HPRshredder

The bulk of those old videos I removed from the channel. But I did keep a few. I still have the videos saved for myself, but when I was getting serious about coming back with something different, I felt like it was time to take most of them down.

As my interest in Yu-Gi-Oh! dwindled over the years, my love for video games grew. I had always played video games but I didn't always view them as highly as I do now. That being said, I still thought about and played them often. The first system I had access to at home was the original PlayStation. It was my dad's, and sometimes he'd play Tekken with me when I was really young. I suspect it was actually Tekken 2 that we owned, but it's hard to verify. He eventually sold the PlayStation to my babysitter's boyfriend (tragic), and for a short while the only access I had to a video game system would be at friend's houses.

Eventually, for one of my birthdays, mAs my interest in Yu-Gi-Oh! dwindled over the years, my love for video games grew. I had always played video games but I didn't always view them as highly as I do now. That being said, I still thought about and played them often. The first system I had access to at home was the original PlayStation. It was my dad's, and sometimes he'd play Tekken with me when I was really young. I suspect it was actually Tekken 2 that we owned, but it's hard to verify. He eventually sold the PlayStation to my babysitter's boyfriend (tragic), and for a short while the only access I had to video game systems was at friend's houses.

The general path of systems in my life after that looked like this: N64 -> GameCube, Xbox -> Xbox 360

By the time I finally got a 360, I had my feet firmly planted in camp Xbox. Halo 1-3 paired with me being 12-15 was enough to make me forget about Nintendo. I did have a GameBoy Advance, and I did finally get to play Super Mario World on it for myself one summer, but for the most part I was more interested in Microsoft's offerings. That Gears of War "Mad World" trailer. That "Believe" ad campaign for Halo 3. It was powerful to me at the time.

Another factor was that I didn't really own too many games for my systems. Birthdays and Christmas were my only opportunities to get new games, really. My library had always been quite modest. I had not even played classics like Ocarina of Time or Wind Waker for myself.

While I enjoyed my time with my Xboxes (especially the 360), I wasn't really what I would consider a "gamer" at the time. That classification can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but what I mean is that I wasn't really into the culture of gaming. It was just something I'd do for fun. I'd get absorbed and engrossed in a game on occasion, but I wasn't really conscious of everything gaming had to offer, its history, or its culture.

I would say that throughout my teen years, I was actually becoming less interested in gaming over time. I was into karate and Boy Scouts, and from 7th grade onward I was much more interested in music (hence, shredder). I would have considered that my "main thing" and as generation 6 approached its twilight years I was pretty checked out. Halo: Reach had burned me. When it released I felt the magic was gone and the multiplayer leaned more towards Call of Duty than I would have liked. I just felt done. I wasn't having fun. If I was caught gaming, it was playing Halo 3 past its prime.

But things changed in late 2010 when I was walking through either Target or Walmart and the box art for Spirit Tracks caught my eye. I picked up the case and read the back. Something about it was really appealing to me. It was simple, but I was into it. I had never played a Zelda game for myself, but I had really enjoyed watching a few of my friends try some of Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask when I was younger. The music from the lost woods even got stuck in my head and I had memories of humming it on the bus.

It was December 2010, my senior year of high school, that I asked for a Nintendo DSi XL for Christmas. I had some moments of fun in the car over the years playing Super Monkey ball on my sister's DS lite, but for some reason it never occurred to me that I might enjoy the system as well. What was cool (to me) was that the games were way cheaper than console games. I asked for Golden Sun, Mario 64 DS, Professor Layton and the Unwound Future, Pokemon Soul Silver, and Spirit Tracks.

When I opened it that Christmas and dove into Spirit Tracks it changed me. It spoke to me right out the box. The music, the charm, the soul; it singlehandedly reignited my interest in video games. It was the first step towards opening my eyes to everything I was missing.

