Thanks everyone for making 2022 the best year ever for my channel and content! It wasn’t easy, I moved house, got a new job, and for the first time in about 6 years now, had to take a break from weekly uploads on several occasions! Despite this, my channel did the best ever, with 75% more views compared to 2021, and a massive growth in subscribers, as well as lots of new members in the Discord and on Patreon! It’s been amazing to see my hard work beginning to pay off, and, if my plans work out, it should all seem small compared to 2023!

I managed to make 39 videos on my main channel, 21 Podcast episodes, and 34 live streams. I’ve been busy, but it was all worthwhile, and I have a few bigger, more impactful projects planned for this year too, which I’ll share more about in a future blog post on here.

I recently published an end of year podcast celebrating everything I’ve achieved in 2022, and some plans for this year, you can listen to that here:

In this post, I’m going to share some of the content I’m most proud of from last year! Starting with the main channel.

Videos

15 Mind Blowing GBA Demakes!

The first “Big” video I made this year, and one that I’d been planning for a long time! This was a look at some interesting GBA Homebrew games that push the system to its limits. I want to do more like this again soon, maybe a series for various other systems.

House Move Videos

A big milestone this yeas was me moving house, it was a very long and drawn out process which took about a year in the end, and was a HUGE relief when it was all over! You can hear about some of my struggles, and plans for the new room in the two videos below:

Everything You Need To Know About The Neo Geo Pocket Color!

A video I’d been excited to make after a friend lent me their console. I want to do more history videos on consoles like this in 2023! I really enjoyed researching the history of the system, and using the flash cart to show off all the best games for it too!

Game Shop Tour Videos

Another set of videos I was very excited to make! I want to try and get out more this year and do even more shop tours, and other videos outside of the game room! I’m saving up to get the Sony A7S III camera, which will vastly improve the quality and stability of the shots inside these shops!

I’m aiming to be the absolute best there is on YouTube, and a go to place for anyone looking for independent shops and other gaming events and locations! I also started building a page on this website to keep track of all the store locations, so hopefully that will eventually fleshed out into a good resource for anyone looking for game shops in the uk! (and maybe elsewhere in the world once I start travelling more!)

You can check out the Game Shops page here

Top 15 3DS Games.

Not a super exciting video to make or edit, but it’s done incredibly well, and given me the motivation to make more top games lists, which, while not exactly creatively fulfilling to me, definitely help a lot of people, and bring in a new audience who will hopefully enjoy my other content too!

Play Expo Blackpool

Now that the world is opening back up, and events are back on, I was very excited to go and film at the first proper event in several years! Taking all my camera gear (and some friends to help me use it all!) was a fantastic change of pace, and the end video came out really well too! Can’t wait to go to a lot more this year! Especially once I get my new upgraded kit, it’s going to be very exciting! Making this video helped me get an idea of how to edit these event videos too, as it was quite a challenge to fit all the footage into a regular length episode!

20,000 Subscribers Special!

The last video I want to share in this post is a very important personal one for me, a celebration of the incredible subscriber milestone of 20K! I never thought I would get there, and now I’m already focussing on how to get to 30! This also gave me the opportunity to do a bit of a nostalgic episode looking back on my gaming history!

Fingers crossed 30K comes even sooner!

Podcast

I’d actually been planning to make a podcast since about 2015, but it was only last year that I FINALLY decided to make it a reality! I actually started it as a way of making content while I was in the process of moving house, as I didn’t have any of my games or capture equipment left, and was getting frustrated! It got off to a great start and I was amazed at the reception it got right from episode 1!

I’ve decided that next year, I’m going to focus on making the podcast an audio only experience, as I want it to stay separate to the main videos. So video will now be a Patreon exclusive bonus, and not the main focus, as over half the audience listen to it on Spotify / Apple Podcasts. For the majority of the year though,. there were also videos to accompany the episodes, some of the best you can see below:

The First Podcast Episode!

