I've been looking at a lot more stuff from other reviewers and creators around the Internet over the course of the last year or so — a side effect of drifting away from the mainstream commercial press.

I've previously been quite resistant to looking into "YouTubers" in particular as I had the idea in my head that they were all Let's Players trying much too hard to have "hilarious" reactions to what they were doing, spoiling the shit out of games in the process. But I've been extremely pleased to discover a number of YouTube gaming channels that overlap very nicely with both my interests, my age and my preferred style of commentary and criticism. I've also found a lot of them genuinely inspiring in terms of the way they present their content. So I thought I'd spend today highlighting some of them and why I like them!

Most of these creators can also be supported here on Patreon; their channels have links to their Patreon pages if you want to fling them a dollar or two.

Classic Gaming Quarterly
This is where my "journey" began. Chris Alaimo's excellent channel updates fairly infrequently (hence the name), but when it does you can expect very well-produced videos about console launches, game libraries, game magazines, modern retro gaming hardware and a wide variety of things of interest to collectors and retro enthusiasts. Also Alaimo has a wonderfully soothing voice!

Gaming Historian
Norman Caruso's channel provides exhaustively researched, documentary-style featurettes about, as you might expect, the history of gaming and the games business. There are some absolutely fascinating stories among his videos, well worth exploring and spending some time digesting.

Lazy Game Reviews
A very long-running channel that has evolved and matured considerably since its early days, and presenter Clint Basinger is clearly very knowledgeable but friendly and approachable. This channel is a great resource for those particularly interested in the history of PC gaming, including both commercial and shareware releases from over the years.

Pixelmusement/Ancient DOS Games
Kris Asick's channel primarily focuses on, as its name suggests, old DOS games. The main series focuses on a variety of different games from over the years, while spinoff series Shovelware Diggers sees Kris and some of his Patrons trawling through an old CD-ROM collection of freeware and shareware titles looking for interesting games to explore.

Classic Game Room
The original Game Room was one of the first ever gaming-themed video shows on the Internet, and since that time has undergone a number of format changes. Today, frontman Mark Bussler treats the show more as a side project to his book, comic and art work rather than the central part of his business as it once was — you can blame the evolution of YouTube in part for that — but it's still a great watch and there is an enormous library of past episodes to watch, covering pretty much every system you can think of and a few others besides. Mark is particularly knowledgeable about very early game systems such as the Atari 2600, 5200 and 7800 along with the Colecovision, Intellivision and Magnavox Odyssey 2 (aka Philips G7000 in Europe).

MetalJesusRocks
Jason "Metal Jesus" Lindsey's enthusiasm for gaming and collecting is absolutely infectious, and his videos are always a good watch, whether they involve just him or are one of his frequent collaborations with other YouTubers. He has a stunning collection of computer and video games and a clear passion for the subject… though he is occasionally prone to slightly stereotypical clickbaity video titles. Don't let those put you off, however; his content is high-quality, well-produced, informative and entertaining.

Game Sack
Joe Redifer and Dave White's channel is another one that has been around for several years and which has considerably improved and matured over time. Their episodes cover a wide variety of gaming topics — primarily console-centric — ranging from magazines of the past through arcade ports of varying quality to favourite examples of obscure genres. Their current episodes are extremely well produced with a lot of research clearly going into them, and will particularly appeal to those who enjoy discussion of the technical aspects of retro systems and games. Plus each episode closes with an amusing (and similarly well-produced) skit.

Game Dave
Dave has seemingly been inactive for a while, but while you wait for him to produce something new (it's on the way, apparently!) he has a decent library of extremely high quality videos to enjoy, including some passionate exploration of obscure Famicom games and an interesting experiment in combining game reviews with an ongoing serialised narrative component. Dave clearly knows his stuff about games from many different eras, and his game room is to die for.

After widespread complaints from Patrons and creators alike, Patreon has thankfully seen sense and decided not to go with its proposed changes to how it charges fees.

Full details here: https://blog.patreon.com/not-rolling-out-fees-change/ 

This means your pledges will continue to work how they always have done, with no hidden fees or charges; pledge $1, you pay $1. And very welcome your $1 is too!

Thanks for those who have stuck by me during this turbulent period; it's very much appreciated. A more substantial Patrons-only update coming later this week! 🙂

Hello! Thought I'd share something a bit happier after the stuff over the fees. I've been meaning to provide an update on my collection for some time now, and I finally remembered to take some photos last night. So let's take a look!

In the header image, you can see my LE shelf (which is now full, so I need to find somewhere else to put any future limited edition titles, and absolutely definitely not stop buying LEs)

On the top two shelves, we have Senran Kagura 2: Deep Crimson, Shinovi Versus, Estival Versus, Valkyrie Drive and Peach Beach Splash.

Under that we have Hyperdimension Neptunia U: Action Unleashed, Superdimension Neptune vs Sega Hard Girls (which I'm yet to play, I must confess!), Cyberdimension Neptunia: 4 Goddesses Online and Megatagmension Blanc + Neptune vs Zombies.

Under that there's Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth 3 and 2 (1 didn't come out physically over here), Hyperdevotion Noire and Megadimension Neptunia V-II.

And on the bottom shelf we have Dark Rose Valkyrie, Trillion God of Destruction, Fairy Fencer F: Advent Dark Force and MeiQ: Labyrinth of Death.

My PS1 collection is pretty small, but I'm pleased with what it consists on. Vib-Ribbon, visible in the foreground, was a particular hit on my Extra Life stream a few weeks back. I'm also happy that I've re-acquired copies of Xenogears, Parasite Eve and Brave Fencer Musashi, three of my favourite PS1-era games that never got a European release. I have Lunar: Silver Star Story, too, and should probably try and track down Eternal Blue again at some point, but I anticipate that being fairly expensive.

