So we're doing Super Mario Sunshine again, but this time it's the 3D All-Stars version and also has Frank. We have also had technical issues already, so it's gonna be another great series.
As a result of releasing Super Mario Sunshine 2 before Nintendo even thought about it, we got 600 views and counting and passed 300 subscribers again. I'm waiting for the backlash from angry people who thought that we somehow had access to Mario Sunshine 2 even though it doesn't exist and we're a tiny little Aussie comedy channel with a handful of subscribers.
Now that we've made our first redo of a series, you may wonder if we'd do the same for other old series, and yes we have discussed it.
We are interested in doing The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD. Ihasnotomato has a save ready for such a series, and we are in a position as of the last 12 months to record things with all 3 of us. The world's our oyster!
Recently we had another recording session, including more Need For Speed: Most Wanted. NFS was horribly laggy for some reason, and so we ended up scrapping it. I did make some big decisions in-game, so I guess there's no reason why I shouldn't explain it now. I sold most of my cars and I think only have 4 cars now. This was to focus on making sure that my cars were fast enough to win races rather than just buying the ones that I personally wanted. I kept the Mazda RX7, the Renault Clio, and the Fiat Punto for sure. According to Raymond C. Johnson, who has been commenting a bit on the series, my cars were poorly chosen and some big NFS YouTubers have made videos saying what the best cars were, so I have modified my collection to maximise performance. I think I bought a new car, but I can't remember.
We recorded some other games, including TF2 which was scrapped due to lag, but I won't reveal them until the videos are out. Thumbnail art looks amazing, as usual.
It's been a while since the last post, and it's simply because we're busy making lots of videos.
Since Minecraft started we have racked up 67 episodes and are now in the middle of a hiatus. We have also started and are now 18 episodes deep into a series of Need For Speed: Most Wanted (2005), in which I play the game while Frank and Liam talk.
We also made a full playthrough of Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze as Funky Kong, played all 5 maps in Mario Party Superstars, and are now posting 1 game per week of Colonist/Settlers of Catan.
NFS: Most Wanted was a long time coming for me. Being a big fan of racing games, and seeing as NFS III: Hot Pursuit was one of my first racing games, it's a big deal for me. You will also find in this blog that the earliest mention of doing a Most Wanted series was in 2014, then again in 2015, and then also again in late 2021, until this year when we were discussing what we could do after Mario Party and have all three of us in it.
I wasn't keen on Poke'mon since we've been talking about it non-stop for like 6 months. I suggested doing Castlevania, so we might do that later now that we've done series that Liam and I wanted to do and so one day we'll watch Frank play while we commentate.
Initial hurdles include my internet not allowing me to watch people stream on Discord, Liam not having a disc drive so I couldn't just bring the disc, and then when the series started the game hasn't been cooperating with OBS or Discord, but we've still managed to get it to work. It is easily my favourite series to watch at the moment. I also have a blast when we're recording. The external disc drive has been loaned to us by former YouTuber Angrove.
Ok so I tried out Need for Speed and it all works. Recording it is a bit scuffed because of how old of a game it is but I can work around it. Works with a controller as well somewhat, the mapping just seems a little odd.
It's not really equppied to be recorded with modern day equipment, so OBS doesn't pick it up as a game so I have to use screen capture. Additionally the game plays in widescreen but is picked up in 4'3 which I presume is it's native resolution so it kinda works out. Though I can't do any adjusting on OBS as whenever I minimize the game, it no longer shows up on OBS to edit. [6:00 PM] Despite all that the recording is still very much usable, it's just a bit funky is all.
~Liam, 11th February 2022
Stephanie has had a hard time editing NFS: Most Wanted, but she's done an awesome job making it all work and using some sweet Sonic Adventure series music.
After Colonist is finished, we're talking about doing some Tabletop Simulator games like Monopoly or Poker. We'll See!
One last thing; Liam and I were having chat about SAIM's history and the eras that have taken place. We agreed that 2013-2015 with Frank was the original golden era, then late 2015-late 2021 without any series with the three of us was the IM era, and since Minecraft started, Most Wanted, Mario Party, and basically every series having the three of us again we're in the middle of a new golden era. It's a good feeling, and recently we've gained a few subscribers, so we might hit 300 subs this year too! That has also been a long time coming. We hit 200 subs in 2018 or something.
