thread of tim rogers content (do not read if you hate tim rogers)

based on his absence from the insert credit podcast, i figured he was either wrapping up work on an action button review or having another of his health issues. from the sound of his voice in this review it seems like it was both

*sigh*

I don't hate Tim, I just wish he gave his work to someone else to deliver it. And to cut out some of the romantic melodramatic garbage always involved in his schtick. Is there anyone like this bloke but not annoying?

I hope he's been busy working on TRUCK HECK

the romantic melodramatic garbage

is a big part of the appeal, imo

There's nobody else quite like Tim out there, but I'd recommend Noah Caldwell-Gervais for a semi-similarly deep-divey and personal (though more focused) approach to games crit.

I say all this and then watch his FFVII YouTube video.....

He would be so good if he could somehow learn to contain his enormous ego. or at the very least, not romanticise it. Thanks for the rec, sadly Noah doesn't seem to cover the type of games I am interested in (which Tim does damnit).
Watching Tim feels like watching keeping up with the Kardashians. I know the vanity is bad for my own soul, yet the hate-watch drive (and genuinely interesting things to say about video games) says give me more.

He just needs someone over his shoulder asking "uhhh, hey Tim, does this part of your content do anything for the viewer except try to manipulate them into thinking you God's gift to this barren earth? No? Is it perhaps entirely self-indulgent? Yes?".

the gonzo style is part of the appeal imo, though it was maybe better in small doses when he was doing 20 min videos for kotaku instead of these 3-6 hour monstrosities

enormous ego
try to manipulate them into thinking you God's gift to this barren earth?

i don't get any of this from his work and i would like to politely remind you to re-read the subtitle of this thread. to quote the man himself, "buddy, you think i LIKE the sound of my own voice?" he's clearly on the spectrum and what i see is his flawed-but-functional social coping strategy.

there is no one else on earth making scripted, maximalist brain puke video game criticism videos and for that reason i'm glad he went independent so he can go as far as his health will allow. though i do fear that his eventual dark souls review will end up like SMiLE or hxxps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73hip3pz0Xs

i don't get any of this from his work and i would like to politely remind you to re-read the subtitle of this thread. to quote the man himself, "buddy, you think i LIKE the sound of my own voice?" he's clearly on the spectrum and what i see is his flawed-but-functional social coping strategy.

and if the tim rogers i'm defending there is just a carefully constructed fictional persona, then he's a very talented artist and should keep on doing what he's doing

i see a lot of criticism like HP's on reddit whenever he's posted there and i really just don't see it. in nearly every review, the egotistical autobiographical stuff is clearly done in service of his main points or in contextualizing the game itself. granted i'm only maybe 25% through the new review, but every piece of biographical information so far has been included for sake of the game itself. i don't think any of it is there to give me an appreciation of tim rogers' life. i've said before that i'm pretty sure a lot of it is straight up kayfabe anyway.

the only review i can think of where he was actually writing about himself for the sake of writing about himself was very long written review of FFVI.

regardless, i don't think the way that he uses his personal life in his reviews is in any way unique except that he's doing it to talk about video games rather than novels, travels, food, whatever, and that he's doing it on youtube rather than in writing.

i do think that his personality and sense of humor is what drives a lot of interest in his videos but when's that ever been a problem with criticism?

there are a lot of people on the internet who have glommed onto a variation of the tall poppy syndrome where anyone who acts as a distinct individual (read: not anonymous) or has actual subject area knowledge is somehow showing off or violating a social contract. there’s definitely a strong contingent in the video game fan space (and Reddit) that have that tendency

Tim’s video persona feels like more of a bit to me, where he does have extensive knowledge but he couches it in this over the top dramatic reading that sounds like a cross between a retro newscaster and an enthusiastic high school drama kid who plays every character the same way in an “acting voice”

It’s not always my thing, but I appreciate his work and seriously hope he remembers to take breaks from video games occasionally

that is to say, I don’t think it’s ego-driven in a bad way, and presenting things you’re knowledgeable about in videos you worked hard on should give you a little ego boost in a healthy way

in a way i feel similarly about tim rogers and battlestar galactica (2004 tv version): there is a whole bunch of it, waaay too much of it. you don't need all of it. some of it is purely filler. but damn, when it is good it is GOOD

tbf some of the tangents are about his understanding that he is a weird, obsessive dude and I get more of a sense of self-deprecation from some of those admissions

Looking forward to the new video and hope he's back on Insert Credit soon. The stand-ins have been good but I do miss having him there claiming he's recently played any and every game ever mentioned.

Reduced to a redditor, ouch.

The potential of him being on the spectrum reminds me to be kind. If that is the case (I’m not sure, has it been stated?) then yeah, what he is doing is a good thing.
I have all the time in the world for stories of saving up one’s part time income and sneaking to the video game store to buy a game in the 80’s outside the view of your female workmate. I cringe when I have to hear him say “I don’t like myself” halfway through a 3hr video essay. His personal stuff is brilliant when it relates, vry off putting when it’s braggadocious like “I played FFVII 16 times in the past two years” repeated x8 in a single video. If the bragging is a bit, I guess I just don’t get it.

All said, his content outside of my complaints is so good I am watching him regardless

that's the worst example of a brag I've ever heard.

I'm an hour in, fun so far. as a former Japan liver </brag> the Why Did You Come to Japan bit was really cute.