The PS2 shelves are the most well-stocked at the moment because the PS2 is so gloriously cheap, easy and fun to collect for right now. I haven't played a whole bunch of these as yet, but I'm really looking forward to getting stuck into them — both the short-form arcadey titles and the more substantial RPGs such as the Atelier Iris series.

They go on and on and on! I think the PS2 is probably my favourite era of gaming, since it provides such a broad mix of different gaming experiences, ranging from sprawling RPGs to short-form shooters, party games and everything in between. There's something inherently pleasing about something like a shoot 'em up being a physical game on a disc with a manual; it makes it feel like a less "disposable" experience than many downloadable games do.

My PS3 collection is almost what I'd regard as "complete", since I own almost every JRPG on the platform. I'm only missing a few multiplatform games, or games in which there are enhanced versions available on other systems such as Dragon's Dogma and the Disgaea series.

I've recently started collecting for PSP. Like PS2, this is a very cheap, easy and fun platform to collect for at the moment, so I'm taking full advantage of this fact while I can. While you can indeed play PSP games on Vita in their downloadable incarnations, like I mentioned with the PS2, there's something inherently more satisfying about inserting a physical disc into the system rather than just firing it up from a menu.

The most valuable PSP title I own there is that copy of Fate/Extra towards the left. The outer box is slightly battered but it's otherwise in good condition, and I'm pleased I managed to pick it up for less than half the price I've seen copies go for on eBay. Having enjoyed the visual novel Fate/stay night, I'm interested to explore the extended Nasuverse!

My PS4 recently reached a notable milestone by filling a whole shelf! I'm going to have to rearrange things when I get any more PS4 titles. That or put the games I have LEs for back in their boxes, since I put the Blu-Ray cases on the shelf to make them more easily accessible and easier to show off.

Dear old Vita. Lots of great games here. I still need to expand this collection a fair bit — though a lot of Vita games have ended up either ported to or released simultaneously on PS4, so where that option exists, I've always gone for PS4 as it's usually a superior version. Portability is nice, but better graphics, load times and frame rates are better!

DS and 3DS are some of my least favourite platforms to collect for. I'm not really sure why, because it's not that I dislike the games on them per se, it's just that I tend to find stuff on other platforms more exciting and interesting. That said, I've still got a reasonable collection here; it just hasn't expanded very much over the course of the last couple of years.

I've also discovered that if you look outside of games with "Super Mario" in the name, the Wii is extremely cheap to collect for — and even better, it has an absolute ton of unknown, underappreciated games, thanks in part to the system's reputation as a shovelware, party game-centric device. I'm looking forward to exploring some of these unusual and interesting games on MoeGamer in the coming months. Like the PS2, there's a nice mix of long and short-form games to play with.

My Wii U collection is almost what I'd consider to be "complete", with only a few outstanding titles like the Kirby and Yoshi games. Here I've got all the games on the platform I'd consider to be essential purchases that are unique to the platform, or that at least have something noteworthy about them in their Wii U incarnation. Aside: I fired up my Wii U last night for the first time since Miiverse closed down, and it was oddly sad to see the main menu plaza without any Miiverse posts on it. End of an era, indeed.

Finally for the consoles, there's the Xbox 360. Like the Wii U, I consider this collection almost complete for my purposes; I have most of the JRPGs released for the platform, and a good number of the Japanese shmup releases from Cave and others.

Right now, my main collecting focus is on PSP and Wii, though I'm keeping an eye on Wii U games to see if I can pick up those final missing pieces. I'm also getting a Switch for Christmas, so those games will need somewhere to live when that happens! I'm really looking forward to this new system; it's a truly unique platform that promises to be a whole lot of fun.

Hello everyone. I think it's important to address Patreon's recent announcement that it will be changing its fee structure on the 18th of December. For those as yet unfamiliar with the upcoming plans, please check out the official announcement here.

Patreon's justification for adopting this new fee structure is to take the pressure off creators having to handle processing fees. Currently, what happens is people pledge a certain amount each month, but I don't get all of that; a certain proportion of it gets eaten by Patreon for their fees. It's simple, it's easy to understand and it means you only pay what you pledged.

The new approach will see Patrons paying more and Patreon making more money, but not a lot of real benefit to creators. There's a good Twitter thread by someone who actually understands economics here, so give it a read if you want to see how this affects everyone. I predict this has the potential to hurt small creators like me in particular, since I'm certainly not in favour of you having to pay more than I've asked for in my pledge tiers, and can't really afford Patrons to jump ship in protest.

A couple of other creators, including Space Quest Historian and Kris "Pixelmusement" Asick have decided, if Patreon goes ahead with its new fee plan, to adjust their reward tiers so Patrons don't end up paying any more. This means, in my case, that $1 pledges will "reduce" to $0.63 (but you'll still pay $1 with the new fees) and $5 pledges will "reduce" to $4.51 (but again, you'll still pay $5). This seems like a fair approach, so I will be following suit if these plans go ahead; that way, none of you will have to actually pay any more than you are now.

While there are no other real equivalents to Patreon out there — Kickstarter's upcoming Drip is looking like a convincing competitor, but hasn't launched yet — there's no sense jumping ship at the moment, not while I have a pleasingly solid base of regular (and in some cases longstanding!) Patrons.

Rest assured we as creators on Patreon are making our discontent with this matter known, and we'll do our best to ensure that you, as our generous Patrons, continue to be treated fairly. It sucks that this even has to be an issue at all, but, well, this is how things seem to go with businesses like this.

In the meantime, thank you to those of you who continue to support MoeGamer and my work, whether it's financially here on Patreon or simply through likes, shares, comments and suchlike on social media platforms and the site itself. We'll weather this storm together!