A few years ago, a guy on the SomethingAwful.com internet forums, named Slowbeef, came up with a bold yet simple idea. To record video footage of himself playing video games, along with live audio commentary. The idea of commentating video game playthroughs wasn’t new. Beforehand, Something Awful was hosting discussion threads where people typed out commentary over screenshots of the game. The internet forum named these type of threads “Let’s Play” topics. But the idea of live video commentary of playing video games WAS new, and the “Let’s Play” name carried over to mean video game commentary video.
Slowbeef’s “Let’s Play” video idea spread like WILDFIRE. It dominated Something Awful and it soon spread off that site like a virus. Different communities and websites hosting “Let’s Play” videos began spreading up over the years, with the most prolific being on YouTube.
I’m not sure if this is the true history of “Let’s Play” videos, since I wasn’t there when it happened, but it sounds good to me. I started watching Let’s Play videos (LPs I’ll call them from now on) a few years ago, and they are some of the most entertaining videos I’ve ever seen. When done right, it’s an exciting experience watching someone else play a video game. You get excited at their triumphs in the game. You laugh at their hilarious mistakes. You learn more about the video game you’re watching. Plus if the person you’re watching is especially funny and interesting, the experience is like watching one of your friends play video games.
After a few years of watching LPs, I began to think that maybe I can create a Let’s Play video too. So with my new Asus computer, I started creating LPs. There by my side is my partner in crime, Dragon Maiden (if you remember her from the Oshawott Pic I did earlier in the blog), who’s an even bigger fan of LPs than I am. She does the voice over commentary with me.
Together we make up the “Frozen Diamond Dragon and the Chimeric Muse” LP team on YouTube:
Frozen Diamond Dragon and the Chimeric Muse Play Video Games
We started back on May 27th, and we only played Super Mario Bros 1 and we’re currently playing the US version of Super Mario Bros 2. I hope you enjoy our videos.
Next post, I’ll go into how I go about creating the LP videos and the creativity that goes into making them.
Chimeric Musings 
Let’s Make a Let’s Play video
In the last post, I went into a brief history of “Let’s Play” videos and why I find them enjoyable. In this post, I’ll go into how I create them, step by step.
Step 1: Choosing a Video Game
First, Dragon Maiden and I choose a video game that we would like play and make entertaining commentary about. So far we have a list of games that we want to eventually make Let’s Plays about. For our first couple of games, we’re going to be playing Super Mario All Stars which is a collection of the Super Mario Bros games. We’re starting out with this game because we’re both familiar with it, its fun to play, and there’s stuff to discuss about it. Plus by time we’re done with the game, we would have ironed out the kinks of creating Let’s Play videos and be comfortable enough to branch out into other games.
Step 2: Setting up a screen recording program
A screen recording program is a program that records video footage of whatever is currently on your computer screen. Having one is essential because we’ll be playing the video game on the computer. Currently, I use a program called “BB Flashback Recorder”. The free version has all the base features I need to reliably record video footage.
The welcome screen for BB FlashBack Express Recorder
Step 3: Downloading the video game ROM and console emulator
In order to play certain video games on the computer, you’ll need a program called an emulator. An emulator is a computer program that emulates, or mimics, a video game console, like the NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, Sony Playstation, etc. Once you have the emulator for the console of your choice, then you need to download the ROM of the video game you want. A ROM is a file that contains the code of the video game, that the emulator program can read and play.
Step 4: Play the video game on the emulator, while recording yourself with the screen recorder.
I set up the emulator, start the video game, and then play it until the point where I want to start recording. From there I pause the game, and use the screen recorder to start recording the emulator. Then I unpause the game and continue playing until I’m done recording. When I’m done recording, I stop the screen recorder and save the footage.
Using BB FlashBack Recorder (the tiny icons in the upper right hand corner) to record playing a video game off of ZSNES, a Super Nintendo Emulator
Step 5: Record the audio commentary
Once I have the footage saved, I replay the footage in a regular media player, like Windows Media Player. But while I’m replaying the footage, Dragon Maiden and I are also talking into a microphone and recording my voice over commentary. I use another computer program, named “Audacity”, to record this audio. Audacity is an audio recorder and editor, that lots of musicians, podcasters, and audiophiles use to edit their music/audio files. Its pretty powerful, but I use it for the simple purpose of recording my commentary. Once we’re done talking, I save the audio as an mp3 file.
The main screen of Audacity, the audio recorder/editor I use
Step 6: Putting the video and audio commentary together into one file
After the commentary is done, I use Windows Movie Maker to combine the video and audio into one playable file. Windows Movie Maker is a simple video editor, that comes bundled in most Windows Operating Systems. It works perfectly for what I need it for now, which is trimming the video file so all the useless footage is cut out, and adding the commentary audio track to the video footage. But down the road, I want to upgrade to a more powerful video editor like Sony Vegas or Adobe Premiere. But for now, Movie Maker is good enough.
The main screen for Windows Movie Maker
Step 7: Uploading the combined file onto YouTube, so that others can watch and enjoy it.
Once I’m done using Movie Maker, that’s it….I finished the editing the Let’s Play video. I save the video into a file type that YouTube will accept, such as a WMV file. Afterwards, I upload the file onto YouTube, which takes FOREVER to do (one 15 minute file takes around 30 minutes). Once YouTube accepts the file, I’m done with the whole process. Now people can watch Frozen Diamond Dragon and the Chimeric Muse playing video games 🙂
A screenshot of YouTube uploading a file
So that’s how I create a Let’s Play video. Check out our YouTube channel here and I hope you enjoy our videos.