#if it's any consolation i was in pain too when i edited this vid

[gentlebeard]

Why don't you love who I am? What we could have been...

Show: Our Flag Means Death - Season 1 & 2 Music: What Could Have Been by Sting feat. Ray Chen YouTube

[crystalnet]

Top 5 Favorite Gaming Youtube Channels

I get tons of inspiration from the many youtubers out there who put their life on the line every day making dank content on some of my favorite games so that youtube always feels like some weird version of VH1/Discovery Channel in an alternate reality where content for gamerz is made with the same production-values and care as bigger-budget cable programming and for that I am eternally grateful. Here are a handful of the many youtubers whose content on gaming is an invaluable resource.

1. SuperBunnyHop

An early-era gamer youtuber classic. His Metal Gear videos are top notch, and I like the wide breadth of his yearly reviews. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_-jyF987MQ&t=18s - MGS3 review

2. Dark Pixel Gaming- https://www.youtube.com/user/WarialaskyPlays

Consists of three midwestern bros who are understandably obsessed with a little genre known as the JRPG. The big draw for me here is the series done by one of the three guys who run this channel which focuses on these really well-done, well-researched reviews/analyses of all the Final Fantasy games, starting with the very first one and working through the whole series (he's struggling through 13 at the moment on his patreon and on weekly public discussion-videos in preparation for it).

These guys put a pain-staking amount of work into their videos, and while the channel covers content related to a variety of games, I'm chiefly interested in their coverage of Final Fantasy and other legacy JRPGs like Chrono Trigger and Xenogears. Whereas other youtubers are able to inject humor and whimsy into their videos for better or worse, these guys are all business when it comes to anything that isn't their more casual weekly vlog-cast, and that level of detail and effort can be hard to come by. I also really appreciate their level of fan-interaction on their podcast when it comes to crowd-sourcing for topics and discussion points, as well as in the way they get feedback from fans on certain games as they are writing their own reviews. Check it out if you care about JRPGs, especially the 90s golden age of said genre. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dtgSqEPkco&t=7s (their review of FF7) 3. Somecallmejohnny- https://www.youtube.com/user/SomecallmeJohnny

The biggest draw for me with this guy are his well-written and long-form reviews of each and every Sonic the Hedgehog game, which is an exhaustive effort given the amount and range in quality with those titles. But he's also good for just about any really big fan-favorite franchise like Mario, Zelda, Kingdom Hearts or Metroid. So he's kind of all over the place but no matter what game or genre he's talking about, he exerts the same level of effort and he seems like a generally well-meaning, well-spoken guy whose straight-forward approach is laudable, even if I don't always agree with him necessarily. And there is a little bit of humor here and there, which I generally enjoy and is preferable to other reviewers who are totally dead-pan or ones who go a little too far in that direction. So yeah, definitely check him out if only so that he can play all the Sonic games that exist so you don't have to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZ0wdIWKGxI -Sonic Advance trilogy review 4. Scott the Woz- https://www.youtube.com/user/scottthewoz

This guy is all about Nintendo, and it's always nice to have a user devoted to a single developer/company. You can tell he really appreciates and understands the Nintendo ethos, and he has videos on a wide-range of things including series retrospectives, console reviews and miscellaneous stuff like videos on old-school E3 shows or the last games released for every console. So it's either Nintendo stuff or industry retrospectives that get into retro ephemera, but I mostly go to him for Gamecube/Wii nostalgia. 

He seems to be a big platform-y guy, and doesn't have that much content on certain big Nintendo franchises like Zelda, which is odd to me personally as a massive Zelda fanboi, but I appreciate his different perspective/values as a Nintendo gamer, and hey they do have a ton of platformers. But he also pays his respects to various Nintendo odd-balls that other people pass over. 

Another thing about him is that he's pretty damn funny a lot of the time. He's good at going between sarcasm and unadulterated sincerity which I appreciate, even if every once in a while something doesn't land or resonate with me necessarily, I still respect the hell out of that hustle. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiBodKbbJy4 (Wii is under-rated) 4. Clemps- https://www.youtube.com/user/MrClemps

This guy seems relatively new in terms of amount of content, but his videos are all really long, detailed looks at super niche-JRPGs like the Yoko Taro games, Dark Cloud and ones that no one's even heard of like this one that Studio Ghibli worked on in the 90s (Jade Cocoon). So yeah he goes deep into the weirder side of my favorite genre, and he's not only well-spoken and niche-oriented but also pretty funny and sports these vaguely threatening rubber gloves as a sort of gimmick that may point to a darker side. 

