Welcome to our very first, Creator Feature! In this series of posts, we get to talk to and conduct a small interview with some talented creators within the Anime, Gaming and Manga communities! For our very first special, we are talking to a very talented YouTuber by the name of SparkyDaHedgehog. I hope you all will take the time to visit their official YouTube channel and I hope that you are able to experience a perspective that offers a refreshing view on games old and new!
•Thank you for meeting with us today! If you could take a moment and introduce yourself?
As I say in my video intro, hello everybody! It’s me: Your good friend Sparky! I am a gaming YouTuber with a focus on Let’s Play content. But I also do the occasional analysis video as well. I always try to spread my love of gaming, and upload to my YouTube channel five days a week, at the very least.
•What got you into making by YouTube Videos? Was there a particular inspiration or were you just impassioned to pursue it as a larger hobby?
I grew up in the era when getting “internet famous” really started to become a thing. So, I was frequently influenced by the times. I started watching YouTube Let’s Plays back when the site had a ten-minute limit for video length. And I still follow several of my favorite creators from that time.
I didn’t start to properly pursue the concept of video creation until much later, though. I posted my very first Let’s Play to YouTube in 2013, essentially mimicking the style of a creator I liked. And then I began doing more uploads in 2017, typically trying to put my own spin on things by providing myself with a challenge or some kind of theming for whatever the project was. But it was more of just a hobby and my uploads were anything but frequent.
It wasn’t until the tail end of 2022 that I began regular uploads, and I started taking the idea of being a YouTuber more seriously. Since then, I’ve very rarely missed a week of uploads in my attempts to provide constant entertainment. So, while there are definite influences on my work I can point out, getting to where I am was more of an evolution of something much more casual. There were several long gaps in between the steps that got me to do what I’m doing now.
•So are Retro titles your primary focus or do you cater to a wide offering of games? Personally, I’ve seen a lot of your Dark cloud content and it always leaves me with an appreciation for the classics more and more.
I wouldn’t say my focus is on retro games, but more on games that I am passionate about. It just happens to be that a lot of those games are retro titles because they’re games that I grew up with! Dark Cloud is a perfect example of that.
But there’s several more recent and modern games that I’ve played for YouTube as well. A good example would be Insomniac’s Spider-Man games. They’re fantastic. I’ve done playthroughs of both Spider-Man and Spider-Man: Miles Morales, and I fully intend to cover Spider-Man 2 as well in the future.
Obviously, I could focus on current and more popular game trends to draw more attention, but if I don’t have the drive to properly cover a game then I have a hard time getting myself to play it. I must stay true to myself and my own interests, because I might start to lose what I enjoy about content creation if I don’t. And that is, at its core, spreading the joy of the games I love with other people.
•Is there a specific title that you would enjoy playing or covering? Sort of like a holy grail game?
Once upon a time I did a playthrough of Sonic Adventure DX for GameCube, but I’d love to play the original, unmodified Sonic Adventure on the Dreamcast as well. It’s one of those games you can’t really get in its original form. Not easily, at any rate.
I’d like to do this partly because I find it fascinating to compare different releases of different games. And it also would give me an excuse to play DX again as well. It was part of an extended project that I unfortunately had to put on hold due to a corrupt memory card. Plus, I think it would just be cool in general to cover the version of the game most people haven’t played or maybe haven’t even seen in the modern era.
Though making this happen would be a matter of budget (and getting an actual Dreamcast to play on). There’s lots of other examples of games like this I’m sure I can think of, but this one has always been on my mind. It all comes down to lacking the proper equipment and funds!
•out of every game you’ve played, if you can recommend one of them, what one would that be?
This is a tricky question because, honestly? I recommend all of them! I hardly ever meet a game I don’t like on some level. Yes, even the dreaded Sonic 06.
It was brought up earlier, but one I always will recommend is Dark Cloud. It’s by far in my top ten favorite games of all time, with a unique mixture of game mechanics and a very distinct “PS2 Era” feel that I love. It has a phenomenal sequel, as well. And the good news is, they’re both rather easy to find and play on modern PlayStation hardware! So, I’ll very frequently point these games out when someone is looking for something to play.
Other than that, if it’s a game I’ve covered, then I say play it if you can! And even if I haven’t covered it, I recommend those games too! The world of gaming is broad and vast, and there’s no shortage of fun options. Don’t ever be afraid to step outside your comfort zone and try something new!
•Any upcoming projects that you can tease or tell us about? Surely you got some amazing stuff in the works!
I’ve got ideas and plans, for sure. I typically keep what I’m working on close to home, but this is a special occasion. So why not talk about it a bit?
After my current project finishes, I’m going to be moving onto playing Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake for a bit. And I’m going to be editing footage from a project I technically completed earlier this year. It was a collaborative playthrough of Kirby’s Dream Land 3 I did with another good friend of ours, Kat Planetshine! So that should, hopefully, start uploading to my channel in episode form relatively soon.
Another project that I’m trying to get off the ground is Shadow The Hedgehog. I uploaded both Sonic Heroes and Sonic The Hedgehog (2006) to celebrate the Year of Shadow campaign Sega did through 2024. But I skipped Shadow’s own title game because there’s something very specific I want to do with it. It’s going to take a lot of time and effort, and I won’t divulge exactly what it is. But hopefully it will be a lot of fun once it’s done!
And one last thing I’m going to try to do this year is solo game streaming for the first time! I’ve met a lot of cool people who primarily do their gaming content on Twitch, and it’s a challenge I’d like to tackle. I finally have a computer that I’m confident enough can stream successfully, so hopefully I can get to doing that soon!
Thank you for your time and thank you for having me! This was a lot of fun. And I’d be happy to join you again!
Thank you again to SparkyDaHedgehog, for agreeing to let us ask him some questions and to be able to share his passion with you all as well! You can follow Sparky at the following!
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