Game Making Journey

A set of episodes I was especially excited to make, and because it was on the podcast rather than the main channel, I didn’t need to worry about them not getting views, or ruining the pesky algorithm… These episodes were focussed on my game making journey. Something I’d never really covered in detail online before, you can watch all three episodes here:

Walking Around And Podcasting!

Something I wanted to try experimenting with was walking around and talking at the same time, I was away for work in Edinburgh, and had a few spare hours to kill, so I decided to try walking around using my phone camera and recording an episode, I think it actually turned out really well, especially if you watch the video version! I don’t work there any more, so I’m not sure if I’ll get a chance to make another video like that for a while, but it was fun to do!

I kind of made this for my own sake, as I already knew I was planning to leave the job when I made this, so it was a good chance to record some of Edinburgh as it was probably the last time in a long while that’d be there on my own with time to spare.

Play Expo Behind The Scenes

This is something I want to do after recoding at various shows going forwards. behind the scenes recap of the event and how I went about filming it. Maybe in the future I can try and get some gets on from the event too!

This year, I hope to continue with at least 1 episode a month, (Hopefully more!) and also get a few guest on the show once I’ve got a good reliable recording solution. I’ve recorded a few podcasts and interviews in the past and had issues with internet connections and audio recording which have made me a bit wary of recording online with others… I’ll try and look into a good solution sometime this year! I’d love to try and make a few with guests in person too, maybe to coincide with one of the events I’m attending this year!

And finally, another new venture for me in 2022 was live streams over on Twitch!

Live Streams

Another new venture for me this year, and one that, although I’d dabbled in previously, wasn’t one I really ever felt comfortable with. But I finally decided to set up a dedicated Twitch channel and begin playing some games. My girlfriend Sarah made me an awesome template to use, and I’ve been enjoying it a lot more than I initially expected. Again, like the podcast, the reception to it has been fantastic and I’ve already got several regular viewers!

I’ve found Live streams to be a lot more difficult to keep the same quality and setting between sessions, having so many systems and cables causes all sorts of random issues with the live streams! Think I’ve mostly got it figured out now though! Plus I’m also struggling a bit to find time to keep up a regular streaming schedule, especially with my main channel taking priority. Some weeks it takes me all week to make a video, as I only have a few spare hours after work and house chores (Hooray for being an adult I guess…) leaving no time for a podcast or live stream! Either way, I somehow managed to stream on 34 separate occasions since the start of the hear!

You can follow me on Twitch here

Here’s a few of my favourites, uploaded to YouTube on my 2nd channel:

Sonic Mania:

Klonoa 2

Zelda Wand of Gamelon

Pokemon Heart Gold / Soul Silver Soul Link series

This was something for fun I did with my girlfriend, were we played Pokemon SS/HG together in a Soul Link Nuzlocke. It was very challenging, and eventually we gave up, but it was fun while it lasted!

Spark The Electric Jester 2

A game I only found about recently, but had a great time with it! (and the first game too!) – Planning to play and finish all three on stream this year!

Not really got any specific plans for the twitch channel this year, it’s kind of a place I want to be able to go to relax and just play games instead of thinking about working on content, so we’ll see what happens this year!

If you’re curious, here’s what the stats on my main channel looked like in 2022:

Here’s 2021 for comparison:

As you can see, although 2022 hasn’t been as smooth as 2021, the highs have been much higher, and more than made up for any gaps in my schedule!

That’s all for this post, hope you’ve enjoyed my content this year, and hopefully 2023 will be even better! I’ll share some of my plans in a future post here, as well as more regular updates over on Patreon!

If you’ve read to the end, and want to support me and my goals, you can do so on Patreon. I put all the money from there, and YouTube straight back into the channel! A proper network storage solution for backing up my files will be my next Patreon purchase!

Thank you all for an amazing year, I’m so excited to start producing content this year!

Nick.