Blog: And the Topic winner is... (07/18/22 - 07/22/22)

With 45% of the votes, "Origins of the Cartridge: Channel F, for Fun" is the winner of the topic vote! The synopsis:

How much do you know about where the game cartridge came from? Who were the people that made the conceptual leap to have interchangeable tapes in games? We discover the truth behind the first programmable video game console, the Fairchild Channel F, and why they never were able to capitalize on this invention.

Expected Runtime: 20-30 minutes

This episode will be written by Ethan Johnson, who also wrote the "Nintendo on Atari" script. The production of this episode will be pretty intense, so there is no timetable at the moment for a release. But Ethan has already started on the script! I will be consulting on the script and editing the video.

Monday, July 18th

Meanwhile, Super Mario Kart work continues! Today, I went through the Nintendo leaks of 2020 and looked at everything found for Super Mario Kart. This includes early sprites, maps, prototypes, and more. It's really cool to match up early builds with developer interviews. For example, director Hideki Konno mentioned the first characters in the game were generic racers with a helmet and coveralls (as seen above.)

What I like to do is take all this data and put it into a timeline to make sense of how the game changed over time. This will help tremendously when outlining and writing the script. 

I feel like this episode needs maybe two more days of research before I start outlining and scripting.

Tuesday, July 19th

I spent today learning about Mode 7 and how Super Mario Kart was even possible on the Super Nintendo. I found this great emulator called "Mesen" that allows you to play the game and use some fun debugging tools, including a Tilemap Viewer. This really gives a great view of how the game actually works. 

Wednesday, July 20th

I wanted to find just a few more tidbits of information before I started the outline. But it was a very productive day! I confirmed the following:

- I was getting conflicting information on when Mario Kart came out in Europe. One site claimed it came out at the same time as the North American release, September 1992 (which would have been very unusual at the time). Well, I finally found the answer: Nintendo released Super Mario Kart in the UK in December of 1992 and Q1 1993 for the rest of Europe. Thank you to densy for finding these dates for me!

- Super Mario Kart stayed in the Famitsu Top 30 rankings for over a year! It was amazing to see the other games coming through the list - Dragon Quest V, Street Fighter II, Mario Paint, Super Mario All-Stars, and StarFox. This was a long process. I had to go through every Famitsu and manually look for the game. The katakana in the search was hit and miss. 

- Super Mario Kart was featured regularly on the "Super Mario Club" TV show in Japan, which featured quizzes, video game competitions, and more. 

- Nintendo released a SNES set featuring Super Mario Kart. It looks like they just slapped a sticker on old packaging. You could get this deal with Super Mario All-Stars as well.

- I also ordered some more Super Mario Kart toys, including a fun little driving game (clearly intended for the kiddos).

Thursday, July 22nd

I spent this morning digging into the background of the people on the Super Mario Kart staff. I think my favorite research session was on Soyo Oka, the composer. I didn't know anything about her, so it was fun to learn about her previous works. She did the music for Ice Hockey, one of my favorite sports games!

Afterward, I finally started outlining the script. I'm really happy with all the information I was able to find. I imagine I'll start on the script by Monday. I always hate starting a script on Friday and then taking two days off. It kills my flow, y'know?

Friday, July 23rd

It had been a while since I looked at my YouTube analytics, so I spent my morning doing a deep dive. I learned quite a bit, and not all of it was great! I might be making some changes here soon to help out. Nothing content-wise, just little things to help bring numbers up (subtitles on every video, consistent thumbnails, better end cards, etc.) 

Originally, I wanted to reach 900k subscribers by the end of the year. I was able to reach my goal by May. One million subscribers by the end of the year is now a possibility. That would be nuts!

I hope everyone has a great weekend. I'll be digitizing some old home movies. Wish me luck!

- Norm