#oneaday Day 649: Ideas and Inspiration

Gotta be honest, watching a bunch of the Hololive gals' stream archives over the last few days has been inspiring me quite a bit. I mean, it's not as if I'm short of things to do right now between MoeGamer and my video series, but I'm feeling a certain amount of… I don't know, I guess "creative energy" is the best way to describe it.

I've been thinking about other things I might want to do with video, as with the way I work that would be the easiest side of things to add a bit to, especially now I've hit pause on the long playthroughs, which frees up a lot of time and energy.

I have several ideas brewing in this regard, and they're all in the similar "single episode showcase" format that currently seems to work well for me on my channel, which would keep things nice and consistent. I don't know if I'm going to do all of these as their own separate thing or fold them into other things, but here's a list of the ideas I've got bubbling away right now.

• Atari A to Z Flashback-style series with the Activision Anthology on PS2. I plan to do this right after Atari A to Z Flashback is finished. There's still a fair way to go on that — we're at 87 out of 150 at the time of writing, with a couple more in the can and ready to go — but that's an all but certain happening, because those Activision 2600 games are super cool. (Also they really need a modern rerelease, but today's Activision doesn't seem to really give a shit any more.)

• Atari A to Z Flashback-style series with the Intellivision Lives! collection on PS2. I don't know the Intellivision at all well, having not grown up with it — I don't think I ever even saw one in the '80s, though apparently it did come out here — but I'm fascinated by the ambition of the games on it. While I'll run into a few of the same issues I've had with Atari A to Z Flashback — mostly two player-only games — I feel like I've kind of figured out the best and easiest way to handle that now, so this is something that could run pretty smoothly.

• A companion/complementary series to my Evercade writeups on MoeGamer, showing the games actually in action. My only slight hesitance with this is that a few of the games from the Evercade's launch lineup still have some peculiar issues with video capture — usually with the audio, so this isn't an insurmountable issue by any means — but I'm quite enthusiastic about this idea, as the Evercade is a platform I absolutely adore and want to continue showing my support for in various ways.

• Some sort of celebration of the underdog games of the seventh generation, as Chris and I have been talking about on the podcast recently. This would include both retail titles that sold and/or reviewed poorly (or were ignored, as is the case with the majority of the Wii's library that doesn't have Mario on the cover) as well as digital-only games from XBLA and PSN that are still accessible, and perhaps even some bigger names that are worth revisiting from a more "modern" perspective. In some ways, I feel this could probably be folded into short;Play, and I enjoy the "pot luck" nature of producing those episodes on a whim. But on the other hand I quite like the idea of having more "focused" series with a clear intent behind them.

I'm still also trying to get my head around the idea of streaming, but I'm not 100% sure how I might be able to make that work in a practical way at a time when the people who might be interested in watching me would be able to watch me. I'm still mulling it over, though, so thank you to those who kindly responded with some feedback to my survey a while back. If you haven't already, you can take a moment to do so here.

Anyway, those are the ideas I have rattling around in my head at the moment. I might try a few "pilots" this weekend, since Andie is away seeing her mother and I have plenty of free time to record some episodes. But we'll see! Keeping myself busy at least keeps my mind out of bleak places, which is important right now.

As always, thanks for all your support, and I hope you have a thoroughly pleasant weekend — or as much as is possible right now, anyway.