Throughout the course of my first trip through college, I fell more and more deeply in love with video games. I had a newfound appreciation for them. I had rediscovered Nintendo. My 3DS had become just about my favorite thing on the planet. The channel was also dead during this time. I had stopped following Yu-Gi-Oh! as closely as I had before and grew less interested in the game over time. Video games had replaced that hobby hole that Yu-Gi-Oh! had left behind.

To fast forward a bit, as I was wrapping up my degree, about 8 months out from graduation, I had become painfully aware that I had no real plan for a “next step”. I had interned at the Red Cross, but I had no real interest in any potential job. I always had jobs during this time, but I had no real direction on what a career for me might look like.

This was the beginning of my FIEA era. I found out about a graduate program in central Florida that was for game development. It was technically a part of UCF, but it was separate from the main campus in downtown Orlando. I applied and interviewed, included some previous projects and an essay about Dark Souls, and I got accepted. This felt like a big step for me. I had really fallen for gaming, and it had never occurred to me that I might possibly contribute towards making one.

I spent what money I had getting down to Orlando. I found a place and a roommate. I bought a few books in preparation, and I was ready to go.

Four weeks into my first semester I dropped out.

Some of my professors were surprised. One of them (my favorite) reached out to me to ask why. A few of my classmates actually reached out to me as well to see if I was okay. One was actually upset at me for leaving. I couldn’t bring myself to reply.

It is hard to describe how difficult it was for me to do that. And for a few years after that I questioned whether I had made the correct call. In the immediate aftermath, I was stuck in a city I didn't like with a lease and no prospects. I was living out of, essentially, a big closet. I still had a small amount of money left though, and I clung to it and stretched it as far as I could.

What had happened, in a nutshell, was I had realized it wasn't what I had signed up for. That I wouldn't really come out on the other side of this with the ability to make games. That the "production" track was really just project management. That almost no one in the industry actually got to work on games they wanted to. That the burnout rate was exceptionally high. That about half of former alumni who actually managed to get a job in the industry after they graduated would leave the industry for something else with five years. That almost every type of job you could get in the games industry paid a lower salary with higher expectations than an equivalent counterpart in an adjacent industry. This led me to a bit of a nervous breakdown.

Everything started to feel like a joke. The school would go on to be rated the #1 graduate program for video game production in the country that year by the Princeton Review. I couldn't really help but feel like I totally blew it by leaving with no backup plan. But in the end it was the only way it could have gone down for me. I may elaborate on this more in the future, because I learned a lot during this period, but for now in relation to the channel, that’s enough.

It was a mix of defeat and having nothing really going for me that eventually lead to my first attempt at bringing the channel back in 2016. I had dropped out in the fall of 2015. I did some slight rebranding. I was looking into camcorders and videos about which were best for YouTube. I was looking for something I could do that would be positive for me. I started doing research. Even back in 2016, the common sentiment online was that phones were generally good enough for YouTube videos. Camcorders were already on the way out. I was already behind in missing that everyone was using DLSRs to record video now. And if you wanted a microphone? Gotta get that Blue Yeti.

While I didn't have much in terms of money, I did eventually scrape together enough for the Yeti and for two cheap battery-powered lights after I got a job delivering subs for Jimmy John’s. I got an adapter for my phone so that I could plug the Yeti directly into it. But it just wasn't working out. I could really break out of the idea zone. I couldn't commit to making something. It was more just a feeling that I wanted to come back. I had no actual plan or video I wanted to make.

One thing that kept me going through this period was the promise of "Zelda Wii U". I had been looking up news daily on this game since its announcement in 2014. I was absolutely devastated by its delay in early 2015. It was something to look forward to, though, and I needed that at the time. I would follow the rumors of the "NX" system daily as well. I had nothing else to do, really, so I mean. Yeah.

