No mention of Gaming Historian in this thread? Been watching him for years, he does a ton of research and puts out high quality content. Here’s one of his more shorter ones if you haven’t seen his stuff before:
Mandalore has some nice videos, especially the ones about weird old games.
The noclip Greatest Hits documentary about early DMA designs is just great fun. They go into the development of Lemmings and Grand Theft Auto and some really bonkers games they did in the early days.
Just like the best interview subject for what was going on at Bungie for halo games was Martie, who worked on the music, the best interview subject here is the music director Chris. I’m telling you man, you gotta interview the music guys. They know the big picture of what’s going on at the studios and how the games come together.
Could you explain what DMA Designs are briefly? Might be interested in the video based on the games involved, but I’m not familiar with the term.
That’s the name of the studio that developed Lemmings, GTA, etc. :) They later became Rockstar North.
Oh that’s wild!
I never really got into Let’s Plays (too long, too much filler). However, the YouTube recs sent me this narrated/edited video of the GOAT isometric Arcanum, which is much more to my taste. It’s basically the story of the game condensed into an hour and forty minutes with critical notes thrown in. What’s cool is seeing how different his playthrough was from my one completed playthrough of the game. Also, just hearing the score again is great. More games should opt for chamber ensembles.
I see he’s got a video for Baldur’s Gate as well, which is probably the only way I ever ‘finish’ it.
Channel:
The two most interesting videos about games I saw were actually full length documentaries. One was about the death of Commodore and the other was about indie game developers with Phil Fish saying things that probably should have best been left unsaid, and Jonathan Blow acting sad and gloomy that no one “got” Braid (as in its meaning and whole point for existing). There was one about game developers in the UK and the early history of programmers for the C64 & the Amiga but maybe that was the same film as the Death of Commodore one. It’s been a while, I probably wouldn’t watch a video about modern games and gamers though because its likely to feature just a bunch of twitchtards or professional gamer goons that give themselves names like “Dr. Disrespect” that wear sunglasses in-doors or gamer girls with pigtails that do anime girl cosplay and play with their bare feet on-camera for their Twitch streamer pervtard fans.
You should find these videos and share them with us so we can watch them too!
Postmortem of Hotline Miami 1 and 2. Good stuff.
The beginning was more fun. It was kind of disheartening to see these fun guys so demoralized by the negative feedback from assholes on Steam after the release of the second game.
In searching to see if anyone streams their solves of the NYT crossword, I discovered that 1) of course people do, and 2) one of them is Firewatch and Valve dev Chris Remo. Pretty enjoyable to watch him work through them after doing them myself. (He’s way quicker than I am!)
Well, former Campo Santo / Valve dev :-(
And former Idle Thumb
In some of his first NYT Crossword videos, he mentioned he moved to the UK and no longer works for Valve.
I thought I had heard that he had moved on from Valve. (In fact I’m pretty sure he’s done some work with Deck Nine recently.) His LinkedIn says he’s still at Valve, but probably a case of just not bothering to update it.
I shared this in one of the Little Indie Games threads after a brief exchange about lo-fi PS1-era 3D visuals. I love the explosion of all the weird and wonderful ‘non-traditional’ aesthetics in games. Cruelty Squad showed me that even I have my limits (maybe?), but I’m still fascinated and excited by them. This video by Jacob Geller had me nodding and saying ‘Yes! Exactly!’ a lot.
If you know me, you’ll probably know how I stumbled on this video too! :)
(Also, props for dropping some World of Goo and Robocop music in there.)
As a dad who plays video games, I felt it was my responsibility to watch this video. I do enjoy a good train game, I must admit. And that power washing simulator looks oddly fun.
Really every game needs trains and fishing, its obviously why Red Dead Redemption 2 was so popular.
Hbomberguy has a long take on Deus Ex: Human Revolutions. Lots of comparisons to the first game. If you’re up for an indepth analysis of narrative and gameplay systems, it’s also worthwhile if you haven’t played either game.
That’s such an odd choice for a video—I remember it being well received, but I’m also not sure I’ve heard/read much (any?) discussion around it since its release, which I assume is kind of the point—but ‘odd’ is often synonymous with ‘interesting’ so who am I to judge?
Regarding the video that kicked this thread off (and attn: @Rock8man in particular):
Fan translation for the SNES version is out. I don’t remember if Rogers considers that to be one of the ‘good’ versions. I know for sure there’s at least one port he thinks is horrible, but I think it’s either the PS1 or Saturn version.
A direct link to the translation file:
Edit: Unfortunately, the SNES version does appear to be the (or at least one of the) version Rogers considers inferior.
SNES Tokimemo is considered a significantly worse experience, graphics and music are predictably worse, and it obviously lacks voice acting. I think it has all the actual story content, but it’s arguably the worst way to receive it.
Those limitations (or maybe just the SNES tech being generally more manageable) may have contributed to the ease of localization, so theyre probably part of the reason it exists at all.
Personally, I find the obsession with hearing the imaginary girl in the computer voice her love for you to be more than a little offputting, but that seems to be the consensus.
I’m always up for a new Hbomberguy video, no matter what the topic.
I’m only 24 minutes into this one, and it’s already fascinating. The guy does his research, and always manages to present it in such a way that holds your interest.
For instance, my girlfriend was sitting behind me on the sofa doing something else, and ended up watching it with me because she found it interesting as well, and she doesn’t play games at all. I mean, she has heard me talk about these specific games before, so she does have a rough idea of the things he’s talking about, but still, for her to find it interesting says something.
I loved the first Deus Ex, didn’t play the second one, and enjoyed Human Revolution quite a bit even though it didn’t come close to rivaling the original, so I’m really enjoying this video.