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Been meaning to do this thread for a long while. As you'll see, there's a reason why it's taken so long for me to post it. I initally had almost everything set up, but didn't realize that thread drafts only saved for 24 hours and I lost everything.
I've been meaning to share some Youtube content creators that I feel deserve a look. Content creators that will help introduce you to video games and even consoles you've never heard of or considered. If you want to find games that were never on your radar, this is the list. I chose to avoid channels that rely heavily on Top 10 Lists (so no gameRanx or Outside Xbox), no Let's Plays, Long Plays, or other Gameplay focused channels (though, a couple will appear here as a mention). I've also leaned heavily on retro channels. Some channels will definitely have stuff for modern consoles, but the focus here is mostly going to be retro. Some channels will go into the technology side, some will focuses solely on the games, some will do both.
Game Sack - I'll start with one of the longer running channels that also has the most varied content. This channel has a mostly Sega leaning host, but they cover a LOT of systems, genres, games, etc. The other channels I'll list will tend to focus on specific type of videos, but Game Sack has videos that may seem to sample from those other channels. They have videos where they compare systems, talk about games that are lesser known, games are maybe too well known, talk about peripherals that you may or may not be familiar with, talk about games that pushed the limits of the system they were on, talk about games that make the system look weaker than what they were, and even covered entire libraries of some systems. There are also full reviews of classic games sprinkled throughout. There used to be two hosts, but at some point one of them stopped appearing in videos. A defining feature of the channel besides the self-deprecating humor in the interludes, is the skit that caps off every video. If you want to discover games, and learn about systems and equipment, while maybe chuckling on occasion, this is the channel to visit.
Austin Eruption - Austin has two types of videos on his channel. There are videos where he gives himself an excuse to talk about any number of under appreciated/lesser known games of a genre or type, whether they're good or bad. No game is safe. Every video is capped off with him talking about a game that typically inspired the video. The other type of video is the "I completed this game 100% so you didn't have to" videos, where he goes through the entire game and explains everything he liked and doesn't like about the game, while finding all the content and completing it. These videos aren't super common, but they do appear from time to time. Based on older videos, Austin was a part of a team of Youtubers who covered video games but at some point, they split off, and Austin continued his thing on this channel. Austin also used to be must more uncensored in the older videos, but because of YT algorithm bullshit, he's had to censor himself, but it's not annoying. Usually, it's a funny sound effect that covers his swear words. A big draw for me, is his general interest in the subjects and games he's talking about. He spends a lot of time on his videos, and it shows. I get the feeling that he genuinely loves to play and talk about video games.
Retro Bird - Retro Bird is a naner munching, Rocket Knight obsessed dork who uses his videos to just talk about what it means to be a video game nerd. He doesn't usually talk about the games themselves in most videos, but more on the gamer and collector aspect of video games. His videos are framed as a starting of a dialog in the comments, like he posted a discussion thread on Reddit but in video form. Videos are relatively short, come out SUUUUUPER late on Friday nights. There's a lot of humor in the videos. Videos are also super clean, you could show his videos to your kids.
Retro Core - Retro Core is a "Battle of the Ports" channel. He takes a game that got numerous ports, shows you how they look and play while providing his own commentary. Then at the end, he shows all of the games at the same time. Initially, he didn't talk, but had text scrolling at the bottom, but at some point, he become comfortable enough to talk. It's obvious that English isn't his first language (I actually think he's Japanese), but that's fine. He still provides subtitles, just in case you find it difficult to understand.
Sharopolis - This channel typically focuses on games that "push the limits" of a system. Unlike how Game Sack does it in their "pushing the limits" series, Sharopolis goes much more into depth for each game, opting to use tools in emulators to rip apart games and find the tricks devs used to make games work on systems that probably work on. It's really cool seeing how devs use tricks to make games look the way they did in the old days. This channel is like just a big love letter to classic game devs. There are other types of videos, but his pushing the limits series is what I really like about his channel. I found about Ranger X because of this guy.