People were unsure if the system would launch in 2016 or 2017. I had hoped it would be sooner rather than later. It ended up being early 2017, but as a sort of stop-gap, Nintendo released something called the "NES Classic Edition” in the holiday slot for 2016. The existence of this system was pivotal for further sparking my interest in retro games. Ultimately, its existence helped shape the early concept for how I might return to YouTube. It wasn't the first thing that sparked my interest – that was actually playing Super Mario Bros. 3 on my buddy's Wii virtual console when I was interning for the Red Cross – but it was the first thing that gave me a hint at an idea for a show.

I loved video games, but in truth I didn't have much experience with them. With the history of them. I still don't, in all honestly. My video gaming experiences are pretty limited compared to most of my peers. But when I saw the "NES Classic Edition" I really wanted one. I wanted to play through all these games I had missed out on. I wanted to see how all these legendary franchises got their start. I wanted to understand the progression on a more personal level. I felt I was in a unique position to tackle them that way since I had never played any of them before.

I failed to acquire one. But the seed was planted.

I felt that if I did ever work up the courage to reboot my channel, this would be the angle I would take.

My lease was up at the end of July and I wasn't thinking too hard about it, really. But something had occurred to me one day when I was delivering subs. I thought, “Maybe I should just learn to program”. The programmers at FIEA were the only ones that were essentially guaranteed jobs. It was all the rage back in 2016. The short of it is, I ended up applying to go back to school for a CS degree. I didn't tell anyone about my plans this time. I was nervous about being rejected. I still felt like a failure. But when I got accepted back, I felt positive about the direction of things for me again.

I can say now that in hindsight, for me, this was somewhat an act of penance. I felt like I needed to "right" the "wrong" I had committed by dropping out of school. But I was very excited. This felt like my ticket out of Orlando. It felt like my future. And while a lot of good certainly came from it, and I'm proud of the work I put it, it did not end up being the golden ticket I believed it to be at the time.

Returning to school was a challenge for me. I was so nervous about digging a deeper hole for myself and "failing" again like I perceived I had at FIEA. But I did really well. As I stated earlier, I had never been very technical. I was never a "computer person". I had no natural interest in programming. I had no natural interest in computers. That might be part of why I ultimately view this trip for a second degree as a positive one, even if it didn't land me the career I expected it to. There’s something to be said for forcing yourself to understand something that doesn't come naturally to you. It helped unlock newfound appreciations and understandings for things not even related to what I was studying. It helped me regain my confidence.

Thoughts of resurrecting the channel were never dead during this period. I was working full-time and I was going to school half-time – and the entire time that was happening I was brainstorming ways I could somehow fit in YouTube as well. I wouldn't end up being able to properly get started until after I graduated in the fall of 2020, but I had decided I wasn't going to take any half-measures like my first failed attempt at a comeback in 2016. I was researching gear, games, systems, mods, photography, lighting, you name it. I had no experience with any of this stuff, but I had a strong will, and I was determined to make it work.

I made my first purchase in the name of the channel in 2018.

A year later, I made a few more.

This pattern would continue for some time. While I made my first purchase in early 2018, it took me over three years to finally post my first video. I had a very different idea of how the show would look at feel back then.

I felt a little silly investing essentially every spare penny into it. But for some reason I had this certainty that it would succeed. I felt immensely confident. And I was also fairly certain that once I graduated I'd land a high-paying job that would excuse some of this premature spending.

Regarding the job: Despite graduating with honors and three years of actual development work experience, it never really happened for me.

Regarding the channel: It's a work in progress, and I would consider it a success, but it has taken exponentially longer to find an audience than I anticipated.

Those two statements are gross oversimplifications. But there's your tl;dr.

Back to gear acquisition, I spent a lot of time researching. My fear of making a "big mistake" was still ingrained in me from my time in Orlando. But since I had spent so much time in the past researching music gear back when that was my main thing, I had a clue when it came to gear of any kind. Generally speaking, you want to pick up the stuff that's good enough to move easily on the secondhand market if things don't work out at a minimal loss. The cheap stuff is just a total loss if it doesn't work out. The midrange stuff; it's a toss-up, but you're usually taking a hit somewhere in the ballpark of 50%. For the nicer things though, the really well-built and trusted equipment, you can resell it if things don't work out, and you'll lose less money overall. The upfront costs are higher, but it's actually less risky. At least from my perspective. That was my general strategy.

