Replicating the Fun

I'm currently doing the unthinkable: taking a break from recording more Mega Man videos to do a playthrough of Space Quest 0: Replicated for GCDotNet. There's been a lot of Space Quest buzz lately with all the new fangames and the adventure game project by the Two Guys from Andromeda, so I've been both in a mood for some intergalactic janitorial heroics, and thinking more and more about how it's about time I play another adventure game on YouTube.

The original plan was to do a blind playthrough of a random adventure game I'd never played, preferably a very short one. Boring story short, I had serious issues capturing live commentary and the game audio simultaneously for the particular one I'd chosen, and even more serious issues with recording the video footage itself. I turned to SQ0 instead, a fangame I'd only played through once, several years ago. I decided on a style similar to my Deja Vu recording, adding post-commentary, but going for one continuous take for the entire video rather than trying to perfect individual segments. A nice balance of speed and quality, that.

There's plenty of footage I'm going to speed up or edit out--watching someone try a series of unsuccessful puzzle solutions can get dull incredibly quickly--but it was neat to let the camera roll and just...play. No constant stopping and restarting to get that boss fight just right. No careful planning to ensure total continuity of video footage between cuts. It was liberating.

It made me remember why I enjoyed recording any videos in the first place--these games are fun to play. Making them look perfect and adding clever commentary only adds to that. I seem to have forgotten recently that, like writing for this blog, I'm really doing this for myself. The fact that other people like it only makes it better.

My playthrough of SQ0 is far from perfect. I botch the words I'm trying to type on occasion. I waste my time on clearly pointless actions. I die. A lot. And those imperfections make it more entertaining than any perfect run I could ever hope to record.

Taking a break from recording Mega Man 7 might have been the best thing I could have done to speed up my recording of Mega Man 7. With a refresher of how enjoyable recording can be, even if I'm still running myself through the wringer to get my showoffery just right, I'm far more inclined to keep on top of this project...and to make sure that the tricks I'm pulling off aren't just nice to look at, but fun to execute.

I think there's hope for me yet.