Weekly Blog (02/06/2020)

Hello Patrons!

First of all, a huge thank you to everyone who has signed up for the new tiers. I'll be shipping out the first wave of merchandise soon to backers. I'm really excited about the relaunch and what the support means to the production of the show.

A few people were having issues connecting to Discord with the new tiers. I reached out to Patreon, who admitted it was a bug in their system and they were working on a fix. Yesterday, they e-mailed me and said it should be working now. If it isn't, let me know. 

Let's get to this week's topics.

Research at the National Archives

For the past two weeks, I have been doing research and scanning documents at the National Archives. 

A little backstory. For the longest time, I've been wanting to remake my "Universal v. Nintendo" video. I made that video back in...2008? 2009? Most of my research was based on books and court rulings you can find online. But there is so much more to this story and I wanted to grab the court documents. 

Unfortunately, the original case files have been destroyed. Courts regularly purge documents from cases they deem "not important." This is unfortunate, as the original case files had Donkey Kong design documents, full depositions of Nintendo employees, and more. 

Luckily, the appeals are still intact and stored at the local archives here in Kansas City! I walked in and was greeted with 4 boxes full of documents. So for two weeks, I came in and scanned everything I felt was important. My goal is to remake this video and then release the scans online for anyone to view. I have found some information that the public has never seen and, I think, will re-write the history of Donkey Kong. 

A huge THANK YOU to all of you! Without your support, I couldn't have taken 2 weeks off to scan all this stuff. 

What Facts Did I Get Wrong?

This is the title of the next Gaming Historian episode. Back in November / December, while I was working on the Mario 3 episode, someone mentioned a fact I got wrong in a previous episode. This inspired me to take a look back and find more errors in my videos. Historians regularly revise their work, so I figured why can't Youtubers?

I hope to have this video done next week. As usual, you guys will see it here first!

Vlog or Blog? 

My initial goal was to do weekly blogs for you all. But I realized a vlog could be just as easy and possibly more entertaining. What would you prefer? I honestly have no preference, so let me know in the comments below.

If you have any questions, feel free to comment and I'll respond to each of them. Thanks for your support and see you next week!