I couldn't afford everything all at once. And if I could have, I don't think I could stomach buying it all at once. I am generally very cautious when it comes to big purchases and I often agonize over them. But one common pattern among all past and present hobbies for me is that I don't always get the gear I need in an order that makes sense.

It would be a full year later from the purchase of my camera that I even had a computer powerful enough to process the video that I was shooting, for example. My initial plan was actually to just use computers I had available to me in a specific library on campus at the university I went to. But the issue there was that the hours were very limited, and I could only ever get there for about 40 minutes at a time. And if they were occupied, there was really nothing I could do.

While I never got around to actually editing during this time, I thought the footage I was getting looked amazing (it was alright). Just the shots coming straight out of my camera were dynamite to my eyes compared to what I had tried getting with a phone. When I finally did purchase a computer for the purpose of editing video and application development though, it really changed everything for me. Finally I could see and play with the images my camera was taking. That's when I finally made the move to attempting to actually reboot the channel. In mid 2020.

Regarding the list of games I had created for this specific project (something I skipped over here) and how I moved toward actually starting my Retro Odyssey project, you can find more information about that in this video here.

The short of it is, while I wanted to progress through all the systems leading up to Gen 6; I had decided to begin with the Famicom/NES and work my way out from there, with the goal being to bookend a system before moving on to the next. I went with the Famicom over the NES for one main reason: the cartridges were cuter. They were more varied and more interesting to me visually. The box art was also typically much better. Additionally, there was significantly less content in English on YouTube that showed Famicom games up close as opposed to NES games. I thought it might be naturally a bit more interesting since many of these titles have been talked about to death.

I had very unrealistic expectations at first. I expected to post a video a week even with the full-time job and school. I had planned to paint the thumbnails my hand. I had even researched the best materials to paint them with. I had no painting experience at all, but I was in pure "go for it" mode. I had even contemplated doing little beat remixes of some tracks from the OST of each game for each video. With no audio engineering experience whatsoever though, that was the first unrealistic idea I canned.

Really, when you back up and take a look at it, the whole thing was extremely unrealistic. I had no experience with retro gaming, no experience with filming, no audio recording or mixing experience, no lighting experience, and I was spending thousands of dollars on gear just to reboot my former YouTube channel with 600 dead subscribers that used to be about Yu-Gi-Oh! . . .

It sounds a bit mad when you look at it that way.

Maybe it still does even with how far I've come.

When the time finally came to put my pen to paper so to speak, I had not developed any sort of real “process” for how I was to make these videos. I had ideas, but everything was still fluid. I wasn’t sure what would stick or not. All I was certain of was the list of games I referenced earlier. I knew Excitebike was up first, so I just went in and started playing that on my modded AV Famicom being recorded through the Ninja V.

Saying it like that though, I realize I ought to elaborate a bit more on the pain of acquiring gear. When researching what sort of camera to buy, what lens, the best possible gameplay footage I could get, the best possible mods (I was obsessed with doing something quality even though I had no experience), the issue arose of recording time. The camera I had settled on could record in 4K 60p, but could only do so for 15 minutes at a time. I was dead set on the framerate being 60 to match the output of the Famicom, so I looked into external recorders, and there was this one called the “Ninja V” which seemed to kill two birds with one stone. Three, really. It recorded footage from my camera’s HDMI-out port directly to SSD without the need to connect to any sort of external software, so, no messy “connect this to your camera AND your computer AND install this software hassle. And it hit me that I could also use this to record pristine quality gameplay. But it was $700.00… This is impossible to justify, but I was beyond justifying it. I knew it would be so beneficial and I felt I had to have it so I pulled the trigger.

