hde2009

Only a day left (or thereabouts) of 2018! And its very much a case of 'so long, we won't miss you' at HdE Towers.

But its not just this year that's staggering to a conclusion. Yesterday, I uploaded the last epsode in this season of HdE's Totally Unoriginal Gaming Show. And, in typical DeviantArt catch up style, I'm here to share that with you.

But first you might be interested to watch teh video I put up a week or two before that, which was a review of the Super Nintendo exclusive SUPER R-Type.



How do you follow up the excitement of spaceships and laser beams and things exploding? Well, with... are you ready for this? A FALLING BLOCK PUZZLE GAME! Yes indeed - the last of this first batch of twelve reviews is a rather in depth (even if I say so myself) examination of Sega's COLUMNS for the Megadrive. Or Genesis, if you're based Stateside.



So that's it! This first run is a wrap!

Plans are already underway for a second season, which should hit YouTube sometime in March of 2019.

Keep 'em, peeled!

Alright, deviants!

I'm stopping by once again with a MASSIVE update on my Youtube show, where I take a look at video games from every era. And there's a bumper crop of really cool stuff here, even if I do say so myself. Which I kind of have to, because almost nobody is watching these videos. Youtube's a hard sell these days, innit? BUT... WHATEVER.

Over the last few weeks, I've cranked out a quartet of videos, three of which are retrospective reviews of games that are almost as old as I am, with the other being a special feature.

I'll lead with the feature first, which is a short peek at a couple of indie games I saw when I visited EGX in September. Get a load of this:



Pretty cool, eh? And now, onto some reviews of old games for consoles you've probably long since thrown out and forgotten about!

First on the list is the NES version of Namco's PAC-MAN. Which, as I explain in grisly detail, is actually a very, very disturbing concept when you think about it. Funny how it's always musicians and artists who get pegged as the big time drug abusers and 'troubled souls' in entertainment. I mean, novelists get a bit of that as well. But I'm not sure that software developers aren't secretly WAY more into the old hallucinogens and wacky pharma products. I mean, just LOOK at what this game has you doing. It's a junkie's fever dream wrought into pixels. Just you try telling me different!



And as if THAT wasn't bad enough, check out the Sega Master System version of MARBLE MADNESS, which looks like the inside of M.C. Escher's brain after a bad LSD trip! YOINK!



I can't think of any 'funny' jokes about drugs for the very latest review. So I'll go for something patronising and probably ineffectual in the long run: remember, kids - just say no! You don't want to end up like Danny Kendall in Grange Hill, do you? Mind you, it might not have been the drugs wot done him in. Remember that teacher who had it in for him? He was also Hitler and a baddie in Star Wars! So I call foul play. What chance did poor old Danny have, eh?

Um... why am I here? Oh yeah - here's a review of BEAMRIDER for the Atari 2600, which was a very good game released by Activision in the days before all they cared about was Call of Duty and bleeding you dry with microtransactions for stripey paint on your gun barrels, or something:




So there you go, folks! Only two episodes in this season to go. They might take a while to appear, mind, because I've got to do some technical voodoo to make them happen.

Until next time, PLAY OLD GAMES!

'Allo you lot!

Just a quick update on my Youtube channel, which has recently had a bit of an explosion of new subscribers thanks to a little unexpected publicity from another YouTuber - the awesome Octav1us (more on her later!)

I've recently come off a brief mid-season hiatus and started uploading again. One of the latest videos features a review of the Nintendo Gameboy version of Battleship, which addresses the practicalities of playing board games on game consoles, and gets into the deeper details of the game in ways that even I found surprising. My brain does pick up on stuff I hadn't realised, it seems! Here it is - the video, I mean. Not my brain. That would be gross.



But the latest review on the channel is a bit more experimental. In that one, I review a... get ready for this... I hope you're sitting down... a BOOK!

Yes. An actual novel. With words in it.

But how is that connected to gaming? Well, it's a review of the XCOM spin off novel XCOM 2: RESURRECTION, by Greg Keyes. And you can see what I thought of it here:



If there's sufficient interest in reviews like this one, I might do more However, my YouTube stats are currently in the toilet, and this means I have to unfortunately do the whole 'call to action' thing.

Sad to say, the reality of these kinds of enterprises for somebody like me is, if they don't gain traction, they don't continue. At present, I'm obligated to finish and post another five reviews, because that's as much as I've actually been funded for. But if I don't see a CONSIDERABLE improvement in views per video, I'll have to take some drastic action.