Modern Vintage Gaming - Along the lines of what Sharopolis does, MVG does deep dives into video games on a hardware level. He also has a series of videos called the "Impossible Port" series, which is kind of like Sharoplis' videos, except it's focused on one game. For instance, what to know how the fuck Capcom squeezed Resident Evil 2 onto a tiny cartridge while still having all of the gameplay and cut scenes? My man has a video for you. MVG also likes to discuss emulators. He has an annual "best emulators of the year" video. Highly recommended if you were ever curious about the technical side of video gaming.
My Life in Gaming - This channel is typically focuses on helping you play vintage video games in the modern age and getting the best picture and audio from your video games. Did you know there were different versions of the SNES (besides the small one), and that some do RGB video better than others? Well, this channel will tell you about it. They occasionally do collabs with Game Sack.
Matt McMuscles - Matt has two types of videos on his primary channel: "Wha Happun", a magazine article style video series that covers the troubled developments of games (and movies). Instead of just finding shit on Wikipedia, he actually goes and looks for developers willing to talk, and also old articles/interviews to gather his information. As he's done these videos, he's started to notice trends as to why some games end up having issues, like crunch time, publisher/studio interference, and trying to chase trends "which was the style at the time". The other video type is his "Worst Fighting Game" series, where he finds trash fighting games, judges this based on three categories: Presentation, Mechanics, and Game feel; then he places the game on a tier list. The series started with a review of an early PS1 MK knockoff called "Criticom", and then was like "I wonder if there is a worse fighting game out there than this trash" and has been doing the videos since. TBH, I think he already found the worst game, in the SNES port of Pit Fighter, but one never knows. Matt also has a bunch of "Lets Play", but he stopped posting those on his main channel and does Lets Plays on his secondary channel called "Flophouse Plays". Matt is big into fighting games, so you'll probably see a lot of those games appear.
SNES Drunk - SNES focuses game review channel. He basically determines if the whether or not the game is worth your time. He also does other systems, but mostly sticks to the SNES. Every video starts with a different way of him saying "SNES Drunk".
Sega Lord X - Sega focused channel. He grew up with the Sega systems so his bias is clear. Videos are mostly lists of games he wants to talk about, whether good or bad. The only thing I don't like is that he gets overly critical about bad games as if they were a slight against his honor as a gamer and tends to trash the devs of those games. However, when he praises a game, he's big on saying "Find a way to play this game any way you can."
GManLives - FPS focused review channel. Dude's an Aussie and he talks like an Aussie. He likes to make childish jokes, like your mom ("Swhacked!"). I think he's ran out of FPS' to review because he's been doing it for years, so he has slightly shifted to more than just FPS' but the FPS reviews are still there.
Nitro Rad - 3D Platform (and survival-horror) focused review channel. He plays through the entire game and gives his opinion of the aspects of the game that he liked and didn't like. If you ever wanted to get an honest and easily digestable opinion on Frogger Beyond, this is the channel for you.
The following channels are either super niche, light in the content that I'd recommend from them, I haven't watched much from them to highly recommend them yet. And also some you probably should already know about.
Maximilian Dood - Well known fighting game focused channel. It's mostly just clips from his Twitch stream where he talks about things related to fighting games and/or videos of him playing games on his own on Stream. What I'm recommending his channel for is the Street Fighter Legacy series he did, where he goes through every mainline SF game (so, no SF Movie or EX games) and discusses how they played and how they compared to the other games in the series. He's also a part of another channel called "Yo, Video Games", where he and a few of his friends play random games on stream.
minimme - Retrospective reviews of games that were either lesser known, or had fallen from the limelight. He's also got a couple videos where he reviews every FPS released on the GBA and DS. The videos that got my attention, were his retrospectives on the Driver games, a series that hasn't gotten much attention after the disaster of Driver 3.
Mort's Garage - Dirty video game reseller. Over the last year or so, his quest has been to finish his N64 CIB collection by acquiring the funds to buy the manual for Clayfighter 63 1/3 Sculpture's Cut (the extremely rare Blockbuster exclusive edition). He gets a lot of discounts on the games he buys from vendors simply because he has a camera and they want to promote their store, so some of the deals are super sus, but that's like every reseller on YT. I like Mort because since his profession is psychologist, he often likes to discuss the psychology of video game collecting. I also like that he always talks to other people (other resellers or just normal collectors/video game fans) to see if they'll share what they've picked up. It's not just him walking around scoring deals the whole time.
