For you, it’s really just “Watch Gallery”

I uploaded this video of me rambling on while playing the modern version of Octopus on Game & Watch Gallery what seems like ages ago, and I’ve had it as my unsubscribed user trailer on my YouTube channel for just as long. So maybe you’ve seen it already. I don’t know. But I have to post it anyway.

Why? Well, because I haven’t made a bloggety thing about it yet. Duh.

Also because I uploaded the video showcasing the rest of Game & Watch Gallery yesterday (horning its way in-between Kirby Super Star episodes, which resume today), and I feel like it would be wrong to blog about part two if I’d never mentioned the first one.

Anyway, enough of my stupid typing. Here’s some of my stupid talking!

Haven’t done this in a while

I started a new video LP series yesterday. It’s a game very near and dear to my heart, and I’ll be unlocking a new episode each day until it’s done. Enjoy.

Oh and also I made up a fun thumbnail for each episode, which is a thing I’m going to be doing for all of my videos from now on. It gives the illusion of a professional production, until you actually start watching the video and realize that it’s the same amateurish crap it’s always been. Hooray for deception!

It’s filler, but not

Hey I haven’t posted anything in a while. I guess I have a thing in the works but ehhhh. Between Cookie Clicker and IRL problems (re: being sick), I really haven’t been all over the writing business as of late.

So here’s a thing I did a while back:

 

Yeah, it’s just an Avatar version of QWOP. It’s not even a very good one. I have this other game that I sort of want to record, which has a similar premise, but a much better execution. Will it happen? I don’t know. It’s a multiplayer thing, and I am terrified of the prospect of trying to record something with another person. Don’t know why. Just am.

One Hit Knock Out

It’s been a while since I uploaded any Let’s Play videos, and there are good reasons for that, but they’re not happy things so let’s skip to the point. During my hiatus, I decided to start up a new format. It’s not terribly original, but I’m going to do entire runs of smaller games in one video, and I’ve titled the project OHKO because it’s the most topical thing I could come up with that’s even sort of clever.

The first game in this series is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan, which is embedded below. So if you’ve got half an hour to kill and want to see me crawl my way to the end of the most pathetic Turtles game, it’s there for you. I’m really hoping the sequel is at least a little better.

How long will this project last? Who knows? Some things I start last for years, and some explode horrifically before they’ve even left the launch pad. But there’s one entry, and I’ve got another recorded and ready to go in the near future some time. And it’s not TMNT: Back From the Sewers. But that’s probably on the way at some point. What I’ve got ready to go is much more… ROM hacky.

I sing in this video

Yes, that’s right. There is an audio recording of me singing in the video embedded below. You’ve been warned. Twice.

It’s been a long time since I’ve uploaded an FFV: The Ancient Cave video, and in that time I’ve pretty much forgotten what little I knew about the game. That leads to me almost being wiped on the first floor. I don’t know how long I’m going to continue banging my head against this one, but I’m not going to give up so easily!

In reality though, I mostly just recorded this because I felt like I should at least try to tie up some loose ends before I start up a new long-running series. I’ve been bitten by the Minecraft bug, and I feel like I should be documenting my attempts to defeat the Enderdragon on hardcore mode. So that’s going to happen eventually, but there’s going to be some more FFVAC before that comes around. Maybe even a little something else…

The unpossible adventure

So despite taking myself out of the game for a while there, and having two unfinished series, I’ve started a new Let’s Play. This one stars Mickey Mouse and is about learning the alphabet.

Currently only the first video is up. I’m not sure what the update schedule is going to be like for this one. One a week seems like a little too long to drag this on for. Maybe one every couple of days.

Morphinology

My YouTube channel hit 10,000 video views last weekend, and while that may seem pretty paltry when compared to single videos that have millions of views apiece, it’s approximately 9,999 more than I ever expected to have when I created my channel. As a show of appreciation, I uploaded a complete Let’s Play series throughout the week: Mighty Morphin Power Rangers for the SNES. Watch the whole thing below.

