any movies news or reviews You like me to cover in the future with all that in mind guys. I will see you in the next video


A Russian general has found a new humiliating way to punish officers who displease him. The Russians are forming assault units of officers in southern Ukraine. The newly appointed Russian general Mikhail Teplinsky issued the order according to the spokesperson for the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Andrey Kovalev. The commander of the Russian occupiers of Niprop, General Teplinsky issued an order to form assault units from among the officers, he says. According to the spokesperson, the main criteria for officers to be recruited to such assault units are their inability to command subordinates, personal indiscipline, and poor motivation. These are some kind of shock battalions. Modelled after the White Guard units of the 1920s adds the representative of the General Staff. Kovalev also adds that General Mikhail Teplinsky, who is currently the commander of the Russian occupation Niprop Group of Troops, is not respected among the Russian Armed Forces. In particular, his subordinates say that he does not care about the lives of his personnel. This is a rather mundane and prosaic situation for Russian commanders, he says. Earlier a new rotation of Russian generals in the Kursan sector was reported in a report by the Institute for the Study of War. According to the authors, Russia has probably replaced Colonel General Oleg Makarevich, who led the Niprop Group with Colonel General Mikhail Teplinsky, commander of the Airborne Forces. This information was later confirmed by Russian media.


Hello Dr. Main, Dr. Stenstrom, and Ms. Luna. It is with great pleasure that I accept the Special Session Scholarship Award for Fall of 2020. I really appreciate this honor and I look forward to working with all of you in the coming semesters. And I just wanted to add I wrote this in my letter as well. My mom attended SJSU and received her teaching credential in Library Science from you. So I will be carrying on the family tradition of attending this school and this program. I'm looking forward to learning as much as I can about the library system and eventually want to be hired on as a librarian at the County of Los Angeles. And I want to be able to show my community the benefits of the library and that it's not just for checking out books. So in closing I'd like to say again thank you and I appreciate this honor and I look forward to working with all of you this fall.


Hey guys, it's John Briningham from Art of Composing with another daily vlog. This is episode number two and today I thought I would address a question that's been asked of me quite a few times on the composer symposiums, which is should I go to college for music? Now to me this question is difficult to answer because everybody has unique circumstances and what's good for you may not be good for somebody else. So I can only relate what happened to me in my personal experience, but when I went to college I started off as a music major and I was really excited about it. I really I wanted to have a career in music, but I didn't really know exactly what that meant. I didn't know the directions I fully wanted to go. I did know that I was really into music theory and I was into composing and that posed some problems for me because when I got to school I realized after about a year that the focus of the school was mostly performance. What I probably should have done looking back on it is really thought about not where I want to go to school, but who I want to study with and what it is that I actually want to study. Part of learning the craft of composition is knowing the directions that you need to be pushing yourself and the things that you need to be learning and it takes not just good teachers, but the right teachers to be able to teach that stuff to you. Well as a 17, 18 year old kid I didn't know any of this stuff and I kept getting pushed into the performance direction for trumpet and it was just something I didn't want to do. I ended up switching my major from music to history after about a year and a half. So whether college is right for you in music, there's a ton of factors. Can you actually afford to go to college? And I'm not talking about afford with student loans or putting yourself in debt. I'm saying is it actually a good monetary decision for you? A lot of people can afford to go to college, but when they get out of college they realize that they don't have any good job prospects and they're in a ton of debt. So for me going back to UCLA and the film scoring program I had GI Bill and it was covering all my costs. So it was a really good choice for me. For you it may not be the same thing. So hopefully this is just a taste of answering that question, but I want you to just sit back and just take some notes if you're thinking about going to college about what it is that you want to get out of it, what you want to study, who it is that you would actually want to study with, go around, listen to different you know composers and composers from schools who are teaching there the kind of music that they're putting out. And I would say talk to some mentors in your life. Talk to your parents and other teachers, music teachers that you've already got maybe from high school or if you're older just people around that have been around in the industry and been around and done it. So hopefully you like this this daily vlog episode number two. Be sure to check out the rest. Subscribe on YouTube and I'll see you tomorrow.


Fotoarchive is like a treasure chest that you have to kind of remage through to see what's there. Fotoarchives allow you to see into the past. A sentient collection of different lenses of power and of life.