I’ll leave

lol cmon. Is that a brag for serious gamers? I dunno. I've never played a Final Fantasy. I should try and get through his review of the remake sometime.

The Doom and Pacman and Tokimeki reviews hooked me. I've always been curious about the omglol Weird Japan! magazine kind of coverage of things we never used to get "over here" and thought that section of this video was well done.

Seems the Boku fan translation isn't out yet.

when you’re a game reviewer/creator, saying you played a game that many times is like “bragging” you worked two weeks of 70 hour shifts and you don’t get paid overtime, imo

he LOVES talking about how much he overworks himself!

tim 'paid tha cost to be da boss' rogers

I find his epic essays a little too much to take (literally; they're really long!) but I've got to admit they accomplish something novel, even necessary, in a way. Video games make a bazillion dollars a year, and young people in particular spend a bazillion hours a year just *watching* people play video games. Yet there's not a lot of long form discussion/dissection of video games anywhere, afaict, not really, which is remarkable, given their prominence in pop culture. So if he wants to spend six hours crafting a take on a game, making the case for why something so niche or cult or overlooked deserves your attention, I say bring it on.

I mean, it's wild, a game like Red Dead Redemption 2 can make almost a billion dollars in a weekend, and yet it's nowhere close to a household name property, imo, not in the same way, say, Star Wars or Marvel is. For sure people will pay attention to the Last of Us show, but many of them will have no idea about the game beyond that there even is a game, let alone a game whose merits someone like Rogers could intelligently, intricately discuss for five hours or whatever it was without so much as dipping into the plot, iirc.

One thing I hope we all can agree on is that he should*absolutely* keep writing hallucinatory ad copy for hbomberguy to read

I decided not to play all of those Contrail games.
I mean actually, I had actually played __all__ of them, years ago,
over the years, it was -- it gave me maybe the very first instance
of going to Wikipedia to look for a list of something, and, realizing
I had engaged with literally everyone on the list.

that was a very Tim moment

it's just one tim moment after another, i love it

when tim rogers does that low, gravelly voice, he's starting to sound uncomfortably like Alex Jones

that naniwa express album the cool guy at work recommended to tim is pretty sick https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAxyYtpazmw

someone took the trouble of listing his favourite albums that he flashed on the screen over like 2 seconds in the Tokimeki video. Some great stuff:
https://rateyourmusic.com/list/pedrochambs/tim-rogers-ten-favorite-albums-of-all-time/

ha! I literally did the same thing freeze-framing it myself. guess I should have just done a google search instead.

of course, I still haven't actually listened to the records I'm not already familiar with. one day!

oh I love that Starbow record, a scifi idol concept album by Hosono that was a huuuuge flop

amazed there is a clip of Starbow on TV, only seen photos before!
the concept was that they were genderless aliens so were dressed and sang somewhat androgynously, early 80s Japan were having none of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FzW4xGQT_s

yep, that's a favorite of mine as well.

the taeko ohnuki is also quite good, a highlight in a large catalog filled with cool records.

Finished the Boku video (who else made it?)

He mentioned again his habit of listening to a new album *every* day. Mightn't be a stretch to many on ILM but I know I wouldn't get much out of trying that. It's probably a decent relief from his memory issues, of course detailed again as he goes home to Kansas for the first time in 30 years...

I never got the sense he was bragging about anything. I hope for him that he even is just pretty OK with himself. There's a lot of talking about himself of course. The thesis he rolls around to at around the 5 hour mark is all we can learn from well-imparted nostalgia. "I love everyone and you can too". I'd be more inclined to call this "nostalgia" simply "memories" or "experience", but I can see if he's drawing a distinction from how he can remember the exact date he last went to a certain food court.

--
The guy working on the game translation is still at it:

I'm currently taking some time off Twitter, but rest assured, I'm working on the thing y'all are excited for! 🦋
I do check my DMs still, so you can reach me there if you have questions or comments!

— Samuel 💻✨ Messner (@obskyr) September 27, 2022

(who else made it?)

i'm somewhere in the third hour! taking it in chunks. in typical fashion, by the time i was in the second hour i was trying (and failing) to download an emulated version of the first game on psx

i didn't know anything at all about boku no natsuyasumi. i want to play!

I'm trying to convince a Japanese friend who loves the games to try getting through the video.

Karl once the translation is out I will commit to help you get it running on a computer

:) thanks maffew! i have openemu (mac running 12.5) but downloaded a file from a sketchy rom place, and the file failed to open. but honestly i've never had any luck with psx emulation, or really anything that for disc-based systems.

you can and you will

oh hell yeah!

it's gonna be a boku no natsuyasumi winter

Without even crossing the equator. They said it couldn't be done

have you played one of them before?

Nope. Had heard about the series from Ray Barnholt's enthusiasm for it over the years. It's sweet that he appears in the video.

*shot of ray barnholt*

"HI TIM!"

add me to the list of folks who wanna try a fanlation. looks great!

i got it running on openemu, there's a gamefaqs guide that explains what the buttons do but you're on your own dialogue-wise. very attractive game tho

The tricky thing with a lot of systems from this point is having BIOS files to get anything to run.

And then patching a rom will be another little pain.

To be clear, my Japanese is crap. I was over there two years. Can still read kana pretty quick, but most Chinese characters..fuhgeddaboutit