The Sega Saturn Chalenge Is Coming

One thing you may not know about me is that I LOVE the Sega Saturn, it's easily one of my favorite systems.  Hell, the first few playthroughs for YouTube I did were of 3 Dirty Dwarfs and Panzer Dragoon Saga

So I'm currently amassing a large collection of Saturn games with the intention to stream ALL of them, or at least all the games in the Saturn library that aren't sports games.  The point of all this being 1. I get to explore a library of games from a system that had a TON of Japanese exclusives and 2. To try and introduce more people to the absolute magic that is the Sega Saturn.  A lot of the games on the system are RPGs so if I actually ever finish or not before I die is another story but I'm sure as hell going to try

If you are familiar with the Sega Saturn and are interested to see a game, feel free to donate to charity to have it bumped up the priority list although I'm only going to finish each game once so don't just donate for NiGHTS 20 times and expect me to play nothing but that.

It's still going to take a while to set up but I'm hoping to get the ball rolling on this by September so go subscribe to the Twitch channel in the meantime or check out the two Saturn game playthroughs I did on the YouTube channel

The YouTube Let's Play Crackdown

Do you remember a long long time ago, back when this thing was still in its infancy and the donation count was barely above £50 that I started making game play videos?  If you don't, it was 3 Dirty Dwarves on the Saturn and you are only a few clicks from being able to watch it from the links in the sidebar.

Now I'm obviously not the only person who does this, there are literally thousands of people doing game play commentary videos and while I'm in it to try and entertain you (probably failing) and convince you to donate a little bit to a charity, there are a lot of people who do it for self profit.

Not that there is anything wrong with wanting to be paid for these kind of videos but when all your really doing is just sitting on your ass and playing a game, it's kind of difficult to understand why someone would EXPECT to be paid for that, but that's just me.

Anyway, this "crackdown" I'm talking about is basically YouTube being a lot stricter with it's copyright stuff.  If you have a video that contains copyrighted material, then they flag it.  If you acknowledge the third party content it puts ads on your video and the money goes to that third party, and if you dispute it and win, the ad revenue goes to you.

This tightening up of what can and cannot be monetised is a problem for some people because for a very lucky few, this is how they make a living, although with these changes there is a chance that they won't be able to sustain that anymore.  I don't really see the problem because simply playing a game and talking over it is not the kind of thing that deserves payment really.  I would sit in a room with people and talk to them while I played games all the time at university but no one was showering me in money.

It's not like YouTube is taking the content down, we aren't see a death of the "Let's Play" here, but what we are having to deal with is a reality where people can't milk game play videos for a quick buck.  Still though, it's not all bad because maybe these people can you know....get a job or something...I dunno, maybe I'm just crazy.

This doesn't really affect me in the slightest because I don't monetise my videos and I'm not all that popular.  So if Sega want to put ads on my Panzer Dragoon videos or whatever to earn a few pennies, then fine with me, go for it.  I have a pretty decent job, I'm not going to cry over losing a few YouTube bucks. 

Basically what I'm trying to say is that it's not THAT big of a deal.  If your idea of having a stable income was by producing game play videos with commentary then I think maybe you need to have a long hard think about yourself.

Three Dirty Dwarves with commentary!

Well it's done! 6 videos of me playing Three Dirty Dwarves to completion with me talking in the background!

Now I am aware that I need to do some stuff in the future to make these videos a little better.  The big one is that I just flat out need a better computer, so I guess I gotta start saving those paychecks.  The second thing is that I need a better microphone, my current one sucks and it's pretty obvious that it sucks, so I'll be popping down to the nearest electronics store in the near future.  The final thing is that I need to adjust the game volume, it was a little loud but I think it turned out just fine here.

Also, as much as I enjoyed putting this thing together, I didn't realise it would make me so nervous.  While I'm talking, my brain is going "everyone hates you and you're ugly" and it really throws me off.  Maybe if it turns out that people do enjoy this stuff that will become less of an issue.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the videos, like em, share em, and maybe donate if you're in the mood for that.

VIDEOS!

Three Dirty Dwarves (and more technical issues)

Well I WAS hoping to have a play through of this game to show you, but the technical bullshit behind this recording stuff is driving me insane.

The way I'm recording this stuff is by using an emulator because I don't have any way to lift footage off a console here in Japan, all my stuff for that kind of thing is in Sweden.   However, the software I am using to record the game play (FFSplit) makes the emulator look like complete ass and the whole thing is unwatchable.

So while I'm working on the issue, take a gander at the opening cinematic so you can get a feel for the game's story while I'm ironing out more problems.  The sad thing is that this 5 minute cartoon for this games opening is way better than most of the crap kids cartoons put out on TV today.  What a sad age we live in.

Thanks to whoever uploaded this video, getting any information on this game is actually turning out to be quite hard!

UPDATE:  Pretty much 10 minutes after making this post, I fixed the problem, the resolution is a little on the low side but the quality is alrite and the frame rate is good!  To be honest, considering I don't own a desktop due to travelling about so much, I'm glad I could get it to look the way it does.

I would record the play through now, but in my video testing sessions I'm playing like a man who has just had his thumbs cut off.  It's been a long day at work and I don't think I could do a good job of playing the game OR making the commentary interesting, so I'll do it in the morning when I'm nice and fresh!

That said I have a day off work and lots of time to make content, so maybe I'll do a little bonus something depending on how I feel to make up for lost time