The whole set clocks in at just over an hour, and even less if you skip video 5 (It ends in a Game Over, and episode 6 is the same level done successfully). There are plenty of worse ways to waste an hour. Why not buff up my view counter a little more? Come on, help a brother out. And throw around some upwards-thumbs while you’re at it. Pweease?

That said, I have no idea what I’m going to do for the next threshold. Or even what that’ll be. I was thinking 20K at first, but 25,000 seems like more of a milestone. Not that I should be thinking that far ahead; that many views is a long, long way off unless I hit another goldmine like Super Talking Time Bros 2.

Another one in the can

 

I thought had posted a link to this when I started it, but I guess not? I barely looked. I just did a blog search for “kirby” and nothing came up. Anyway, here’s an embedded thingy for you to watch Let’s Play Kirby’s Adventure. The series is complete, and I embedded the playlist, so you can just press play and watch beginning to end.

The whole series is about two and a half hours long. So a little less than the current average Hollywood blockbuster? It’s probably best to watch them all at once too, because I did it in two recording sessions, then just split them up between worlds. You’ll notice that I did not consider that plan as I was recording, and usually talked over the transition from boss to world intro, where the videos are cut.

This also marks the first series in which I intentionally cut out footage. There’s a section in episode seven that got me really riled up, and I ended up having to remove some of the video because I was getting embarrassingly frustrated and let slip more than a few naughty words. I like the idea of keeping all the video for a more complete experience, but sometimes you have to make an edit for the betterment of everyone. It’s not like you miss anything good either. It’s just ten minutes of me swearing and failing.

So laaazy

You know, I’ve had a new movie review sitting around for over a month now, but I have no idea how long it will be until I post it. It was originally supposed to go live in July. And it’s pretty much done, too! The bulk of the writing is done; I still have to go back over it to do a little spellchecking and other fine-tuning, but the words are essentially done. The thing that I’m stuck at it getting some screengrabs.

Normally, that’s the part I’d do first. I’d watch a movie/show, and then go back and take a few shots of important part, and then write the article around those. This time I did all the writing first, and the way that I wrote it calls for a lot of images. And not just the basic screengrabs either! No, I worked myself into a corner full of photoshops and collages. I suppose I could go over the article and edit the parts that call out images I don’t want to take/create, but at that point I’m cheating the reader of a fuller experience. Oh, what a world.

It’s not that I don’t want to do it, it’s just that taking screenshots o a movie is dull and tedious. Making sure I printscreen jsut the right moments, making sure everything is sized and named properly… It’s boring.

This is sort of similar to the reason why my Monster Hunter Let’s Play is stalling. Playing Monster Hunter is one of my favourite pastimes, and talking about Monster Hunter comes in at a close second, so in that case I’m mostly blaming Camtasia. With sprite-based games, I can set it to record and then just have at it as long as I need, then stop when I feel like the session is done and do a little chopping to make everything nice and neat before I produce it. Monster Hunter, being a PS2 game, I guess eats a ton of memory while being recorded. If I go over about 15 minutes of footage, it stops recording sound and just replaces my narration and the game’s audio with a horrible extra-loud static track. So I have to time myself to make sure I don’t record too long, find a suitable spot to pause, and then wait while to video is processed, then wait twice as long while the video is saved to a file. The processing/saving part eats up all my PC’s resources too, so I can’t do anything else with it while I wait. Then I have to do the usual editing, which is not terrible, but annoying after all the other hoops I’ve had to jump through to get that far. Especially if I screwed up the timing and have to fix the sound problems. And then, then I have to hope that while it was paused for Camtasia to do all its things, that my PS2 emulator hasn’t crashed. That’s happened twice now, and it’s even worse than when the audio breaks, because not just footage is lost, but actual game progress. This was the worst project I’ve ever started.

But that movie review? It’ll be done… maybe this weekend. I don’t know. Maybe that’s what I’ll do with my Friday night.