SchmidGame - Dreamcast Files - Channel dedicated to reviewing all 248 NA released Dreamcast games. Their production rate has decreased heavily over the last year, though. I wonder if they'll end up doing it. Right now, they have 86 games reviewed, and they are set to release a video for 87 and 88 soon.
Gaming Historian - um, it's in the name. Documentaries on the history of video games. I haven't spent much time watching his videos. He quit doing videos earlier this year, so it's unlikely he'll make more, but he says he might do some on occasion in his free time, but it's no longer something he intends to do as a job.
Cinemassacure (AVGN) - The channel was initially known for the "Angry Video Game Nerd" as that's how the channel started out (though he initially started in filmography before starting the AVGN thing). AVGN is pretty well known and highly influential content creator in the video game community, as noted by his ability to bring to light some of the worst games ever created, absolutely dumpster them, and make sure everyone fucking knows about it. His influence is so large, that he's directly influenced all time worst lists. Some games may or may not actually deserve the absolute vitriol they received by him. Channel is almost as old as Youtube itself and still gets videos posted, though not all of them are AVGN vids anymore, which is fair.
Classic Game Room and CGRundertow - REALLY old video game review channel that likely predated Youtube itself. Apparently, they got their start in 99, so there you go. Initially, their intent was to "review every game that ever existed", but I think he got tired of doing the reviews (even if the videos weren't all that long). Their last review was that of Pokken Tournament DX and it was posted 6 years ago. CGRundertow's last video was 9 years ago. Ever since then, they haven't posted any game reviews, opting to try to move to comic book reviews and then started posting music (I think it's electronic music of their own making) and car clips. Then in the last couple years, they started posting "best reviews of [Insert system here], and then have started doing podcasts in the last year. CGRundertow featured reviews from another reviewer. They're both Classic Game Room channels. There might be more Classic Game Room spin-off channels.
Digital Foundry - I haven't watched much from them and a majority of the videos are focused on newer gaming tech, but there are occasionally deep dives into classic consoles. They started a series where they're going to compare the multiplatform games released on the Saturn and the PS1. They started with racing games, and intend to move onto other genres. Next one is SHMUPs. Judging from the older videos, they did framerate comparisons of games of games on different systems, as well as tech analysis on games.
Ahoy - Once known as "Xbox Ahoy", Stu used to do reviews of Call of Duty weapons. As the years went by, he created a couple other channels in order to branch out. At some point, he stopped doing the weapon reviews. He started to do documentary type videos on video game weapons in general. His upload rate has decreased heavily over the years, but he still posts videos from time to time. They're all gaming related and in a documentary style. He seems to have merged his channels, as his RetroAhoy videos are included in this main channel. Had has a bonus channel, where he took questions from previous videos and answered them. He doesn't use that channel anymore. Stu's channel is probably the channel I've been subbed to for the most amount of time because I started watching YT back when the Modern Warfare games were new.
Second Wind - This is where the folks at The Escapist... escaped to after the bullshit that happened there. That includes Yahtzee Croshaw, the no BS video game reviewer known for the Zero Punctuation review series. Not really retro focused, and most of the older reviews are on The Escapist, and they don't deserve more clicks... Still figured they were worth mentioning.
VideoGameDunky - KNACK 2 IS A MASTAHPIECE, BAYBEEEEE!!!
Scott the Woz - Video game focused comedy/variety show type channel. This channel is the least "retro" of all of them, (even dunky).
Ok, that's it for now. I might end up finding more at some point. If you have channels that focus on systems/genres I didn't mention, lemme know. There's all sorts of goofy shit out there, too. There's a channel out there where a guy goes through Zelda and Mario games doing silly challenges, like "How fast does it take to touch grass in every Mario game?" There are also channels that focus on single games/series, that I just can't see lasting long without them branching out like Stu did in his Ahoy channel. How much can you actually talk about Smash Bros before getting bored of finding things to discuss?
