Kimble Justice's Youtube Channel

[KimbleJustice]

Howdy everybody! A few weeks back christuserloeser posted my top 20 worst Sega Mega Drive/Genesis games video list to the forum, and it ended up being quite well received! I'd been waiting for an opportunity to start promoting it myself after I'd been here a while, but it was neat and surprising for a fellow forum user to do it. So, now that I have been here a while, I'd like to present the other videos that I do, mostly based around Mega Drive/Genesis game reviews although I like to throw in the odd Amiga/ZX Spectrum game every now and again. Unlike the previous list that got featured, I also tend to do games that I actually enjoy rather than any crappy games (the main reason I did the list was kind of to get that out of the system - I've done the bad games, now I can move on!). I've not done a massive amount so far so I can present a small list of all my review vids, with the most recent ones at the top (all Mega Drive unless otherwise stated):

NHL '94
Altered Beast
Deathchase (ZX Spectrum)
Alien 3
Football Glory (Amiga)
Strider and Strider Returns
Space Harrier II and Super Thunder Blade

I might not be the best person to ask, but I'd say that if you were to watch three of these vids to get my "style", I'd go for the two Strider videos and Alien 3. There tends to be a bit of variation in quality as I dabble about with length, equipment, pacing and so on (the vids at the top are generally better, thankfully), but it's gradually getting more consistent...

My latest "weeview" (hot off the press and uploaded a couple of hours ago) is for True Lies on the Mega Drive:



Notable for being a good Arnold Schwarzenegger game - perhaps the only good one ever released! Features a bunch of footage from a bunch of other Arnie games, including more obscure ones like Red Heat and the Running Man, and the odd attempt at humour - but I try to stick to actually talking about how the game plays and I avoid any of the usual Youtube video game review nonsense - I don't do silly skits, faked anger or compound swearwords. Also, I do try and research a fair bit - if there's an interesting tidbit about a production or a game that I can compare another game to, I don't want to miss it.

Anyway, I think that's about enough self-promotion from me. I'd love for you to watch the videos and see what you think, and I'd appreciate any comments or even criticism you might have. Many thanks!

[KimbleJustice]

This isn't a proper review video - just an off-the-cuff gameplay video that came out well, for an odd little obscure computer game:



Level 1 of Red Heat on the Amiga, a game I came across when I was capturing just about every Arnie movie tie-in going for the last video. It's a pretty obscure one, seeing as how it was released on British home computers only (same deal as all tie-ins for "The Running Man" - I think that's the only other one) - and I think the other versions may have been very different to this Amiga one. The first level is kind of...well, interesting. It's a terrible game for sure, but I've not seen a terrible game like it. It's set in the bathhouse scene, for a start. And there's the Cinemascope display, all the many people in the background freely showing their wares, not a single shirt in sight...I do have to give the developers some credit - Red Heat is regarded as one of the most homoerotic action movies ever made, and I think Ocean Software successfully got that across by making one of history's most homoerotic games.

[Drakon]

Hey these aren't bad at all. I'm listening to the altered beast one.

[Barone]

Keep the European exclusives coming, KimbleJustice. Please...
Amiga is always welcome!

There are some good European exclusive Mega Drive games that didn't get a video review (at least not a proper/good/minded one), like:
Man Overboard!
International Sensible Soccer - Limited Edition: World Champions
Mr. Nutz
Snake Rattle 'n' Roll
Super Skidmarks

[KimbleJustice]

Sensi is something I definitely will do one day...when I do, you damn well better prepare yourself for a long one! International Sensi would only be a small slice of the great Sensi cake.

Mind you, I don't have any other games I've committed to doing at the moment. Big job, though...

[KimbleJustice]

Well, I took the challenge. Presenting my new vid:

Thoroughly Sensible Soccer - Part 1: Introduction and Origins



This is a long video, and it's only the beginning. Sensible Soccer's not a game that can just be done in the regular way: It was so incredibly special and important to Amiga guys like me, and really to the gaming world as a whole - more so than any other sports title. So this first video in the series goes mainly into the four big games that shaped Sensi, as well as containing a bit of a love letter to the Amiga in general. I'll be doing the series in four parts - the original Sensible Soccer will be next, then Sensible World of Soccer, and closing with the disastrous Sensible Soccer '98 and Sensible Soccer 2006, the rebirth that just missed the mark. Enjoy! Don't forget to comment, or indeed subscribe if you like what you see!

[Barone]

AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111111111111111111 11111111111111111

Man, that's what could be called "journalistic" rather than the crappy CGR stuff.
Sorry for mistaking you as "just one more YT reviewer". The "w" replacing the "r" seems to be making all the difference, lol.

Honestly, thank you for that. It's a masterpiece, really.

[KimbleJustice]

All hail the "w"!

Seriously, thank you for such a nice comment. I greatly appreciate it, and I wouldn't do nowt if I didn't get feedback from people, good or bad.

