Week of 5/13 Update!

Hey folks! I'm aiming to start providing these text updates more consistently to give you guys a better idea of what's in store. Why am I starting the second week of May? Shut up.

God of War II & Ape Escape coming to the Patreon feed imminently!

I didn't anticipate I'd keep running into age restriction issues with God of War, but those hit II like they had with I and it's been pushing me back and frustrating me to no end; after the first couple tries, I gave up and pivoted to writing Ape Escape first since I figured that was going to be a day project once I sat down. I've essentially been juggling the main Ape work with researching/prepping some of my other projects (see below); and then at the end of the day I've been rendering chunks of GoWII and trying to figure out which parts are getting claimed.

I think I've got God of War mostly ironed out, but I'm currently rendering to test it out one more time. At worst if it does it again, I'm gonna upload the chunk that I know is safe and get that as an early preview hopefully tonight. That covers about the first 30 minutes, including the entire development background part, and then hopefully I'll have an unrestricted full cut that drops tomorrow. Ape Escape is pretty close to finished as well, so if the YT stuff keeps up, you might get a weird order of partial-GoW-II, then Ape Escape, then full-YT-safe-GoW-II, just so that I'm giving some kind of ample Patreon early bonus to you before one of them hits the YT feed. I appreciate your patience and understanding - this back and forth has thrown my whole month off and I need to get that back into order soon.

In the wings: Paper Mario TTYD video remake? FFVII Rebirth/FFXVI? My longest History Of video yet??

Technically, all of the above! With the TTYD remake coming out next week, once one of the above two vids is done, out to you, and then public, I've gotta decide if I am going to remake my TTYD video after all. It'd be a quick turnaround, and most of the TGB audience wasn't around to have seen that one back in 2019 or whenever I made it. But Nintendo's always iffy until the audience starts expanding into that side of the fence, so I haven't locked in yet. This is why I'm getting something out on the public feed by Wednesday, so that I still have the option of doing Paper Mario before the remake comes out. (If this is the case, you'd be getting whichever vid of Ape Escape/God of War that doesn't come out this week 2-3 weeks early!)

We're also nearing 3 months since FFVII Rebirth came out, and I'd like to do something on it since it's going to be announced for PC probably right on 5/29 when the exclusivity period ends. That's why there was supposed to be a video last week, because we'd have ended up with 4 this month! This might be one I push back because there's a lot I have to say, but since FFXVI turns 1 year old at the end of June, I also want to get to that. These are very in-the-air videos for now, because if God of War II ends up doing around the same viewership as the first one, I'm gonna probably shelve the more mature games for a bit and get some more reliable performers out before I return to GoW/hit on FF. (Especially since the next GoW vid would be covering both PSP games and the Java game - that's a lot more work going into one vid!)

But after GoW II/Ape Escape/maybe also Paper Mario, I do have a couple history projects I'm chipping at as well. If God of War's delay has been good for one thing, it's been me getting ahead on other stuff to keep the gaps more consistent between vids! I've got one that's partly recorded and already in editing, which might be my biggest project to date: A full 40 year history of Activision video. I don't know that I'll fast track that for May yet if the other vids aren't quite hitting where I want them to, since that's a big thing to drop cold. I've got some "history of [insert console here] launch" videos that are a bit easier to prime and bang out that I'd probably pivot to instead, just for the sake of appealing to the algorithm/keeping numbers stable. But the order of those depends on God of War II and Ape Escape - God of War could very well end up doing the R&C thing where the views of 2 spike the views of 1 retroactively, and if they do then that series is on track to do well. (Sadly I've gotta keep tabs on that kind of thing!) Ape Escape has always been niche so I'm just kind of sending that one out to see how it does, it very easily could flop or boom. I'd still want to continue covering both series in full, but I also do have to juggle that alongside making sure I have videos that do perform well for the sake of growth/bills/all that fun stuff.

So this is all to say there's stuff hitting your feed very soon, the order might shift around a bit after these next two but I'm feeling more productive than ever if not for YT age restricting God of War and throwing my whole schedule off by so much! The silver lining is that I'm inching closer to having a video or two backlogged here on Patreon for a week or two before it hits the public YT feed, and that's the goal for the year!