I've been meaning to share some Youtube content creators that I feel deserve a look. Content creators that will help introduce you to video games and even consoles you've never heard of or considered. If you want to find games that were never on your radar, this is the list. I chose to avoid channels that rely heavily on Top 10 Lists (so no gameRanx or Outside Xbox), no Let's Plays, Long Plays, or other Gameplay focused channels (though, a couple will appear here as a mention). I've also leaned heavily on retro channels. Some channels will definitely have stuff for modern consoles, but the focus here is mostly going to be retro. Some channels will go into the technology side, some will focuses solely on the games, some will do both.
Game Sack - I'll start with one of the longer running channels that also has the most varied content. This channel has a mostly Sega leaning host, but they cover a LOT of systems, genres, games, etc. The other channels I'll list will tend to focus on specific type of videos, but Game Sack has videos that may seem to sample from those other channels. They have videos where they compare systems, talk about games that are lesser known, games are maybe too well known, talk about peripherals that you may or may not be familiar with, talk about games that pushed the limits of the system they were on, talk about games that make the system look weaker than what they were, and even covered entire libraries of some systems. There are also full reviews of classic games sprinkled throughout. There used to be two hosts, but at some point one of them stopped appearing in videos. A defining feature of the channel besides the self-deprecating humor in the interludes, is the skit that caps off every video. If you want to discover games, and learn about systems and equipment, while maybe chuckling on occasion, this is the channel to visit.
Austin Eruption - Austin has two types of videos on his channel. There are videos where he gives himself an excuse to talk about any number of under appreciated/lesser known games of a genre or type, whether they're good or bad. No game is safe. Every video is capped off with him talking about a game that typically inspired the video. The other type of video is the "I completed this game 100% so you didn't have to" videos, where he goes through the entire game and explains everything he liked and doesn't like about the game, while finding all the content and completing it. These videos aren't super common, but they do appear from time to time. Based on older videos, Austin was a part of a team of Youtubers who covered video games but at some point, they split off, and Austin continued his thing on this channel. Austin also used to be must more uncensored in the older videos, but because of YT algorithm bullshit, he's had to censor himself, but it's not annoying. Usually, it's a funny sound effect that covers his swear words. A big draw for me, is his general interest in the subjects and games he's talking about. He spends a lot of time on his videos, and it shows. I get the feeling that he genuinely loves to play and talk about video games.
Retro Bird - Retro Bird is a naner munching, Rocket Knight obsessed dork who uses his videos to just talk about what it means to be a video game nerd. He doesn't usually talk about the games themselves in most videos, but more on the gamer and collector aspect of video games. His videos are framed as a starting of a dialog in the comments, like he posted a discussion thread on Reddit but in video form. Videos are relatively short, come out SUUUUUPER late on Friday nights. There's a lot of humor in the videos. Videos are also super clean, you could show his videos to your kids.
Retro Core - Retro Core is a "Battle of the Ports" channel. He takes a game that got numerous ports, shows you how they look and play while providing his own commentary. Then at the end, he shows all of the games at the same time. Initially, he didn't talk, but had text scrolling at the bottom, but at some point, he become comfortable enough to talk. It's obvious that English isn't his first language (I actually think he's Japanese), but that's fine. He still provides subtitles, just in case you find it difficult to understand.
Sharopolis - This channel typically focuses on games that "push the limits" of a system. Unlike how Game Sack does it in their "pushing the limits" series, Sharopolis goes much more into depth for each game, opting to use tools in emulators to rip apart games and find the tricks devs used to make games work on systems that probably work on. It's really cool seeing how devs use tricks to make games look the way they did in the old days. This channel is like just a big love letter to classic game devs. There are other types of videos, but his pushing the limits series is what I really like about his channel. I found about Ranger X because of this guy.
