Behind the scenes - Mastering Mario Maker (Patreon)

Hey! I thought it might be fun to share some stuff about making my last episode, just for you lovely backers.

Getting Mario Maker

So I had been planning to do an episode about the 4 games in Mario Maker for a while. But then we got an email at Pocket Gamer from Nintendo asking if we wanted a code for the game.

I decided to be cheeky and wrote back, explaining that we couldn't cover it on PG, but, "hey, I do a YouTube show..." And they generously gave me a review code. Hooray!

Which is great, because I think the episode is improved greatly by having the section at the end where I put all the lessons to use in my own stage. To be honest, it wouldn't really have worked without that section. 

Going retro

I actually own all of the retro games I show on this episode on their original cartridges. And I also tested the idea of capturing directly from an NES and a Super NES. It gives quite a nice retro feel, but is just too mushy and low resolution for YouTube.

(And prone to graphical glitches and freezes, as you can see in the attachments!)

I decided to stick with emulators. Plus, I can record them in 60 frames per second. Funny to think how obsessed the gaming community is with 60FPS right now, when we had loads and loads of 60FPS games back in the 8bit era!

The only downside of emulation: having to play with an Xbox 360 controller d-pad. Ouch!

Long long video

15 minutes might not seem like much compared to other YouTubers, but when I'm used to doing 3-5 minute videos, putting the same amount of effort into one 3 times that length was exhausting. I had no idea how long it would be until I started to put the script together and realised it was around 3,000 words. They're normally 1,000. 

I've added a screenshot of the Premiere timeline. Lots of edits, lots of images (the discoloured freeze-frames are just stills from the video, edited in Photoshop) and lots of music - almost all ripped from Mario Maker.

The total project file for this one is about 50GB. That's not bad, mostly because I didn't record much unused footage. In comparison, the Half Life 2 video is about 135GB (almost the entire game captured in 1080p), and the Point and Click vid is 150GB.

A stylistic choice

I never know what to do with 4:3 games. My videos are in 16:9 widescreen to account for modern games and the devices people watch on. So what do you do with the black borders to the sides of older, 4:3 games?

Previously I have used blurring effects but I think they're a bit ugly and distracting. Others use a border image which is okay. For this one I decided to just leave it black - that's what it looks like to play these games on a 16:9 display and it should just blend into your monitor or phone.

Dunno. Let me know.

And finally: I've decided that it's time for a moratorium on Mario. The plumber has featured in almost all of my videos so far in some capacity. And I've shown Super Mario Bros. in 5 out of 15 episodes. Yes, they are beautifully designed games but it's time for a break. 

I'll try to keep the plumber at bay until the new year, at least.

Thanks as ever for your support, it means so so much.