Annotated Appendix 1

Well, hi there.

That thing at the top? Yeah, that's Episode 2 of the series, which was just posted early this morning. I haven't had a chance to dig into the episodes here since posting them, but the response to the first was very promising, and the comments were more than supportive. If you're reading this and you've commented, then thanks again for the views and the kind words.

Let's get into the process a bit regarding this first two videos. These both wound up being kind of awkward with the way it seems that I'm forced to do these for one reason: choreography. See, there's just too much to say about a given topic that by playing a normal game and not stopping to smell the roses once in a while that it's certain that my commentary won't be able to cover everything. A good example of this is in the first episode where I hit three big facts about the Death encounter. Without stopping there for a certain length of time, I wouldn't have enough room to talk about the Bone Scimitar enemies (both of which are unique, it turns out) and the Red Rust sword that the red one drops. It turns into real logistical problem when actually playing the game.

The solution, then, is to write tight scripts, record them in Audacity, annotate them so I know what's coming and when, and then listen to them through headphones as I'm playing the game. As you can imagine, it's kind of a painstaking process, but I'm trying to cut down on the amount of time that Alucard is either bum rushing through commentary or just standing around in silence, so I'm trying to get it down to more of an exact science.

The other problem with this (which is something I re-learned the hard way the other night) is that SotN isn't a game with multiple save files. If I complete a section and think, you know what, I should re-record that, I have to do it with a separate run of the game, which is something I'm trying to actively avoid. I think people would eventually catch on, and my schadenfreude would be lost. We don't want that, do we? Honestly, I want some semblance of consistency with the videos, and to me, that means one unified playthrough. I'm not saying that this won't happen down the line, though, so please keep your pitchforks and torches in the shed now that you know the reasoning.

The good news is that the actual recording and editing is getting a lot easier now. I've decided to put the kibosh on the PS3's smoothing option when playing PSX games. This doesn't completely translate into crystal clear pixels on a YouTube video, but it makes me feel better, I guess. I'm still using the copy of Symphony that my parents gave me for Christmas when I was 17, though, so I'm at least getting a sense of authenticity with it, even though it's not on original hardware.

The second episode was much more dry of interesting things to say, though, sadly. One thing I probably should have mentioned is that most of the enemies in Alchemy Laboratory are all old timey monsters from the very first game, other than the Spittle Bone, Bloody Zombie, Bone Scimitars and the bosses. In fact, they all come from the second to last level where you fight Death, which may have something to do with the Grim Reaper's appearance at the entrance and Slogra/ Gaibon being the first boss, but that's a bit of a stretch. Anyway, the Marble Gallery is a larger area, and I should still have more fun things to talk about more often.

Part of those fun things is something I'm going to playfully call "backtrack filler." Mapping the entirety of the game (not counting outside of the castle, which I'll only briefly mention) can take a fair amount of time, and there's definitely going to be some episodes that are a little on the quiet side as I blast through old areas to find previously inaccessible chambers and locations. I'll be using these moments to talk about as much of the background development history of the game as I've dug up. I worry that I don't have enough to fill the entirety of the game, but I suppose I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

So yeah. Part 2. It's a scene, man. Lucky for me, I have a week off of work soon, so I'll try to blast through another video within that time, because life is about to get pretty nutty for me over the next month or so.

Thanks again for watching.