The NES Classic podcast episode... (Patreon)

...is actually not what I originally set out to make. I knew that it would be fairly pointless to do a review of it; there would be a ton of other reviews out by or on launch day, and I don't necessarily want to make the same videos everyone else is making.

My teardown videos had gotten a pretty good reception at that point, and many folks were curious about what was inside that little retro box, so I decided a few weeks prior that I'd try to bang out a teardown episode as fast as I could for release on launch day. I wasn't able to secure a preorder, so I planned out how I'd try to get my hands on one at a store, starting at midnight. If the store I went to sold out, I had backup plans for the opening times of other stores that I could scramble to get to. I scheduled the day off from work.

But then something I didn't expect happened. I'd figured that Nintendo would, of course, seed a number of units with reviewers ahead of time, and set an embargo for perhaps 2 or 3 days before launch. (An embargo means you can work on the review ahead of time, but not release it until a specific date and time set by the manufacturer.) Imagine my surprise when I started seeing reviews go live over a week early -- apparently Nintendo hadn't set an embargo, so it became a mad dash to get reviews out.

And then, only a day or two later, teardowns started appearing.

Dammit.

I debated whether I wanted to go ahead with my plans anyway. At some point, I decided I didn't, as the cat was already out of the bag and the NES Classic was, frankly, not very interesting inside. I canceled my vacation day.

Two days before launch, I realized I had an opportunity to make lemonade from lemons. I normally release podcast episodes on Fridays anyway, and it seemed like the NES Classic would be hard to get, so in the very least I'd have a good topic for an episode. The day off went back on my calendar.

I woke up at 5am on Friday. (While I still wanted to get my hands on one, the podcast didn't actually require that I get an NES Classic like a teardown would, so I scrapped plans for starting at midnight.) I made my way to a Walmart that opens at 6am. I got incredibly lucky and got the last one the store received. I shot some B-roll when I got home, then once the sun came up, hastily shot and edited the episode (as the poor lighting attests).

The response was surprising. Apparently YouTube's new suggestion algorithm liked it and views took off. It blew my mind.

So while it wasn't the video I wanted, it ended up being the video I needed.

Thank you as always!