There's a good bit of story summary which I usually end up skipping over, but that's kind of an issue with the majority of game reviewers, and hey, I guess some people really do want to hear a game's plot boiled down like that, and he does have a delightful accent. So yeah, big draw for me are videos on Nier and Nier Automata, FFXV, Odinsphere and Dark Cloud, but if your of a freakier, JRPG-oriented persuasion, then there's bound to be something here for you. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf9y567Lqg4 - FFXV review 6. Superbutterbunz- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKn72wsF89-DxlA1jlq_fUA

Last but for sure not least is Superbutterbuns, who covers an eclectic range of games including deep-level JRPGs like Persona as well as big crowd-pleasers like Overwatch and Dark Souls alongside niche-y, oft-forgotten platformers like Jak and Daxter and Ratchet and Clank. So she's kind of all over the place with a vague focus on JRPGs, but no matter what kind of game shes talking about you can count on her unique sense of humor and a style which has her going between wacky editing and lite-meme-ing to pretty serious and thorough analyses. 

I'm not always in the mood for the high level of energy in her vids, but there's always something in every vid that gives me a new perspective. Her diverse taste makes me think of her channel as the most Tumblr-iest of video game youtubers that I follow in a way that I can't quite explain, but something about Ratchet and Clank vids, next to Kingdom Hearts vids next to Overwatch and Dark Souls vids just makes me think  of Tumblr, in a good way. And big ups to her Persona and Catherine vids and the use of Tchaikovsky as background-music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZEG3bG_5rY ("yelling about Catherine") Runner-ups/Shout-outs

MetalJesusRocks- Respect this dude's console retrospectives, and mostly hit up his videos when I'm thinking about a whole console and its library, seeing as he has a massive amount of games for every platform being a collector and all. His vids are very collector-oriented which is a cool perspective and I like the diverse cast of guests who he collaborates with. 

https://www.youtube.com/user/MetalJesusRocks

ValkrieAuroroa- Awesome taste in deep-level JRPG goodness and has worked with Superbutterbuns and Clemps on a few games including Nier Automata. Well-written videos and great taste? Can't go wrong. 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDjB4FTYBq2KCh67pGx1D1Q PeanutButterGamer- Not to be confused with Butterbuns, this guy is one of my go-to youtubers for Zelda content, see as he has a crazy amount of it, including very niche-y Zelda content like "top 10 dungeons" or "top 10 items" etc, which get deep into one of my favorite franchises. His sense of humor can sometimes be a little "LOLZ-random" and yet he seems like a good guy, and I respect his vids/writing/editing. 

https://www.youtube.com/user/PeanutButterGamer

Mark Brown- This dude has content on a lot of games, but for me his Master Key series is the big draw because it’s one of the only series that I’ve seen which focus specifically on Zelda dungeons, and I'm personally a bit of a Zelda dungeon-freak, so seeing him get deep into analyzing, comparing and like deconstructing Zelda dungeons is freakin’ awesome.

https://www.youtube.com/user/McBacon1337

Cleanprincegaming- Not really sure why I feel the need to include this dude, cuz  I just recently subscribed and I have an issue with like all of his videos, but I feel like he still makes pretty interesting stuff despite all that. They just happen to always be over-produced to shit, overly self-serious and err on the side of being kind of negative generally. I also don't like his voice that much, but there's still something to be had from his videos and one day he could be great, if he like chills out and lightens up. I'm kind of interested in things he does differently like weird b-roll footage mixed in with his reviews, but I don't think a lot of it works, and yet here I am still writing about him. Idk, he's good enough to go in the 10-slot, and you can tell he's ambitious as hell and I feel like I went to public school with him in an alternate dimension.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXj7EFAEM6PtQLjjh0wfsSA

And shout-out to Game Grumps for being the most palatable and easy-going but still enjoyable LPers out there. Hat’s off, gentlemen.