Retrogamers Worth Watching: Pixelmusement's "Ancient DOS Games"
Believe it or not, there are hours of the day when I'm not writing about horror novels, laserdiscs, and comic books. Sometimes a guy just needs to relax and let someone else take the driver's seat. Not @blewitt (the guy single-handedly keeping the show Parking Wars on the air with his routine mooning of traffic regulations) but someone.
If you grew up in the DOS era of the 80's and 90's, chances are you have fond memories of great (and not-so-great) games from your youth. Well, so does Youtuber Gemini, who has spent nearly a decade of his life compiling tributes to well-remembered classics, forgotten gems, and shovelware compilations on his channel Pixelmusement.
Gemini has been churning out content for his Ancient DOS Games playlist for eight years now, and in that time he's racked up over three hundred videos where he shows off gameplay footage, explains the history behind the game, its current status (freeware, shareware, commercial license, etc...), where to find a copy, and how to get it up and running on modern systems using DOSBox.
But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Gemini also produces a series entitled Shovelware Diggers, where he scours through those massive, ubiquitous game collection CD-ROMs you could find all over the place in the 90's. You know the type: they had names like "200 Arcade Games" or "500 Action Games" or "Instant Software Mega-Collection", each promising that this was the only software title you'd ever have to buy because there was just so much content it would take you five lifetimes just to play them all. Well, Gemini looked at that and said, "Challenge accepted." Shovelware Diggers is his response:
And even that's not all. The guy also does livestreams of game playthroughs, runs a semi-regular vlog, and records himself doing game design stuff.
Despite going at this for nearly a decade, kicking out new content regularly, he's still only got 12,000 subscribers. I refuse to accept there are only 12,000 people in this world who appreciate stuff like this, so fellow heroes of Steemit, if you like gaming of the "Ancient DOS" variety, you owe it to yourself to check out Gemini's channel. I guarantee you hours of entertainment, nostalgia, and sleepless nights geeking out over his well-produced videos.
Steem on!
Stunts was so awesome. I spent so many hours building tracks and racing. That car security system thing where you had to type in a word from the manual was a pain, though. But after a while I had them all memorized.
This channel was MADE for people like you, @methus! :D
Cool channel. Subscribed.
I love finding channels that have a sharp and dedicated focus. For example, theres a channel called Turbo Views that exclusively reviews US Tg16 games.
I know, it never ceases to amaze me that there are Youtubers out there clearly phoning it in or relying on some gimmick that have subscriber counts in the millions and view counts in the tens of millions, yet there are folks churning out great, well-researched, well-edited content that they are CLEARLY enthused over and they barely rate 1,000 subs and view counts in the hundreds. WTF?
Guess it's like Steemit: whales breed followers and the rest of us fight for the crumbs. :)