[KimbleJustice]

The end of Psygnosis - Memories of the Beast:



A quick off-the-cuff video made for the closure of Psygnosis. None of the usual editing...indeed, no editing at all. I certainly wouldn't usually make a video that includes 5 minutes of Spectrum tape loading (in Klive - a pain in the arse to capture but it's the only good Speccy emulator I know that actually allows you to load games "for real"), but I wanted to get the full experience down, unedited. Plus it gives me more of a chance to chat about Psygnosis and Shadow of the Beast, seeing as the demo's only a couple of minutes long.

[sheath]

Hey, I've been enjoying these. I particularly enjoy that you are one of those rare gamers who recognizes that Action games take a lot longer to "finish" than the amount of time the game can be beaten by an experienced player. I get so tired of hearing "reviewers" say that a game is great, plays great, looks great, sounds great, oh but it can be "completed" in 20 minutes so it's short on "content". Strider is an absolute work of art, and I just blew through to the last level in a few minutes last night and loved every minute of it.

[Kamahl]

Did I really just watch the stinky spectrum demo of shadow of the beast load for 5 minutes?

[KimbleJustice]

Did I really just watch the stinky spectrum demo of shadow of the beast load for 5 minutes?

Haha...well, if you didn't automatically turn the vid off in disgust when you realised just what you were in for, I must have done something right!

Hey, I've been enjoying these. I particularly enjoy that you are one of those rare gamers who recognizes that Action games take a lot longer to "finish" than the amount of time the game can be beaten by an experienced player. I get so tired of hearing "reviewers" say that a game is great, plays great, looks great, sounds great, oh but it can be "completed" in 20 minutes so it's short on "content". Strider is an absolute work of art, and I just blew through to the last level in a few minutes last night and loved every minute of it.

Thanks. And yeah - that is kind of a lazy criticism. It's something that makes more sense when levelled against games of today that tend to be more linear, have infinite lives, more checkpoints and what-not, but it doesn't really apply to an arcade game that has limited lives/continues - unless you're quite brilliant or you're playing on the very easiest difficulty, chances are you're not going to beat a 16-bit action game on the very first run through. Look at Ninja Gaiden - how long would it take to complete that game? Probably about 15 minutes tops if you don't get stuck. But it's going to take much longer than that to master the game and to be able to run through it in that length of time - you're going to get stuck and die a lot.

Judging content purely by how long it is strikes me as a bad path to go down in general, really. What matters, as you say, is if the content is good or bad. Portal 1 may "only" be 2-3 hours long, but it's all killer, no filler - the game doesn't waste a single second. To take two examples from a single game, the original Grand Theft Auto IV is way, way too long - by the time you reach the third island and the story takes a shift direct into "ripping off the Sopranos" land, you get the feeling that Rockstar can't think of much else that's interesting to do and are just playing for time. By comparison, GTA IV's episodes were much shorter and were so much better for it - just going by the stories and missions alone, they were a hell of a lot tighter and the missions didn't at all wear out their welcome - they didn't repeat anything.

Speaking of repeats, that's another thing - people just look at length as the length of a single run - as if everyone just puts a game down after they've seen the credits and never touches it again. Professional reviewers do do that, of course - they don't really have much in the way of time to do anything else, 'cause they've got a word count to fill and a deadline to meet. But one other thing they should be looking at through the eyes of the gamer is "is the experience good enough that I would want to do it all over again? Not necessarily to get 100%, clear out the achievements etc. - but just to do it and experience the game from scratch?".

[M4R14NO94]

Just watched the Psygnosis video and part 1 of the Sensi retrospective.

Gotta say I enjoyed them quite a lot.

Also to answer one of the comments on your vid about the custom teams it clearly seems that Gremlin got somewhat inspired by it with the bonus teams on Actua Soccer 3, and they're just as wacky/crazy as those on Sensi (Top 50 Babes, anyone? Then again International Sensi -the Jaguar version, at least; haven't played the Amiga one- had a similar one called CJ's Starbirds)

Also the "tape rewind" effect on MicroProse Soccer is awesome.

[Zebbe]

This channel has my approval. The host keeps the interest up with his knowledge, opinion and memories. Good job!

[KimbleJustice]

Just watched the Psygnosis video and part 1 of the Sensi retrospective.

Gotta say I enjoyed them quite a lot.

Also to answer one of the comments on your vid about the custom teams it clearly seems that Gremlin got somewhat inspired by it with the bonus teams on Actua Soccer 3, and they're just as wacky/crazy as those on Sensi (Top 50 Babes, anyone? Then again International Sensi -the Jaguar version, at least; haven't played the Amiga one- had a similar one called CJ's Starbirds)

Also the "tape rewind" effect on MicroProse Soccer is awesome.

Thank you!

And isn't it? God, I love that effect. I can't think why virtually no one decided to rip it off. Almost a shame that it didn't make it into Sensible Soccer itself.