How Well Can You Really Know a Game?
About the only thing I thought I knew was that nothing I’d ever know would do any good. | Watch all my exclusive videos by joining Nebula at https://go.nebula.tv/jacob-geller
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/JacobGeller
Buy my book: https://www.lostincult.co.uk/howagamelives
Social media and merch links at https://jacobgeller.com/
Watch the companion video on Nebula: https://nebula.tv/videos/jacob-geller-whats-wrong-with-the-sunshine-bluray
Watch this video on Nebula: https://nebula.tv/videos/jacob-geller-how-well-can-you-really-know-a-game
Special Thanks to Jasper for technical consultation: https://www.youtube.com/@UC5bN6XKHDCFt_wYAJmsP_Mg
Additional footage courtesy of:
Pannenkoek2012: https://youtu.be/kpk2tdsPh0A?si=9OoxnDeAJqjbExhN
Displaced Gamers: https://youtu.be/iH3MYbhtrQA?si=nkfOfaXwVUJS1lTe
Armaggedun_: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b71Jk0Hh0xM
Snark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BziHXEhLnjk
Retro Rabbit Ears: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6RxENG9HAU
Mario 64 x No Surprises by on4word: https://youtu.be/LDqWxlFdikU?si=_cEkXs_ZaILmeGCk
Media Shown: Star Wars Episode III: The Game, Super Mario 64, Breakout, Super Breakout, Furi, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Fantastic Voyage (1966), Magic Schoolbus (1994), Missile Command, Heli Attack 2, Interactive Buddy
Music (Chronologically): Main Theme (Roller Coaster Tycoon 2), Mos Eisley Cantina (Lego Star Wars II DS), Moondown (Rain World), The Facsimile (Citizen Sleeper), TRANCE (Humanity), Scenes from Childhood Op. 15 (Robert Schumann), STREAM (Humanity), Make this Right (Furi), BOUND (Humanity), No Suprises — Mario 64 Remix (on4word), Asphalt Maelstrom (Death Stranding 2), Inertia (Thomas Was Alone), Quarter Past Eleven (Victor Lundberg), Make This Right (Furi)
Thumbnail and Graphic Design by https://twitter.com/HotCyder
Description credit: “Human Knowledge” by Robert Wrigley
If you enjoyed this video but also wish you could hear me talk about blu-rays for twenty minutes and sixteen seconds, I've got GREAT NEWS: https://nebula.tv/videos/jacob-geller-whats-wrong-with-the-sunshine-bluray
When I was a kid I would play red dear redemption. I used to use the map that came eith the cartridge. I didn't use the mini map because I would sit on the bed and plan my routes . I got lost aeveral times because I was 12 and didn't know how to navigate well. For me the little radar map was used only to find bodies and stuff
I still have the strategy guide book for fallout 3 on my shelf. Its like 500 pages. I used to bring these guides to school. I wasn't exactly a popular child.
cool video!
I have the fondest memories of playing FF7 while thumbing through my official strategy guide, making sure I never looked too far ahead so the story remained unspoiled as I played through it. The thing I remember most is the smell. That smell brings me back to 1997, like I was actually there. I lost that damn book but I wanted to smell that aroma so badly I went to eBay and bought it for more than it should have cost, but when I got it there was no smell. That was the entire reason I wanted it. Those books don’t exist anymore but I have some great memories involving them.
SM64 – Watch for Rolling Rocks – 0.5x A Presses (Commentated) is, no hold barred, my favourite video on this entire platform. With the exception perhaps of the experience I had when watching pannenkoek2012's SM64’s Invisible Walls Explained Once and for All unfold live in premiere without being able to see the runtime. Thank you for introducing more people to this gem of Youtube.
furi mention holy shit YESS YESSS. the shivers when the soundtrack started ohh my god
I was REALLY into wrestling as a kid. I had a gaming magazine with a very brief single page add dedicated to WWF Warzone.
See, in the summer of ‘98 I spent most of my time in a hospital since my father was in a coma, resulting from a botched surgery. I hate hospitals to this day, but back then all I knew was my dad was sick, there was nothing to do, and it smelled funny.
That magazine offered me a much needed escape and I poured over this one page story detailing what amazing new features this game would introduce, with a handful of pictures to foster my unbound imagination. I owe it to that magazine and its single page for getting me through that summer. My dad got better and came home and the game i so eagerly awaited released- and I hated it.
Can I just say: the Rain World music always hits me like a truck. Excellent choice.
Pannenkoek doesn't say he could program the game better than the developers, but Kaze Emanuar sure does. I really hoped it would go into that direction 😀
If only Jacob’s mom had just used The Force to sense where he was in the Target.
David Sudnow's book (which I'd never heard of) seems almost like videogaming's Proustian moment—Proust was maybe the first writer to go off the deep end in his attempts to look at anything completely, leading to over a hundred of pages about a single salon soirée, momentary revelations expanded out into philosophical treatises, etc., such that À le recherche is over 4,000pp long but nothing much ever happens—and it's kind of astonishing how, once Proust showed the way like this, videogame writing could match it within what, eleven years of the invention of the medium? (Pong is '72.) Also it makes perfect sense that a classical pianist (and one who, no less, websearch tells me, wrote a Guggenheim Fellowship–winning book about piano technique!) would obsess over the mechanics of a game and regard its creators as god-like—see how these people treat Bach and Beethoven, memorising their music for performance with a respect these (or any) composers themselves rarely did/do. I've even heard classical musicians speak of their craft as aspiring to self-effacement—'taskbot' indeed! I think the power of computers now makes that aspiration seem anachronistic though; I wonder if that’s still an ideal in this tradition.
RAIN WORLD MUSIC 2:06
I honestly can't tell if this book is parody or a deep dive into the mind of a full-on autist.
Roller coaster tycoon 2 music 0:43
Here's to everybody who experienced games through Guinness World Records books
Hey Jacob, is there any reason you don't list books mentioned in the description? I don't read books very often but recently started reading Kelsey's book on Animal Crossing, just realized Pilgrim in the Microworld is part of the same series of books! Thanks for the quality Geller material, best game essayist in the game.
i enjoyed this 🙂
So glad to see someone talk about Furi even now, well after its release. One of the best OSTs I've heard in a video game. Shoutout to Lorn for contributing two of the best tracks.
Reminds me of a quote from the film Lost Boys: got a TV guide, don't need a TV.
Good job on your parent finding a Wii in the launch year
0:02 in the year 2005, i was born
Wow
The types of games that excite you and the types of gameplay you truly enjoy often don't appeal to me at all, but it is nonetheless fascinating to listen to you talk about them. Thank you for these videos.