Gatorbox in 2024

I usually post these year in preview posts on December 31st but I was out of town at the time so sue me I'm a little bit late.

Gatorbox is entering it's thirteenth season on the air in 2024 which means it is continuing its record breaking run of the longest project I've ever been involved with. At 13 seasons Gatorbox has outlived things like my high school writing outlet more than THREE times over and at the time I was convinced that website was going to be my magnum opus. I attribute Gatorbox's longevity to how often I mix things up and how there are many smaller ideas and projects under the umbrella. Case in point we're going to touch on many of those in this post.

But first, how well did I do in 2023?
--- 100 Best Games of All Time (did not complete)
--- Off Air videos (did not complete)
--- Robot Arena 2 AI mod (completed & released)
--- Fanfiction Factory season 2 (did not complete)
--- The Sharperer Image 2.0 (completed)
--- BattleBots Update season 12 (completed)
--- Advent Calendar 2023 (completed)
--- Fruit Finder for PC (did not complete)

Pretty hit or miss, but what's also important to note is that I was able to accomplish many things that I didn't exactly plan for such as filming the entirety of That's Not Lego until I had nothing left in the backlog. It's a give and take and sometimes I get swept up in the moment of working on an unannounced project because I'm just in the groove and at least I got something done! Now, onto my projections for 2024.

--- 100 Best Games of All Time: Still planning on doing this. In fact, I want to use my January hiatus from streaming to write as much of the script for this as I can. The main issue with working on it is it's a massive undertaking that is going to occupy multiple months. However with BattleBots' new season MIA this means I won't have a multi-month commitment to work on BattleBots Update like I have every year for the past half decade so perhaps this will translate into being able to finally work on this project.

--- That's Not Lego!: We filmed all of this in late 2023, this was when I used every other Monday chill stream to instead do the bootleg Lego thing. Something like 25-28 hours of content was recorded and now I just need to edit this down into digestible chunks. Those of you who saw it all live technically have no reason to watch it again on YouTube but I know the vast majority of our audience either doesn't watch on Twitch or doesn't know about it.

--- Official Gatorbox merch store: Over on the Gatorbox website I made some changes to the merch page to ready it for a (hopefully) incoming inventory of cool things to buy. I will be selling items through eBay and Etsy to increase the amount of reach I get on the items. I am starting small with an order of custom MissingNo Pokemon cards. I've already placed the order and am now waiting for the cards to arrive. The cards cost me 40 cents each to print and I am planning on offering them at either $3 or $4 plus 55 cents for shipping. It is my hope that I can flip this $100 investment into several hundred dollars and then use those funds to order things like lapel pins and stickers and everything else.

--- Gator Love physical release: Also on the Gatorbox merch page are entries for Atari 2600 games, one of them being "Gator Love". This is a furry-themed Custer's Revenge romhack that I made in 2008 and never finished. No one has ever done anything like this before and I 100% believe this is a fun novelty that people would actually want to have. I am planning on offering a "collector's edition" that comes with a box, manual, stickers, keychain, patch, lapel pin, art postcards, and possibly more. I will also have loose cartridges for sale at a much cheaper price for those who want the game without all the extra goodies. I am planning on launching this project on Indiegogo to raise money to cover as much of the production costs as I possibly can. This endeavor can also possibly be financed using profits from the main merch store if that takes off and becomes profitable.

--- Fanfiction Factory season 2: This project took a backseat through 2023 and I never got to work on it. Season 1 wasn't as much of a "hit" as I had hoped for; I launched the podcast separate from Gatorbox in an effort to let it stand on its own but it never really caught on or picked up steam. The podcast does have its fans however and I have been asked about episodes 11-20. I have the show outlined and planned out up to a theoretical episode 36 but I just need to sit down and record them. Recording and mastering an episode of the podcast takes approximately three hours for each one so I can reasonably knock out two of them on a solid work day if I don't work on anything else. Last year I lapsed on Fanfiction Factory but this year I plan on doing its second season for sure.

-- 35/50 Twitch sub marathons: I'm sorry for having never gotten around to doing these. Usually there is a lot on my plate and there are several moving parts involved with doing these marathons that I just haven't been able to pin them down. Long streams like marathons take a lot of planning and when I have so much to do they're usually the first things cut. This year I hope to complete both the Milon's Secret Castle and Swordquest marathons. Just_Elesde will be joining me (voice only) to be my co-pilot through Milon so I need to figure out a time that fits his schedule and commit to it. As for the Swordquest marathon I'm still kicking myself for not getting the extremely rare Waterworld when I had the chance a couple years ago. I could've done the whole marathon on real hardware if I did! Swordquest will be a big gamble because I don't fully understand how to play the games so that marathon might actually take MULTIPLE marathon streams to finish seeing as how there are four games in the series.

--- "Eraser" album release: Three years ago I streamed a lot of Twitch Sings when it was announced Twitch was pulling the plug on the game over copyright issues. I thoroughly enjoyed Sings and I played it quite often even when I wasn't streaming it. I used to sing when I recorded music in my high school and college days and this game helped me "re-train" myself and work on my voice. It also helped me get over anxiety I had regarding singing and performing in front of people again. I've taken recordings from my Twitch Sings streams and converted some of the better ones into audio files. Later this year I will release Eraser, a 12 track "album" featuring these recordings. Leading up to its eventual release I will be putting out individual tracks as "singles", the first of which ("Landslide") is already available to listen to on the COLA Incorporated YouTube channel.

--- Gatorbox game reviews: There's a whole section of the Gatorbox website that I haven't kept up with and that's the section where I was planning on writing longform reviews of some of the games I've streamed. I made it to three posts before I got too distracted to work on it further. Part of the issue is I am approximately 18 months behind in the video editing queue and a lot of my spare time goes into working on this, but I accept that I will probably never actually catch up. I fell behind several years ago when I was trying to balance Gatorbox and Your Level Sucks 2 and BattleBots Update all at the same time and that was too much to do all at once. I would like to be able to post reviews to the website again and I am loosely aiming for one per month given my workload.

--- Pokemon "Cock Version" playthrough: It's a shame I can't stream this live on Twitch because of the racial slurs in it but I'd rather play it safe because Twitch bans streamers for the dumbest shit these days. That said there's nothing stopping me from recording a playthrough of this offline and simply editing out the unacceptable parts before I post it online. I've wanted to do this for a while but yet another 100% playthrough of Pokemon Gen 1 is a massive undertaking and everything about it is going to take a long while to process. To keep things interesting since I won't have a stream chat to banter with I reached out to Tuna Boat Tony who says he's up for cohosting the playthrough with me. I expect this to take multiple recording sessions so we'll see how it all comes together. This might be an endeavor that starts in 2024 and finishes in 2025.

That's all I can think of for now! Keep in mind something great might pop up and I'll latch onto it and focus on that instead of something listed here kind of like how I filmed all of That's Not Lego. I just had the opportunity and I took it in the moment.

As I work on things from this list I'll try to set aside previews and sneak peeks to post here on Patreon for channel supporters. Thank you for your support in 2023 and here's to a productive (and big) 2024!