Of all the gear I’ve acquired for the channel, this was the one that hit me the hardest for some reason. I was just in so deep. I hadn’t made a single video and I questioned myself and what I was going here. I cried to myself sitting on the stairs after opening it. But after testing it I was really impressed with it and I got over that hump quickly. I can say with confidence now that it was 100% worth it. It is possibly the most critical piece of kit that I own. It’s a complete tank and it has been key to making all these projects happen.

So, back to the first video, now that I believed I had almost everything I needed to start, starting still wasn’t easy. I was afraid, a bit. I wanted it to be perfect. I also wanted it to be raw and unscripted. But you can’t expect to knock it out of the park when you haven’t been in from of a camera in almost a decade. And I certainly didn’t. Eventually, I had to just tell myself “It’s not going to be perfect” and force myself to record, telling myself if I hated it I could just throw it out and start over.

Once I had what I felt was “enough” footage, it was time to teach myself how to edit. This part of the process, I was very self-aware that I lacked any skill. I knew I was starting from scratch. I was hoping I could use the quality of the footage from my camera as a crutch to make up for the lack of editing. I also never anticipated editing ever becoming a serious part of my workflow. I wanted to keep things casual and simple (I had no idea what was coming lol).

During the editing process I realized that my camera had actually shut off during my unscripted ramblings about Excitebike. I noticed that my camera was changing the white balance on the fly during the spinning shots. I noticed all sorts of little imperfections. But it all made me so excited. I felt like I was so close. I didn’t know it at the time, but I wouldn’t actually publish anything on my channel for another year or so after editing this footage together. I can confirm through looking at my tests, that it was uploaded to YouTube in the state I would eventually publish it in September of 2020.

At that point I had already decided to keep it in it’s current unfinished state. Without me talking about the track creation or offering my final thoughts on the game. Considering the rest of the series, this might seem like an odd decision. It is. But I explained it as much at the end of that video in writing. Sometimes you just have to move on. I felt I had been waiting for far too long to finally start posting. I decided I needed to just move forward since I knew it wouldn’t be perfect. I placed more value on pressing on since I felt I had been trapped in the idea cave for far too long.

It is worth noting that late 2020 and early 2021 were an odd time. Given I was graduating as well at this time and also keeping my eyes peeled at new job opportunities, it felt like things kept getting in the way of me finally getting going with the channel reboot. I was still going back and forth between whether to do a completely new channel or stick with my original one. I had gone through the trouble of setting up a new channel just in case, but I was leaning towards keeping my original one. I just couldn’t think of a name for the new one that felt right.

I also didn’t want to launch the channel without multiple videos ready to go. In the months leading up to my actual reboot which would happen on May 20th, 2021, I had recorded two more episodes. Balloon Fight and Ice Climber, and I felt each one was better than the last. Once I decided for certain I was sticking with “HPRshredder”, I recorded an update video. And I also edited together a compilation of clips from my Yu-Gi-Oh! days to post after that leading up to the premiere of Retro Odyssey. I felt it was all coming together. Finally. After Everything.

I was having issues with the audio, but I figured I would just push through that. I spent hours trying to improve it with the EQ in my editing software, but the attempts were mostly futile. I was considering looking at other options for microphones, but I was just so deep already and I felt it was really time to just start. To rip the bandaid off. To set sail on weekly retro videos. To learn more about the history of video games, to see how I felt about them, to see where all these legendary franchises started. Once I had a few finished videos in the tank, and a few kind of crappy thumbnails that were the best I could do at the time, I scheduled the update video and prepared for liftoff.

You think you’re prepared for no views. You tell yourself, “I can get by with no views for a little bit, no big deal, I know it takes time and consistency to grow!” But your idea of what that feels like in your head and the reality of it setting in are different. Nothing can fully prepare you for it. It can be soul crushing. It probably won’t set in with the first video, but by video 4 or 5 when things aren’t changing (or even somehow getting worse) the pain is palpable.

Here are a few screenshots to illustrate my point:

My big return got 33 views in the first day. My first Retro Odyssey episode got 25. My Balloon Fight video got 11.