Mabeanie here to say that Akirasora, Ihasnotomato, and I just finished recording our first session of Minecraft and the first session together since 2015 and Metroid 2. We recorded for 4 hours and did some cool stuff, things got a little crazy and heated at times, but at the end we're still chums and now the brain's gonna be working on cool stuff we could do in the future.
Stephanie's got her work cut out for her with three different views. Oh boy she's gonna hate synchronising all of our recordings up. Ugh.
Today Akirasora, Ihasnotomato, and I (Mabeanie) played some Minecraft together on a Realm to make sure that nobody was having connection issues or anything. This has stopped us in the past, so it was important not to get too excited before recording. Now that we've got that test out of the way, we have scheduled time on the 18th of September to have our first session with all three of us for the first time since 2015 and Metroid 2. That's a little surprising. Liam and I have each made series with Frank, but not the three of us.
Minecraft will be the first indefinite series that we've started since our original attempt in 2012. All of us will be recording and the views will switch between us depending on what is most interesting at any particular instant.
Liam and I have also decided what game will succeed Twilight Princess, but of course we won't reveal it until a) we have recorded it, and b) the first episode is published. We will run three episodes of us playing Worms and then the next series will start.
That's everything, and hopefully it all goes nicely and we don't have any trouble.
Yesterday we recorded the ends of Hollow Knight and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD. Stephanie smashed through editing the Twilight Princess episodes today and I've worked out that the last episode will go up on the 2nd of October. I don't know when Hollow Knight will finish, but it depends on how the episodes go. She does try to cut the episodes down a bit so that they're just the good parts.
Anyway, the main concern for us is what will run alongside Minecraft. We have discussed my idea of doing Need For Speed: Most Wanted (2005) where Liam plays and I be the expert. We have also talked about doing Zelda: Breath of the Wild, but we don't like playing games from franchises immediately after one another, so we've never done it. We could of course return to Borderlands 2 or 3. Those series were good when they last ran. It's not immediately concerning, because we have about a month to work out what we're going to do. I'll give it a few days before I give Liam a list of what we could do. I am very keen on doing another I.M. series at least. It's been good for my mental health, spending time with friends.
Quick update to let you know that Liam and I recorded Hollow Knight and Twilight Princess yesterday. He suggested that if I'm so excited about doing a Minecraft series, we can run one at the same time as the other two. Stephanie is excited to get these episode edited, so we should see a continuous run of videos for the next month or two. I'm certainly intent on making sure that we have lots of content for the rest of the year at least.
Mabeanie here to update you on what's been going on at SAIM. First of all we did run Hollow Knight and Civ 5 for a few weeks. Frank and I recorded more Civ 5 and finished the game, then we ran out of finished episodes of Civ 5, and Hollow Knight ran out a few weeks later. So at the moment we're waiting for the final batch of Civ 5 episodes to be edited and scheduled, and Liam and I have a Hollow Knight and Twilight Princess session set for the 27th.
I expect that we will see Hollow Knight and Civ 5 be uploaded until the latter runs out, and then Twilight Princess will replace Civ 5.
You may wonder what will come of future content with Frank, and to that I have an exciting answer; Minecraft.
Anybody who has gone back to some of our older videos may be aware that our first videos and original intentions for SAIM Industries were Minecraft content. I have been working on a word document with a decent list of things that I would like to build or do with Frank and Liam in our Minecraft series. It is quite fitting that we would return to the game around the time of our 10 year anniversary, but I think that with our current series being long games it might be a stretch to say that Minecraft will happen in 2021. We will have to wait and see.
At the moment, my working title ideas are as follows:
The SAIM but different Minecraft series.
Anything that uses the SAIM initials.
I also think it would be fun to introduce each session with a different take on what SAIM stands for.
This new Minecraft series for me comes at a time of nostalgia for my own Minecraft series, and so much of what I want to happen in the SAIM series comes from the experience of making those series, the three episodes of Adventures In Minecraft (AIM), and my experiences of playing the game.
Sorry for the delay, but we do have plans for lots of great content for the rest of 2021.