Modern Vintage Gaming - Along the lines of what Sharopolis does, MVG does deep dives into video games on a hardware level. He also has a series of videos called the "Impossible Port" series, which is kind of like Sharoplis' videos, except it's focused on one game. For instance, what to know how the fuck Capcom squeezed Resident Evil 2 onto a tiny cartridge while still having all of the gameplay and cut scenes? My man has a video for you. MVG also likes to discuss emulators. He has an annual "best emulators of the year" video. Highly recommended if you were ever curious about the technical side of video gaming.
My Life in Gaming - This channel is typically focuses on helping you play vintage video games in the modern age and getting the best picture and audio from your video games. Did you know there were different versions of the SNES (besides the small one), and that some do RGB video better than others? Well, this channel will tell you about it. They occasionally do collabs with Game Sack.
Matt McMuscles - Matt has two types of videos on his primary channel: "Wha Happun", a magazine article style video series that covers the troubled developments of games (and movies). Instead of just finding shit on Wikipedia, he actually goes and looks for developers willing to talk, and also old articles/interviews to gather his information. As he's done these videos, he's started to notice trends as to why some games end up having issues, like crunch time, publisher/studio interference, and trying to chase trends "which was the style at the time". The other video type is his "Worst Fighting Game" series, where he finds trash fighting games, judges this based on three categories: Presentation, Mechanics, and Game feel; then he places the game on a tier list. The series started with a review of an early PS1 MK knockoff called "Criticom", and then was like "I wonder if there is a worse fighting game out there than this trash" and has been doing the videos since. TBH, I think he already found the worst game, in the SNES port of Pit Fighter, but one never knows. Matt also has a bunch of "Lets Play", but he stopped posting those on his main channel and does Lets Plays on his secondary channel called "Flophouse Plays". Matt is big into fighting games, so you'll probably see a lot of those games appear.
SNES Drunk - SNES focuses game review channel. He basically determines if the whether or not the game is worth your time. He also does other systems, but mostly sticks to the SNES. Every video starts with a different way of him saying "SNES Drunk".
Sega Lord X - Sega focused channel. He grew up with the Sega systems so his bias is clear. Videos are mostly lists of games he wants to talk about, whether good or bad. The only thing I don't like is that he gets overly critical about bad games as if they were a slight against his honor as a gamer and tends to trash the devs of those games. However, when he praises a game, he's big on saying "Find a way to play this game any way you can."
GManLives - FPS focused review channel. Dude's an Aussie and he talks like an Aussie. He likes to make childish jokes, like your mom ("Swhacked!"). I think he's ran out of FPS' to review because he's been doing it for years, so he has slightly shifted to more than just FPS' but the FPS reviews are still there.
Nitro Rad - 3D Platform (and survival-horror) focused review channel. He plays through the entire game and gives his opinion of the aspects of the game that he liked and didn't like. If you ever wanted to get an honest and easily digestable opinion on Frogger Beyond, this is the channel for you.
The following channels are either super niche, light in the content that I'd recommend from them, I haven't watched much from them to highly recommend them yet. And also some you probably should already know about.
Maximilian Dood - Well known fighting game focused channel. It's mostly just clips from his Twitch stream where he talks about things related to fighting games and/or videos of him playing games on his own on Stream. What I'm recommending his channel for is the Street Fighter Legacy series he did, where he goes through every mainline SF game (so, no SF Movie or EX games) and discusses how they played and how they compared to the other games in the series. He's also a part of another channel called "Yo, Video Games", where he and a few of his friends play random games on stream.
minimme - Retrospective reviews of games that were either lesser known, or had fallen from the limelight. He's also got a couple videos where he reviews every FPS released on the GBA and DS. The videos that got my attention, were his retrospectives on the Driver games, a series that hasn't gotten much attention after the disaster of Driver 3.
Mort's Garage - Dirty video game reseller. Over the last year or so, his quest has been to finish his N64 CIB collection by acquiring the funds to buy the manual for Clayfighter 63 1/3 Sculpture's Cut (the extremely rare Blockbuster exclusive edition). He gets a lot of discounts on the games he buys from vendors simply because he has a camera and they want to promote their store, so some of the deals are super sus, but that's like every reseller on YT. I like Mort because since his profession is psychologist, he often likes to discuss the psychology of video game collecting. I also like that he always talks to other people (other resellers or just normal collectors/video game fans) to see if they'll share what they've picked up. It's not just him walking around scoring deals the whole time.
