Burn, baby, burn!

Now that I’ve told you a bit about myself, explained the process for one of my (what I like to call) “comedic shorts” and one of my AMVs, I thought this would be a good time to dive into my Let’s Plays… And where better to start than the beginning?

“Let’s Play! Captain Commando stage 1” was the very first LP (Let’s Play) video I ever did—I hadn’t even done a little team/partner LP episode with a buddy or anything. I was completely new to the world of Let’s Playing, and it was obvious. I had only watched 2 LPers; the perfect and professional Thet, and the great Alexander Frost.

FUN FACT: Thet is a real-life buddy of mine, and is actually the person who got me into Let’s Playing.

I decided on playing Captain Commando for multiple reasons. First, I was good at it, and could actually get to the final boss with the same amount of lives that I start with. Second, I’m a big fan of Captain Commando, but honestly I had never heard of him until the first Marvel Vs Capcom game came out. However, he quickly became one of my favorites, and is actually my best character now. Once I realized he had his own game for the SNES I simply had to play it! Third, there were other LPs of it out there, but it wasn’t as if it had been overdone like some video games (the Mario franchise). So, I fired up the ol’ SNES9X, opened Captain Commando, and started recording using the built-in recorder on SNES9X.

At the time I didn’t even bother making more than one attempt, mainly because I could get through the first few stages without taking much (if any) damage. But, I did notice a little problem with my method of recording… It caused slowdown and cut out the audio while playing. However, the audio was in the recorded video, I simply couldn’t hear it while playing the game. It was weird, and for a while it threw me off a bit, but I eventually got used to it.

FUN FACT 2: Back then I did not own a PC controller, and used my keyboard with WASD for my directional pad.

I decided against doing a “traditional” Let’s Play, and instead sort of copied the style I was most familiar with, which happened to be Thet’s style. This meant I would need to come up with a voice for Captain Commando, a personality, and dialog on the spot. I didn’t want to attempt to impersonate the voice he had in MvC, not only because I’m fairly sure he had a Japanese accent, but also because the little “effort” noises he would make in his original game sounded nothing like that. So, I went with a low gravelly voice, which changed one or two times over the course of the 9 videos until I finally got it just the way I wanted it. Originally, I think I used Audacity to lower my pitch slightly, and then added a bass boost, but I believe I finally ended up getting rid of the bass boost and just naturally lowering my voice a bit more, adding a bit more roughness, and then lowering my pitch a tad in Audacity to make it less recognizable as me. Also, I'm pretty sure this first episode was before I got a mic, and was just using the built-in mic on my little laptop.

Anyways, the first stage was a breeze to beat, but trying to think of things to say as myself and Captain Commando was not. I’m still not satisfied with how it came out, but I do like looking back on it now and then just to see how far I’ve come as a Let’s Player.

This episode of Let's Play Captain Commando has over 200 views. :)