BTS - Hercules Double Episode 💪 (157,158) (Patreon)

G'day legends, apologies for how long it's taken me to write up this behind the scenes blog. If you need an explanation, check out this update post for the full story.

Anyway I've decided that since these 2 episodes go hand in hand, it would be best to cover them both in a single post as they were simple in concept and execution for the most part. So let's not waste any time and get into it!

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How did this episode come to be?
One of my original plans for the first quarter of 2022 was a set of Tarzan reviews. The idea was to start with the PS1 classic and then follow it up with some lesser known titles, however one of those I wanted to cover NEVER showed up. Postage has been slack the last few years due to covid but I waited and waited and it never showed up. In the meantime, I'd just rewatched Disney's Hercules and so needing a replacement, it was perfect.
The PS1 game was one of my very first, getting it with the system for Christmas and so I've always wanted to make a video on it. With the film fresh on my mind and already having all of the gameplay recorded from a previous playthrough, I was able to immediately jump into the writing process.

Going into this, branching out into covering more movies and movie related topics has been on my mind so this seemed like the perfect opportunity to test this new format out. Knowing that I had a shitty Phoenix Games Hercules knockoff, following up with Hercules Bootlegs seemed like a simple and logical step to take... that was before I realized just the sheer volume of ripoff movies there are. But we'll get to that in a bit!

The First Episode: PS1 Game Review!
This was a super standard production i.e. nothing flashy which is what I've needed lately due to my living situation. Much more well known is JonTron's Hercules episode which focused on a lot of different games, including the PS1 and Game Boy versions of Disney's game. That was the first video of his I ever watched and fell in love with, though it always shit me how little was actually covered. So in line with how I like to make videos, the goal was to discuss the entirety of both games: the PS1 game having childhood nostalgia attached to it which led to high praise in some areas and long obsessed grievances I've wanted to air. As for the portable version, I'd never touched it before and GOD was it awful. This is a case where going the extra distance to play the entire game led to an untapped vault of incredibly bad, yet fun shit to rip apart for some laughs.

The script was super simple and thrown together with much ease, though there was one very old concept I failed to include.
The song "I Can Go the Distance" from the movie is a song that has inspired me so much, especially in my earlier years making videos. Hearing it used to get me really fired up and motivated to work on days where I didn't want to get out of bed. To tribute that, I'd always told myself that when I reviewed the PS1 game, I'd find some way to include that in there one way or another with me actually singing it! In all honesty... it's probably a good thing I've grown up a lot over the years because that could have been incredible cringe worthy.

I did honestly consider it for this but given everything going on, I wanted to keep things as simple as possible and ultimately decided not to force something like that in where it wasn't needed.

Logos and Graphics:

The logo on this one was pretty simple once I found a suitable font for the base. I threw this together in about 30 minutes which is pretty good. The real question is what was I going to do with it?

The original idea I'd had was to emulate the original title screen for the game. It has the little 2d pixel Herc carry the title onscreen and throw it into place before jumping off. It's simple but I always loved this from the moment I first saw it that Christmas morning all those years ago.

The problem with this is the complexity in re-creating it. I could have potentially just covered the screen with my own logo and video, masking it and keyframing along the animation but that can get messy looking VERY quickly and I'd also lose Herc once he jumps away.
In looking around online for a solution, I stumbled into the sprite sheet for Herc from the actual game which each individual frame of animation for both his walk and jump. For a moment, I did actually consider re-animating the entire thing frame by frame with the clean graphics which in all honesty... would have looked fucking DOPE! But like I've said numerous times, I've needed videos that are quick and not overly complicated lately so I quickly scrapped that plan, opting for the backup of just using the intro from the original movie which thankfully, I was able to clean up and work quite well I think.

Cut joke referencing a glitch:
While playing through the game due to scratches on my physical disc, certain audio cues play at the wrong times. This includes the Cyclops calling to Hercules for battle which features at a much later point in the story. The original plan was to reference my older content from years ago about hearing voices in my head, as well as a different take where I name drop The Macho Man. With the Game Boy port offering SO MUCH I wanted to talk about, I was worried about video length, as well as people even getting the joke so I decided to cut this out to save time. I will attach the video file to this post so you can view it (it might be at the bottom of this post, I'm not entirely sure sorry).

The Bootleg Episode:
Moving onto the second video now, the original plan for this was simply including the Genesis/Mega Drive version based on the PS1 game and the Phoenix Games movie I'd mentioned before. Once again, failing to explore past the opening 30 seconds of gameplay, JonTron missed out on some quality shit buried within that awful game. But once I watched the Phoenix movie and learned it WASN'T the iconic Dingo Pictures animation, I started doing some digging and what I discovered were SO MANY other movies, including one by Dingo Pictures. So great that's 2 movies to cover in one video. But then I found more and more and it was this never ending rabbit hole that was like god damn, I can't not talk about all of this.

To make it a little easier on myself, I set the criteria to only include movies that released in 1997 and recent years later just to make the claim they were most likely created to capitalize on Disney's success. But just trying to find information on these forgotten films, let along actual ACCURATE information was incredibly difficult. I researched for a solid 3-4 days in-between the burden of having to actually sit through the damn things.

Video Production:
Watching so many of these in rapid succession was such an effort, let me tell you. All up I had a whopping 7 pages of notes for the 3 primary films I actually discussed (those being the Pure Magic, Dingo Pictures and Golden Films) and with an additional 2.5 pages of notes for the fucking Genesis game which were mostly fully written rants regarding my thoughts while playing... this was one of the largest undertakings I've ever had on the channel that wasn't an Every Level Ranked or some crazy cinematic experience like Sly, Croc or Ty.

It was a huge effort to organize my thoughts but honestly, it might be one of my absolute favorites. I feel like it just ticks all of the boxes for what makes a great video.

Video Reception:
Probably due to a lack of consistency with uploads or maybe a lack viewer interest, both of these episodes are what I'd consider dead on arrival. With only 10,700 views within 2 months as of writing for the first and the bootleg episode barely surpassing 9,500 views in six weeks, a total of barely 20k views from two really solid videos is incredibly depressing.

I do make shit because it's fun but it's brutal whenever a video flops that you've poured your heart into and for a channel of my size, those view numbers are awfully low and I just don't know why. It's an incredible shame but I just hope that those who saw them, really enjoyed them and appreciated the effort!

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That's a WRAP!
I hate always ending these on the sad note that "oh the videos didn't perform well" but I'm so used to that being the normal for me at this point... I thought it'd hurt a lot less but instead, it gets harder to deal with each time.
Knowing I had the Crash Team Racing Every Level Ranked inbound, I knew that would boost things back up but it does suck. For all the shitty rushed content that blows up, I really tried my best to make the Bootleg episode in particular appeal to the widest audience possible by not including my face in the thumbnail in place of additional bootleg boy. But oh well... what can I do?

Anyway despite all of that, thank you all so much for reading and staying tuned. I hope you enjoyed the episodes and if you haven't already, maybe give them a share on social media for me. That'd be great!
As always thank you all so much for reading and until next time, I hope you have a great fucking day. Cheers guys! 😄