mattkc

EARLY ACCESS: How did they get RGB out of the NES?

EARLY ACCESS: Why do NES games look so different in emulators?

Wii U Gamepad Clone - Development Vlog 10

EARLY ACCESS: I spent a month fixing everyone's least favorite console

BONUS: Building a Genesis to CD-i controller adapter

🎉 Goodbye 2025!

It's been a busy few days - since posting my last video, Vanilla has had a big influx of testers, bug reports, and feature requests that I've been working my way through - but I wanted to take a moment to say thanks to all of you guys for watching and supporting what I do.

This year we actually hit two pretty big milestones: not only did the channel reach a whopping 500,000 subscribers, this year also marks the 10-year anniversary of me creating my channel (on October 27, 2015). Huge th...

BONUS: Vanilla - The DHCP Rabbithole

Here's a bonus segment that didn't make it into the final cut of the first Vanilla video. I felt it was a little too much of a tangent to keep in that video, but that it was still interesting enough to talk about in a bonus video like this. Hope you guys enjoy!

EARLY ACCESS: How I Cloned the Wii U Gamepad (part 1)

About time, right?

If you've followed the development vlogs, you'll already be familiar with most of this, but it's a little more thorough of an explanation and a good refresher if it's been a while.

EARLY ACCESS: This eMac was left outside for YEARS... how bad could it be?

This is an introduction video to the eMac I posted about last week. Remember if you'd like to choose what happens to this eMac, comment on my previous post!

What should I do with this eMac?

I recently acquired this eMac for cheap, and while it works, it's clearly in need of a thorough cleaning. But I figure if I'm going to take it all apart, I could also do some other enhancements too.

Should I try restoring it to "showroom condition"? Should I try overclocking it? Should I try replacing the internals with Apple Silicon or a Hackintosh (keeping the CRT of course)? Should I convert it to a VGA monitor, maybe with a switch so it can still be an eMac when I want it to be?

BONUS: Cooking With The Sun - Making Of And Deleted Scenes

Just a little extra exclusive Patreon content for those who enjoyed the cooking with the sun video.

EARLY ACCESS: I tried to barbecue with nothing but sunlight...

So here's something a little different. Still the kind of trial-and-error problem solving you're used to seeing me do, but no real computing or gaming involved. Don't worry, I've still got plenty of my regular content on the way, but hope you enjoy this one too!

EARLY ACCESS: How fans are remastering The Elder Scrolls when Bethesda won't (audio fix)

Audio glitch has been fixed since the last version of this.

Ordinarily I wouldn't queue up two "early access" videos like this, but the sponsor for the last Byte is taking a while to approve it, so I may swap them out and publish this one first.

Wii U Gamepad Clone - Development Vlog 9

Turns out there was more I had to say, but now it's really time to grind on the public video...

EARLY ACCESS: How Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was broken by a Windows update

Here it is: the first "Bytes" video that'll go out on the main channel. And here's an early sponsor-free version!

▶SilentPatch on GitHub: https://github.com/CookiePLMonster/SilentPatch

▶Silent's blog post: https://cookieplmonster.github.io/2025/04/23/gta-san-andreas-win11-2...

July 2025 Update

Wii U Gamepad Clone - Development Vlog 8 - Quick Update (June 2025)

A really quick update on the status of some of the projects I've talked about before.

Early Access: I built the ULTIMATE productivity monitor (or at least tried to)

For over a decade, we've had to put up with monitors that largely sacrificed productivity for affordability, and as someone who mostly uses their computer for work, I set out to try changing that. Sadly, it didn't quite go as planned...

Vanilla for Nintendo Switch patches released

Sorry for the long wait, but I've officially published my patches to get Vanilla working correctly on the Nintendo Switch! You can find the files and instructions at the following GitHub repo:

https://github.com/vanilla-wiiu/nexmon/

It's a fairly complicated setup unfortunately. Ultimately it would probably be a better solution to make a custom L4T distro with the correct firmware/module baked in that ...

Early Access: So we FINISHED decompiling LEGO Island...

The saga has finally come to an end!

This is a slightly rough early version of this video. It's missing a lot of background music, camera shots, and some additional information that may be added later, but I'll be preoccupied for the next few days so I figured you guys may as well be able to watch it in its current state.

Behind the scenes: "The Making of LEGO Island"

I spent a week reverse engineering Broadcom firmware for this...

One more platform off the list - Vanilla now runs on the Nintendo Switch without external hardware!

So I wrote my own video editor...

In the midst of working on longform documentaries, smaller videos for the Bytes channel, and writing a Wii U gamepad clone, I've also been working on this! For the most part I've kept it on the down low because there (naturally) tends to be a lot of skepticism around a project like this (and in general I prefer to "underpromise and overdeliver"), but seeing as this Patreon is all about taking you guys on journeys with me, I figured we may as well get started on this one!

Wii U Gamepad Clone - Development Vlog 7

Now that the documentary is done, I can get back to working on the Wii U gamepad, and I've made a lot of huge improvements that I'm excited to talk about!

Any questions about the LEGO Island documentary?

I'm in the process of putting together a video detailing the making of the documentary and wanted to see if there was anything you were interested in that I haven't thought to cover. They can be questions about the documentary itself, or about LEGO Island.

Thanks and I look forward to hearing from you all!

LEGO Island Documentary - Deleted Scenes

Here's the first (of at least two) bonus videos for the LEGO Island documentary.

This is an assorted collection of clips that didn't make the final cut, but that I still thought were cool. Some of it is stuff that I filmed myself, but most of it is interview clips. When you're trying to cut 12+ hours of interviews down to less than 1 hour, there's bound to be some interesting stuff left on the cutting room floor, so I hope you enjoy!

(Small) January 2025 Update

Hey! Just checking in to say thanks to everyone who has joined since I posted the documentary, and really, thanks to all of you for your continued support in helping me making bigger and better videos and projects (especially in the case of the documentary, which got demonetized so Patreon is my only source of income).

I've been taking a short break since posting the documentary, but am back now and have a lot planned. I once again have two "appendices" for the documentary...

Early Access: The Making of LEGO Island (1997) - A Documentary

I'm not beating the "LEGO Island guy" allegations with this one, am I...

This represents either the last 5 months or the last 3 years depending on how you look at it. I've been slowly collecting interviews and footage with the intention of making a documentary since late 2021/early 2022, but only around July 2024 did I feel like I had enough to actually start putting something together. At the time, I thought it would only take a few months to weave everything together, but instead, it ...

Wii U Gamepad Clone - Development Vlog 6

Hello I'm back! This is largely a summary of the livestreams I was doing from October to mid-November for those who weren't able to tune in.

Speaking of livestreams, I'm currently on "break" trying to grind out my next Big Video before the end of the year, but in general I'll probably be slowing down a little on those and returning to doing more regular Patreon updates.

Thanks for continuing to support me and I hope you guys have great holidays!

Desktop Tour - October 2024

This is a fairly lo-fi video, I thought it might be interesting to snapshot my setup for the last year or so, and make a follow up to my setup tour from January 2023. I have some plans to upgrade/optimize this that I'll talk about in future videos, but this is what I've been working with for most of 2024.