Balloon Fight I always remember as being the most painful. A full hour before even getting a single view. Then another six hours before getting a second. I remember I posted this one just before taking a 5-hour trip across the state and when I finally mustered up the courage to check the analytics my heart sank.

Ice Climber after it got 10 views in its first 25 hours.

This was my new reality.

Even looking ahead to my Season 2 debut, things don’t appear much better. Goemon got 40 views in its first 24 hours. Metroid was an anomaly, getting a cool 183 views, but it was back to 53 views for Adventure Island.

Going back to those first few uploads though, it felt bad, but I wasn’t defeated. Obviously, I’m still going. I don’t plan to stop. If I can help it.

I hadn’t yet nailed down what I was even going for. I remember showing a coworker my Excitebike video (My boss, actually). He had played it a lot as a kid. He was excited to see what I had to say, but I could physically see the “wtf am I looking at” on his face. He was asking, essentially, where’s the gameplay? He had a point. I had initially expected to include a lot more, but this one was mostly just me talking directly into the camera. I didn’t really think it was that big of a deal at the time because I was into videos of people just talking about their experiences with games. A channel I really admired at the time that sadly no longer makes (or even at this time, made) content, Dustin Kreis, would just sit down and talk for as long as he felt he needed to about whatever he wanted and that would be the video. That is kind of what I had in mind, though, obviously I had more planned. But even though the next few videos were already done and did have more gameplay, I still took note of it and planned to include more moving forward.

I had not yet dedicated myself to work on just one video at a time at this point, so it was a tiny bit harder to find the exact footage I wanted. I also wasn’t in the habit of just recording the entire game yet. The process was still in the works.

That Excitebike video was more a video for me than it was for anyone else. Even at the beginning I included a shot just showing how I hadn’t set it up correctly and was still on the photo mode. Then I go into a lengthy intro segment with the song that would essentially become my theme song for a full minute, just because I liked how it looked and how the sounds from the game paired with the music. I was proud I got to use the song I wanted because I had reached out to the artist, Outmind, who I had been a fan of for years and he gave me permission. Music is a minefield on YouTube and I felt really happy that I was able to use something I personally had a strong connection to. The video starts with me reminding myself it wont’ be perfect. The video ends with some text that’s really just me reminding myself that you have to keep going.

I won’t got into excruciating detail with how every video went and everything that happened in the production of each one, but I will include the highlights.

My Super Mario Bros. video was the first I did sitting down at my desk. Sitting down was actually my initial plan, but I didn’t know how to make it work with me visible and with the background out of focus in such a small space. It was too hard making micro adjustments on my camera to get me actually at a pleasing angle and centered on screen. But it turns out, it wasn’t too hard, that was just what I was telling myself. And what pushed me to finally give it a shot was the final investment I would make for quite some time in the gear department. A brand new microphone and interface plus a mic arm to the tune of $1100.00.

I was so unsatisfied with the audio from the first four videos on the channel, and I decided that as ridiculous as it sounds, the time to make an investment into better audio was yesterday. I knew that audio was important and I didn’t want to just continue having it sound so bad to my ears every time. I had initially bought a shotgun microphone to keep it out of frame, but I just could not for the life of me get it to sound decent. My room wasn’t sound-treated. I had nothing to stop the echo. My cable would sometimes buzz. It was very finicky and the hours I would send trying to make it sound better in Final Cut weren’t enough.

At this stage I lacked the ability to continue doing a lot of research and I just needed to get something soon. Since I wasn’t an audio expert, and I was short on time, I ended up just getting the industry standard microphone I had seen used everywhere for years.

I was a little uneasy about this, but I was all in. When it arrived and I hooked it up and I tried it out for the first time… I rejoiced. It sounded amazing right out of the box and it made editing so much easier because it would go silent when I wasn’t talking due to the type of microphone it was. I was also able to speak more naturally and more comfortably while sitting down, and it was what I had wanted to do initially. So it was a massive early win for the channel even if I still wasn’t getting any views. Retro Odyssey Episode 4, Super Mario Bros., is the first one with truly listenable audio.

