Behind the Scenes: A-Tazmanian Christmas (Episode 108) (Patreon)

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How did this episode come to be?
I've always loved a good Christmas special. Unlike Halloween which demands a spooky, horror theme, Christmas episodes can really be anything you want! Without many Christmas games, especially that haven't already been covered ad nauseam. So, I always like to do something unexpected. The Christmas tradition of unwrapping gifts is the perfect setup for talking about whatever you like, but I wanted to do something different. Nobody has ever done a game review, to my knowledge, with the Australian Christmas theme. Our celebration of the holiday is a lot different to many people's around the world and I wanted to showcase that in my own way. I decided the video had to be shot outside in the sun, by the barbecue and pool. I've found a strength in visual comedy for myself over the years, so having these props to work with led me to some very early inspiration for the antics I could get up to!

As for the topic of the video however, rather than unwrapping a bunch of different games, I thought it could be fun to look at the same thing... over and over again. Almost like a perpetual hell, with a bad present that keeps getting worse and worse. The immediate inspiration for the episode was AVGN's Bugs Bunny's Crazy Castle Episode with the entire premise being how shocking it is, that so many versions of the same game exist, despite them seemingly getting more and more detached from what the series originally represented.
So for the idea to work, I needed a game with a bunch of ports across a large variety of platforms. You'd think there would be plenty of perfect candidates to chose from...

The process of finding the PERFECT game:
The first game considered was Krusty's Super Fun House, as I've had that on my radar since mid 2016. It has A LOT of different versions, maybe even too many. I decided against this game because there wasn't enough to really talk about, as it's just a generic platform/puzzle type game (reminds me of Lemmings). PLUS, with so many different copies and such a short time frame to get everything purchased and played. It was unrealistic.

The next idea was Donald Duck "Quack Attack"/"Goin' Quackers" as it has a lot of different versions across multiple systems, including handhelds. Having a portable version was key to the format of each game getting worse and worse. Again, I decided against this as a lot of the different versions were simple ports, FAR too similar. Each new game had to have something new to talk about. On the Disney idea, I started to look towards Disney's PS1 collections, as many of the games saw variations across multiple systems. The problem here was that there wouldn't be enough different versions to cover.

Then I looked to Looney Tunes, the flip side of the coin and very quickly, came across Taz-mania on Mega Drive! I've owed the game for years and never played past the first level but new how terrible it was. Doing some research led me to realize that there were SO MANY games simply called 'TAZ-MANIA' whether they're related or not. The SEGA titles were all related, getting worse and worse. While the Nintendo side had a set of different games with almost zero relation to the source material, which on top of that, had this incredibly confusing name changing between regions... resulting in numbering being back to front. PERFECT material for making entertaining videos. So, I ordered all the games, including the ones with mixed up numbering. Patreon funds were used for both the games and various props used in the video. This video ended up costing more than I would have liked due to all the games, however I was using up the last of excess funds from the previous month, as Tony Hawktober was so much cheaper to produce than the previous year

Ideas and pre-production:
With so many games, it's important to only talk about THE most important aspects. Originally, I wanted the video to be around the 20-25 minute mark but because there was so much to cover that couldn't be cut down, the video came in just under 39 MINUTES!!! It actually broke the record for the longest episode to date, and that's WITH cut content!

To showcase the Australian Christmas theme, I wanted to have food on display and run through some rambling, Aussie Slang and phrases just to really confuse the international audience with what I was saying. Due to the limited time to film and the logistics of having real food incorporated, that scene was cut down to just taking the beer and saying "Cheers!" Something I wish I had have cut in retrospect would be the Christmas Carol finale. Kevin "Bloody" Wilson's 'Hey Santa Clause' is an absolute classic and I wanted to do my own version. I sat on it for a couple of weeks and couldn't really come up with any clever lyrics until my Mum actually suggested "I've unwrapped all this other junk and it's all the fucking same!" which perfectly details the story of the episode. Messing around with the song, it was hard to get everything sounding good and the end result, just comes out of nowhere and abruptly ends with me falling into the pool. I enjoyed doing that but it's kind of all over the place as an ending.

