January 2022 Report (Patreon)

Happy Lunar New Year!

With new variants of COVID hopping around, this Lunar New Year also hasn't been super eventful for me, and as of typing this I caught a nasty stomach bug and fever just 2 days ago which has thankfully gone away. But this month can finally mark the release of...a new core video!!

Every Unique Level Gimmick in New Super Mario Bros. 

It may not the originally planned next core video topic *cough*, but this video that originally started out as a way for me to explore "small-scale" video topics turned out to be big enough to get this label anyway! While a ranking/tier list video hasn't really been something I've done before (and I don't think I'll be doing more just for the sake of doing top 10 videos ranking random things), it was still a great way to tie into the topic of the current direction of 2D Mario games, and I also love how the skits turned out!

Shoutouts to TheEpicJames as well for the new glow-up on the intro that I'm sure most of you spotted during the previews, as well as Darkonius Mavakar for research help! He's a level designer on some Mario fan-games and indie projects so his feedback was greatly appreciated! He's working on a Metroidvania called Dormiveglia as well, you might want to give it a peep 👀 

I am also currently working with the original composer of my intro theme COCONABE for a 2022 rearrangement, but it unfortunately wasn't able to debut in this video due to some very understandable personal delays. You guys will get to hear it next video though!

And yes, the Tetris-themed core video will be the focus next. It feels like the new Famicom 3D System video with how long it has taken to produce, but I am still sure that the end result would be worth it! I shall share more updates when they happen.

Plans for Akfamilyhome Plus

If you haven't kept track, there are now 6 extra unscripted videos on my second channel available exclusively for all patrons (excluding the first one that I've since made public!) To find them all, just sort my Patreon posts by the 'Akfamilyhome Plus' tag. I hope you've been enjoying the topics on there and there will be more to come.

You may have also noticed however, that on the public-facing side there hasn't been a lot of updates on the second channel. While I'm not making the channel exclusively Patreon-only content, I still want to find a balance between building up a nice bonus catalog for Patreon while still having new unscripted content available publicly once in a while, seeing as a few public viewers have also enjoyed the Starter Edition 3DS video I released.

Going forward, there may be several ways I can approach making public content on my second channel, and I would like to hear some opinions from you all on this!

A) Have a few future unscripted videos available publicly, and most others being Patreon-exclusive

B) Make some previously Patreon-exclusive content public after a certain time (e.g. a few months or more)

C) Keep most unscripted videos Patreon-exclusive but do occasional votes on ones to release publicly after a while

Feel free to let me know which of these strategies you would prefer in the replies or on Discord, or let me know if there are any other suggestions you have! I'm always welcome to hearing them.

Recent pickups!

And time for more new pickups! Some of these I've shared a bit in other places before, but I figured I could talk about them more here!

I finally have my hands on a working Pokémon mini, along with two retail games! That probably isn't enough for a deep dive core video on its entire library, but I might also be grabbing a flashcart for it in the near future, so at the very least it could be a neat Things of Interest topic, seeing its general obscurity! (There are already a few videos on the thing by other YouTubers that I definitely recommend by the way)

This isn't necessarily a new pick-up, but I found a faulty boxed Panasonic Q unit a little while back, and recently was able to find a fellow local collector who was happy to trade it with a working unit! There are still a few minor issues with it mostly relegated to the DVD player portion, but for the most part it's able to play GameCube games (in both US and JP regions!) without serious problems. This could be another TOI topic, if I can actually find something new to say about it that other videos haven't already! Maybe a Plus channel video, perhaps? :p Either way, still a very neat piece that I can't believe is actually in my collection considering how much it usually goes for!

This

Lastly, this isn't really a gaming-related pickup more so a boring adult productivity one, but I recently got myself a mini whiteboard after seeing multiple creators sing praises about them! I'm currently using it as a quick immediate to-do list for both my full time job and online work, since having a tangible thing to quickly glance at and be able to change at a moment's notice definitely seems to work better than having to manually open a notes or reminders app on my computer every time (or even forgetting to do so). So hopefully this will be a nice way to help with my productivity a little!

That'll be it for this month's report! Resuming work on the *next* core video that I've planned for so long might be a challenge, but I'm still hoping to finally share it with you all soon! Just gotta focus on that...and my job while I'm at it lol