Looking back on the first season of Retro Odyssey, I consider the first real episode to be ep.007: The Legend of Zelda.

That was the first episode that really had all the ingredients of Retro Odyssey present. It took me significantly longer to make, but I was so much happier with the video itself than I had been with anything else I had made up to that point. I had taken a lot of the feedback I received up to that point and applied it. Notably, having a spoken cold open followed by the theme song as a bridge, which made a lot more sense. It was something this guy suggested after I had asked for advice in a small YouTubers thread.

This was also the first time I got a bump, naturally, from outside of YouTube. Don’t get me wrong, I had been doing everything I could to try and share the videos online. It just wasn’t working. But someone who watched my Zelda video ended up sending it to an old-school blogger by the name of Sean Malstrom. You can read what he had to say about it here.

I cannot tell you what a boon this was to my morale. I was checking the analytics constantly just for a couple hundred views. I was absolutely floored by this. It had me really excited. I knew that I had to step up my game after that. I wanted to continue delivering videos that took a bit more effort, but that I was more proud of in the end. I still wasn’t writing scripts at this point, but I was including bullet points and lists in front of me as to not forget anything important.

I did end up making a mistake with this video soon after, however. I paid Google to try and promote it like an ad. YouTube recommended this in YouTube Studio, and I was curious to try it. I regret it deeply. It absolutely tanked my watch-time and retention. It would take over a year for the video to recover and get impressions again.

For just about every video I posted after Zelda, I felt at least something was improving. Even if the totality of the video wasn’t always as good as that one, I felt I was tightening up in other ways. Whether it be the pacing, the editing, the balance of gameplay, or the quality of the lighting or CRT shots. Nothing was ever perfect, but I felt I was building toward something. And for me, the next major video project that felt like it took things to the next level, was Metroid.

Metroid took things a significant step further than the Zelda video and it really solidified the Retro Odyssey formula. The whole process and everything. When I was producing it, I was thinking in the back of my head that I wanted to try my best to make it the best video about Metroid 1 on the platform to the best of my ability. Whether I could achieve that was less important, it was more about making that the aim. This was by far my longest video. It had the most scripted segments (still not a full script). It had the cleanest editing and a darker, moodier lighting setup. It had several points to it that were bigger than just the scope of that specific game (though I always tried to make the videos about the game first and foremost).

This video felt like a clear step up for me. It raised the bar. It was hands down my most successful video up to that point. By February, the video had over 1,000 views, which for me was a monumental achievement considering how unpopular my videos had been up to that point. It certainly took a lot out of me. But like every other video up to this point, I learned a lot making it. And everything I learned I would take with me and apply to the next one.

While Goemon, the first episode of season 2, isn’t my favorite thing I’ve made, I am generally pretty satisfied with the remainder of the season from Metroid onward. Adventure Island, Layla, Kid Icarus, Dragon Buster, King Kong 2 – I’m very pleased with how these turned out. I think the two standouts of the season though are Hinotori, and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. To this day those are two of my favorite things I’ve made. Both of them raised the bar. Especially Zelda II.

For a recap of each season of in video form, check out my “Retro Odyssey Recap” videos in which I talk a bit about the process and the memories from doing each episode. Currently, as of writing this, I’m past the halfway point of season 3 of Retro Odyssey. As I’ve tried to raise the bar with each video, the length between uploads has grown to the point I consider it a major issue. And while the quality of the videos is what I believe is responsible for the growth the channel has seen over the past couple of years, it’s also the biggest bottleneck for further growth.

I can assure you I have been hard at work behind the scenes looking to find a solution to this problem. I believe I have finally found it, but as you’ve likely deduced from reading this, it can sometimes take me a while to put my ideas into action.

I plan to update this page in the future with more channel history from time to time. But I thank you for being here and for reading what is here, currently.