Thanks to the mention I got in Octav1us' video, where she recommends a dozen smaller channels like mine, my subscriber count has recently jumped to a whopping 400. FOUR HUNDRED! That's an amazing achievement, and I'm bowled over that so many folks have decided to jump on board. I'm also, truthfully, a little bit overawed that Octav1us felt I was worth including in her list (check out her own Youtube channel - you can find it here:
www.youtube.com/channel/UCz5Kx…
It's a hoot! She talks about old timey computers, really rubbish technology, terrible video games and mental health issus. Did I mention shes awesome? She's also a Northerner. 'Nuff said.)

But, sadly, this subscriber boost isn't proving to be the incredibly positive development that you might think. Because as much as hitting 400 subs is a big deal, and as grateful as I am to all of those folks for hitting that big red button on Youtube... well, it doesn't translate to healthy views, unfortunately.

On average, most new videos that get posted on my channel dependably attract just 30 to 40 views. You do the maths. Something is going wrong there. And I have an idea what it might be.

Basically, Youtube's notification system is borked. It relies on folks clicking on a notification bell icon next to the subscription status box. And I get the impression that most YouTube users - especially casual ones - just aren't aware that they need to do this to receive regular notifications. Additionally, YouTube's increasingly algorithm-based internal mechanics make it difficult for channels like mine to get their videos seen by new viewers.

I'll be blunt: If not for the potentially huge audience it exposes videos to, YouTube would not be worth uploading to at all right now. The site is run by a shower of idiots who are hell bent on making it unviable for smaller channels. And they're certainly not interested in fixing anything they've already broken. As a result, future plans don't revolve around YouTube. That said, I want to make sure there's some content on there for folks who want it. But with these kinds of numbers, I can't go on forever. We're already at the 'use it or lose it' stage.

So, if youre subbed, and assuming you WANT to keep abreast of my new videos, please find that notification bell and give it a click. And if you want to be EXTRA, EXTRA helpful, please feel free to share any of the videos around online wherever you like on social media.

I'll keep folks appraised of how all this stuff is panning out in future updates.

Anyways - hope you enjoy the videos! And if there's something you'd especially like to see in one of them, by all means drop me a comment under one of them (don't do it here - I only check in very occasionally on DA now) and let me know.

That's a pun. Geddit?

Updating my otherwise negelcted DA journal with the last couple of episodes of my new Youtube venture, HdE'S TOTALLY UNORIGINAL GAMING SHOW.

The latest picks skew towards something a bit meatier and - GASP!- more recent than most of the oldies I've been talking about, as well as a nifty version of an old timey classic.

The big hitter in this crop is Bungie's last ever, tour de force Halo game, HALO: REACH -which probably features the strongest storytelling of the bunch (I still shudder at the hideous narrative mess that kicked in when 343 Industries took over.)



But if planetwide tragedy isn't your thing, you could always watch my review of the Atari 7800 versin of ASTEROIDS, wherein you visit a fiery apocalypse upon a bunch of innocent space rocks. And the occasional flying saucer. And a second player.



An Atari 7800 DIED to bring you that review. So the least you could do is pay your respects by watching it, right?

I'm taking a couple of weeks out from these uploads now, just because I have some big-ish comic book projects that need to be lettered, and the channel is so badly buried under Youtubes terrible algorithms that I need to work out a new strategy to get these things seen. Serioulsy, I have 250 subscribers, and the best these videos are doing righ tnow is 20-30 views. Without an audience, alas, there's not much point in doing them. But not to fret... I have a plan. A very *special* plan...

I'm off to stroke my beard and look thoughtful now, in a way that suggests I know what I'm talking about. In the meantime, cheers for reading and - I hope - watching!

Sort of.

Well, alright, only in the most *figurative* sense. This week's episode of my new Youtube gaming show sees me tackle X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE - UNCAGED EDITION - a super-violent PS3 rehash of the game that first appeared on the PS2 to coincide with the film.

If you watch it, you'll also get my very succinct verdict on the movie.

Here it is:



Alternatively, if the thought of all that Canuckleheaded carnage worries you, and you'd rather have something more sedate and cutesified, you could check out my review of BUBBLE BOBBLE for the Sega Game Gear:



That's all I got for now. I gotta get back to lettering comics!