For years, I've been interested in doing more with video. I've been toying with creating video summaries of the various RPG eras. Although my primary medium will always be these text postings, sometimes it's tough to convey the sense of a game with screenshots alone.
Well, it turns out I don't need to worry about it. YouTuber RPGBirdy has just published the first video in an anthology, each covering several years of RPG history. The first covers 1975-1981, and it uses some screenshots (with my permission) from my blog.
Excellent work, and I look forward to the next one!
I'm definately grateful you take the time to write more thorough reviews and not just throw a "Dungeons of Kairn is a computer roleplaying game that was independently published for DOS in 1989" out there.
ReplyDeletePretty sure it's not intended to be a review. In fact I have no idea how you came to that conclusion in the first place lol.
DeleteI'm sorry if I gave the wrong impression with my video, but I didn't intend for it to be review-like. I love older PC RPGs and am saddened by how easy it is, especially for people from my generation, to forget about them. I wanted to briefly showcase the games and give basic information in the hopes that if someone saw a title that appealed to them, they would research it further online, and hopefully come across this blog, too. I never intended for it to be thorough; just brief. Thorough is what Chester is doing amazingly here!
DeleteYou made that very clear in the beginning of your video, Birdy. The intention of your video is commendable, and I think you did a very good job with it. I caught myself wishing there'd been at least a short sentence or two of extra information for each (noteworthy) game, but I get that that was not the point. Hopefully it'll indeed get some more people interested in these older games (and this amazing blog, too).
DeleteBirdy....Well done. It is a good compliment to what the CRPG Addict has put together.
DeleteI think I gave a wrong expression with my comment, I wasn't expecting reviews in the video but wanted to say I'm grateful for the actual reviews Chester creates.
DeleteThe video makes it perfectly clear that it's just supposed to be teasers in the introduction, but then all it shows (at least for the first couple of titles) is like three screenshots, always accompanied by the almost identically voiced line "xxx is a computer roleplaying games independently published for the PLATO system in yyyy". Brevity was to be expected, but "Star Wars is a science fiction movie distributed by 20th century fox in 1977 is ... very brief, imo.
@Birdy: My comment was mostly aimed at commending the addict rather than as a critique of the video. It's probably not very useful for avid readers of this blog (imo), but for the average youtube watcher? Sure.
DeleteAlso, I've since realized how small your channel is and feel like I've just given a third grader a beating.
Nothing on the channel for me (yet), as I don't care much for console-style RPGs, but there's of course a big audience for that, and who knows, maybe you'll make some nice vids about computer RPGs as well - the videos seem well done in any event.
Please don't let haters such as myself discourage you and keep up the good work.
Oh, I'd hardly call you a hater. It's not like you're actively going out of your way to make me feel bad about my work or anything. You simply have your preferences and it just doesn't happen to line up with what I created. I do agree that I sound like a bit of a broken record in the beginning, which even I was rather irked by, but I thought it got at least a little better once more platforms came into the equation and I was able to use my own footage. With future videos I would like to include a sentence or two for each game, if I can.
DeleteI do definitely have a bit of a console RPG bias at the moment, because as you said my channel is still small as I only started working on it this year. But I definitely want to delve more into PC RPGs, which had this video sort of acted as a gateway for me. It helped me discover numerous games that maybe I would like to talk about more in depth in the future.
Thank you for posting my showcase video! It was unexpected and is very appreciated. For anyone who didn't really catch it in the video and happens to see this comment, I did this simply to help people discover older titles, then have the basic information to go out and discover more about them. (Hopefully from this blog!) I do plan to continue with this and will do my best to improve upon them from the 1985 and onward videos. (The next video is already fully recorded and unfortunately has little room for adding additional information.)
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of the early era, in February you promised to revisit some of the older titles (http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2018/02/19871988.html)like The Seven Spirits of Ra or Wizardry IV. Is it still on the table? I would really like to see them reviewed some day, since it's really hard to find info on these early RPGs anywhere else.
ReplyDeleteApplause for more videos on this blog. I miss the plain old "I'm narrating what I'm doing while playing" that used to happen all the time. Goldbox, Sword of Aragon, etc. Those were all good videos and I wish they can come again. Screenshots are great but video is the real deal.
ReplyDeleteNay! I must take a somewhat strong opposing posture to this sentiment. "Video"
Deleteis in no way the "real deal", written word is. Verba volant, scripta manent.
This is of course largely a personal preference. But the internets are
full of videos, and a vast majority (of what I've seen, at least) are of
rather poor quality. (Not to say that Addict's was, on the contrary.)
For a non-english speaker, spoken narration is hard to follow.
On an iffy internet connection, videos eat a lot of bandwith, or there
are technical difficulties on the service otherwise.
That being said, I don't mind the occasional video, especially if aspects
of the gameplay are hard to convey in writing.
I tend to skip videos unless it something extraordinary that really requires it, it´s just so time consuming compared to reading.
DeleteI much prefer animated gifs to showcase playing
I do those occasionally, but there's only so much you can show in them--and no sound at all.
Deleteit's "Compleat Apventure"....APventure! :D
ReplyDeleteThat "ap" always gets me! I instinctively say "ad" even though I see that it's spelled otherwise, and I don't realize until it's too late.
Delete"Ap" is a stylistic choice not a change in pronunciation. Nobody pronounces the 1995 movie Se7en as "se-seven-en."
DeleteOh good, it's reassuring that I didn't make a fool of myself for pronouncing it "adventure", then. I had always wondered about that, so the clarification is nice.
DeleteBirdy says there is no image of Nemesis available, however an image is available here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.retroarchive.org/cpm/games/games.htm
I am stunned this game doesn't turn up in more CRPG histories, because it was probably the first to include a separate scenario editor disk and was probably the first (I think it came out in 1981). It was also one of the only CRPGs unique to the CP/M operating system.