Avery Beckett

YouTube video by Avery Beckett Complete in Box

I spent a while making a new video on game inserts, what they are, why you should care about them, and the fleeting relationship they fostered between fans and companies. Check it out!

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Yet another mention of that guide book. We’re getting closer to the day that someone finds a sample printing…

I’m planning on releasing some longer videos, which is very obviously what the Youtube algorithm prefers, but these short vids have been a fun creative exercise. If anyone has any suggestions on what they’d like to see, let me know! I’ve got like 200+ scanned docs on my archive page

YouTube video by Avery Beckett How Nintendo Fun Club Changed Video Game Culture

Last week, I talked about Nintendo Fun Club, the predecessor to Nintendo Power, through the lens of some of their earliest merchandise— score pads for Mario, Excitebike, and Hogan’s Alley. It played a pivotal role in shaping video game culture in the late 80s!

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YouTube video by Avery Beckett Ask Me About Banana Bucks

Hi! I’ve been posting some short videos to highlight the preservation work I do and hopefully draw some more interest to these more niche topics in video game history. My latest is on a (likely) experimental Donkey Kong Country promotion: Banana Bucks!

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Sukeban Shachou Rena – the worst selling Wii game of all time, with approximately 100 copies sold in 2 weeks. It was the last game ever produced by Jourdan.

The cat pictured, Rena, was the mascot of a popular blog entitled Nekopunch. She also has her own Twitter page! x.com/renawii?s=21

delivered exceptional scores.

out and replaced it with, well, nothing. I truly don’t understand why this decision was made.

Overall, I absolutely love the game. But I realized that I could only recall a single theme: the Dandori Challenge. Which is fine. But far from what I’d expect from a franchise that has consistently

is a glue to keep this all together. A real, distinct theme for a location that allows these choices and changes to be noticed. All other Pikmin games before this has different ways with which they bridged this gap with scored music. And I think that they worked extremely well. Pikmin 4 tossed this

idea to warrant a complete overhaul of its soundtrack design.

Now this isn’t to say that Pikmin 4 doesn’t have fantastic sound direction. The micro shifts from area to area, differing enemy themes, subtle nods to other Nintendo franchises, etc. are brilliantly done. What I feel is lacking, though,

a pseudo-post apocalypse. Not that it’s really elaborated on. Pikmin 4 seems to try, to an extent, to push this narrative a bit further with its stages including more human-centered dwellings than other pikmin games (notably Pikmin 3). The issue for me is that it doesn’t lean hard enough into this

its sparse use of full bodied musical numbers. And yet, as the game settled in, more and more people began appreciating it for what it was – a fantastic reflection of a post apocalyptic world, with an OST that sought to bolster these themes. Now, Pikmin is a game that is somewhat similarly rooted in

My biggest complaint about Pikmin 4, as of 95% completion, is the direction that the soundtrack went in. I understand that certain Nintendo published open world games have been increasingly pushing the boundaries on the definition of the word “soundtrack.” BOTW very notably drew a ton of backlash at

Here’s the back of the flyer. I currently own 5/6 of the items from the promotion, but have yet to track down the sweater. It’s been over 4 years since I started looking. I’m going to guess the promotion didn’t do particularly well, as all clothing exclusive to it is very, very hard to find.

Donkey Kong banana bucks advertisement with extremely rare deposit certificate from Bradlees (a defunct retailer as of 2001, for those who don’t know.) While there were never physical “Banana Bucks,” as it was just an order form where you tracked purchases, these coupons are close!

In light of Pikmin 4 being awesome, here’s a neat little mail away pamphlet from Nintendo Power making a convincing case for their readers to buy Pikmin 1. Not only does it have a $5 off coupon, but it also includes a thorough intro to the story, a developer interview, enemy info, and silly renders!

Well I for one am aghast that someone would use the mr beast branding to expand rapidly at the expense of quality

i let it go at greensky but i draw the line at orangesky. Please stop

I’m trying to make a video that may give me some answers. I’m scripting it now, and i’m very excited to see where it ends up

differentiate myself from the folks that make haul videos on youtube or talk about collecting games as if they’re objects that maintain value and could be used as investments. There’s a middle ground in there that I don’t think has really been capitalized on

I have a lot of projects I’m currently working on, but I do really want to post some of my ideas on here! There aren’t a whole lot of spaces I can discuss old games, their history, their impacts, etc. in my real life, so hopefully I can curate something here. While I do collect, I’ve struggled to

The Gameboy Advance just totally nailed how to get an audience excited about your game by only looking at 1/6th of the box. I can’t say that I’ve seen that in many other console libraries.

If a store didn’t have room to display all games frontward facing, they could get away with putting them spine out instead. They weren’t really any less appealing! While the SNES had great box arts, the spines were comparatively bland – the game name in a specialized font and maybe a small symbol.

While many previous consoles, such as the N64 and SNES maintained a totally uniform design for their spines, GBA games go ALL OUT with color. It is very difficult to find the side of a GBA box that isn’t begging for you to turn it over and look at the front. This was also a great marketing move!

I know people talk about box set a whole lot, but I really think that game spines are so neat. The design shifts from generation to generation give a shelved collection different personalities, while generally remaining identifiable as being under a certain console. Case study: GBA games.

It should be illegal to lie like this. Jail to whoever decided that this was a good post.

This is the guy they had speak at our graduation. He was, as you might imagine, awful

I forgot to post but Goose shares a birthday with America of all things! He has now 3 years old! Happy birthday goose!!!

Honestly based on the amount of buzz I’ve seen on other sites (although that may just be confirmation bias) it looks like it has a real solid shot. And I would love that so much.