Difficulties with the shoot:
With all of these games needing to be shipped here in such a short amount of time, the PAL Tasmanian Tiger in Island Chase (Taz-mania 1) on Game Boy actually didn't arrive in time for the video. Needing the right weather for filming outside, I had no choice but to make up a fake cartridge. It was such a quick job and looks horrid up close but for the wide shots, you'd never notice the difference. Between starting to edit the final video and actually reaching the close up shot of the fake game in the video, the real version arrived so I quickly got a close up of the real game for the video.

The fake game is pictured on the left, the REAL on the right. I'm holding my thumb over the region code on the left to hide a Photoshop mistake, as I accidentally used the US region code on the PAL release of this game (Taz-mania 1).
This is the ONLY shot of the real game in the actual video, which sucks because the only reason I bought the second copy of the same game, was to show the region differences. Having to make a fake anyway seemed like a waste but sometimes, these things happen. 

The other difficult shot was burning the SEGA Game Gear game. Believe it or not, a mint, complete in box version of the game was actually cheaper to buy, than just the loose cartridge so I was happy about that. But of course, this was the only game in the episode I didn't actually play the real version of. I don't own a Game Gear, nor would I want to but regardless, it just isn't a system with direct game capture options so, it had to be emulated. Since I still needed something physical to unwrap for the video, I purchased the real thing and being the only game with an actual box (and easily the worst game of the lot), it was a good chance to destroy something in the video.

Now of course, I didn't burn the real game, I always make fakes as you might expect. Normally I take good pride in my counterfeit games but because I was rushing to get this done, I only made 2 fakes very crudely. This meant that I only had ONE CHANCE to get the wide angle of the game burning, while saying my lines... and I fucked them up! I actually had to keep the first half of a botched line in and quickly cut away to the close angle and a better voice take. In an effort to cover up my shoddy, imitation game box, I added some extra flame effects in with the real fire to hopefully improve the look of the shot.

The other thing that gave me a lot of trouble doing all this was my camera, the focus has been totally whack for a while now. It refused to auto focus and manual focus still wouldn't work right. This meant a lot of stopping and starting after every single take and still, some blurry shots had to be used in the final cut because there was no way to re-shoot them.
Finally, I should talk about sun burn. Filming outside in the Australian Summer... of course I was going to come out of it red raw and... that was actually the plan!

While nobody wants to get sun burnt, I was prepared for it for the sake of realism and given the order everything was filmed, it actually looked like I got more and more burnt throughout the video. And honestly, it didn't hurt until I finished filming and I realized it's probably the second worst sun burn I've EVER had in my life. That might also make it the most hurt I've ever gotten from filming a video... what an accomplishment! DO NOT RECOMMEND!

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That's a WRAP!
The entire product from starting the first game to finishing the edit was a 2 week job, fairly normal time frame. I actually finalized my script a day early just to meet the best weather possible. Surprisingly, the writing process was actually a lot of fun too. This can often be difficult but with so much quality material to work with and designing it after that classic AVGN format, it's a quick watch despite being 39 minutes thanks to the sheer amount of stuff going on. While the hardest part is always shooting the video, when it's anything more complicated than just me sat by the shelf. That was also the most fun part of the process: outside getting fresh air and sun, getting wet in the pool and when the sun set, I took that last dive in for the finale. Only had one chance at that and it looked like a legit spill which I'm happy about.

For such a long year with a lot of really big projects, I'm really proud of how Episode 108 concluded that! It was a fun video with an interesting format and story line, but I'm also happy to represent a different side of Christmas that probably seems alien to most of the world. So with all that said, if you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to ask. 

AND if you could please leave some FEEDBACK on how to improve future posts like this, that'd be VERY much appreciated. Thanks! I'm Square Eyed Jak and I hope you have a great fucking day, cheers! :)