SchmidGame - Dreamcast Files - Channel dedicated to reviewing all 248 NA released Dreamcast games. Their production rate has decreased heavily over the last year, though. I wonder if they'll end up doing it. Right now, they have 86 games reviewed, and they are set to release a video for 87 and 88 soon.
Gaming Historian - um, it's in the name. Documentaries on the history of video games. I haven't spent much time watching his videos. He quit doing videos earlier this year, so it's unlikely he'll make more, but he says he might do some on occasion in his free time, but it's no longer something he intends to do as a job.
Cinemassacure (AVGN) - The channel was initially known for the "Angry Video Game Nerd" as that's how the channel started out (though he initially started in filmography before starting the AVGN thing). AVGN is pretty well known and highly influential content creator in the video game community, as noted by his ability to bring to light some of the worst games ever created, absolutely dumpster them, and make sure everyone fucking knows about it. His influence is so large, that he's directly influenced all time worst lists. Some games may or may not actually deserve the absolute vitriol they received by him. Channel is almost as old as Youtube itself and still gets videos posted, though not all of them are AVGN vids anymore, which is fair.
Classic Game Room and CGRundertow - REALLY old video game review channel that likely predated Youtube itself. Apparently, they got their start in 99, so there you go. Initially, their intent was to "review every game that ever existed", but I think he got tired of doing the reviews (even if the videos weren't all that long). Their last review was that of Pokken Tournament DX and it was posted 6 years ago. CGRundertow's last video was 9 years ago. Ever since then, they haven't posted any game reviews, opting to try to move to comic book reviews and then started posting music (I think it's electronic music of their own making) and car clips. Then in the last couple years, they started posting "best reviews of [Insert system here], and then have started doing podcasts in the last year. CGRundertow featured reviews from another reviewer. They're both Classic Game Room channels. There might be more Classic Game Room spin-off channels.
Digital Foundry - I haven't watched much from them and a majority of the videos are focused on newer gaming tech, but there are occasionally deep dives into classic consoles. They started a series where they're going to compare the multiplatform games released on the Saturn and the PS1. They started with racing games, and intend to move onto other genres. Next one is SHMUPs. Judging from the older videos, they did framerate comparisons of games of games on different systems, as well as tech analysis on games.
Ahoy - Once known as "Xbox Ahoy", Stu used to do reviews of Call of Duty weapons. As the years went by, he created a couple other channels in order to branch out. At some point, he stopped doing the weapon reviews. He started to do documentary type videos on video game weapons in general. His upload rate has decreased heavily over the years, but he still posts videos from time to time. They're all gaming related and in a documentary style. He seems to have merged his channels, as his RetroAhoy videos are included in this main channel. Had has a bonus channel, where he took questions from previous videos and answered them. He doesn't use that channel anymore. Stu's channel is probably the channel I've been subbed to for the most amount of time because I started watching YT back when the Modern Warfare games were new.
Second Wind - This is where the folks at The Escapist... escaped to after the bullshit that happened there. That includes Yahtzee Croshaw, the no BS video game reviewer known for the Zero Punctuation review series. Not really retro focused, and most of the older reviews are on The Escapist, and they don't deserve more clicks... Still figured they were worth mentioning.
VideoGameDunky - KNACK 2 IS A MASTAHPIECE, BAYBEEEEE!!!
Scott the Woz - Video game focused comedy/variety show type channel. This channel is the least "retro" of all of them, (even dunky).
Ok, that's it for now. I might end up finding more at some point. If you have channels that focus on systems/genres I didn't mention, lemme know. There's all sorts of goofy shit out there, too. There's a channel out there where a guy goes through Zelda and Mario games doing silly challenges, like "How fast does it take to touch grass in every Mario game?" There are also channels that focus on single games/series, that I just can't see lasting long without them branching out like Stu did in his Ahoy channel. How much can you actually talk about Smash Bros before getting bored of finding things to discuss?
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