Hello. If you follow me here, it’s relatively likely that you follow me in other places, too. But I realise that there is the possibility you don’t. As such, I would like to devote today’s post to sharing a few things I’ve done over on YouTube. If you would like to follow my YouTube channel, here’s the link. Over there, I make videos on video games, primarily retro stuff but with occasional dalliances into more recent stuff I feel like talking about. And also related topics, which brings me to the first video I would like to share.
Exactly what does Yars’ Revenge taste like? I decided to find out. Yes, I am someone who is foolish enough to see a range of 10 sauces with “Atari” written on them, and then to spend £70 on purchasing all of them. I partly did this because I like Atari, partly because I like a good sauce, and partly because I thought it might make a fun video. I am pleased to report that these ten sauces have fulfilled all of their obligations, and you can see my first reactions to them in the video above.
You probably know this, but for my day job I work for Blaze Entertainment, makers of the Evercade range of consoles and the HyperMegaTech! Super Pocket devices, which are also Evercade compatible. When I learned we would be doing an Atari handheld, I was, of course, delighted — even more so when I learned we would be doing a special edition woodgrain model. In this video, I give a quick overview of all 50 games on the system. I was not paid to do this by either my employer or Atari — I just wanted to, because there’s some cool stuff on there, and I’m an Atari nerd.
Atari attracted some raised eyebrows when they announced Yars Rising, a follow-up to the famous 1982 Atari 2600 title. I played the demo one Steam Next Fest and was very taken with it — helped enormously by the fact I’m very fond of the other games developer WayForward have previously worked on. I bought the full game and really enjoyed it, so I made a video about it, based on my write-up over on MoeGamer. It did quite well by the standards of my channel, too, which was nice.
This video didn’t do very well, at least initially, and it’s still sitting on the low side of the view count compared to some of my other stuff. But I wanted to share it because it’s about a thoroughly interesting game: The Missing by SWERY65. This is a platformer in which you play a woman who can’t die; she can survive being decapitated and dismembered and, indeed, it’s necessary to endure both of those things in order to solve the game’s various puzzles.
Far from being a weirdly violent horror game, though, The Missing is actually a thoroughly fascinating, deeply personal story about gender identity and finding acceptance — both in yourself, and from those around you. The game was so striking to me I really wanted to talk about it, so I’m glad I made this video, even if not that many people watched it.
Let’s close with this one. I went into this thinking that doing a video on a text adventure would be a silly idea, but ended up really enjoying the whole thing. Narrating the whole thing makes for (in my humble opinion, anyway) a relaxing, pleasant video, and I don’t mind admitting that I’ve fallen asleep to the sound of my own voice in this video on multiple occasions. Plus I think Moonmist is a thoroughly interesting game from Infocom that rarely gets talked about.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy those. Please do feel free to subscribe over on YouTube if you want to see more. My wife Andie is away for a couple of days from tomorrow lunchtime, so I’m going to use the time to record a bunch of stuff, I think, and probably do some streaming, too. Join me!
Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.
