We did it. We played every mainline *Pokémon* game. After 21 months of prep, play, and production, Season 6 has come to a close. It doesn't feel quite real, even as I write this out. I feel like there is still more to do. <audio controls> <source src="https://traffic.libsyn.com/chapterselectpod/CS_S6E11_Final.mp3"> </audio> - *[Download](https://traffic.libsyn.com/chapterselectpod/CS_S6E11_Final.mp3) (11MB)* Last time I wrote one of these, I was just settling into my new office. Eloise was just 10 months old, couldn't really walk, talk, or go to bed without being swayed for 30 minutes. Now my office feels (mostly) complete and is entirely functional. And, as you can guess, Eloise is walking, talking, and goes to bed in the blink of an eye; just like podcasting, bedtime requires consistency and a schedule. We had also just launched Super Chapter Select, a new membership tier of the show. It gives folks access to longer shows, bonus videos, and exclusive episodes. We designed our *Pokémon* season to be the launchpad for Super, as we thought the two would gel together well, alongside the back catalog we had already made for members. It costs just [$2.50 a month](https://maxfrequency.memberful.com/checkout?plan=99142) or [$20 a year](https://maxfrequency.memberful.com/checkout?plan=76115) and you can sign up at those links. Let's get into the numbers. # Statistics - Chapter Select Download Totals – 11,532 (IAB) / 58,682 (unique) - Total Downloads during the Season 6 Release Window – 2,092 (IAB) / 4,380 (unique) (data from 8/23/23 thru 1/10/24) - Growth from End of Season 5 - 26% (IAB) / 12% (unique) - Overall Season 6 Download Totals = 1,310 (IAB) / 3,506 (unique) - Top Episode – - [[S6E3 - Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver]] = 167 - [[S6E2 - Pokémon Scarlet and Violet]] = 701 - Twitter Followers @ChapterSelect by the end of Season 6 – 32 - Super Chapter Select Subscribers - 1 Season 6 wasn't as big as I expected. The show grew, sure, but not in the way I thought being tied to *Pokémon* and all. Season 5 was a better performing season with almost same amount of episodes. Maybe it's just the timing or the algorithms. I'm not sure. I'm almost tired of trying to interpret the data beyond the raw numbers. I am tired as I write this because I haven't had my cup of coffee yet. I still enjoy seeing that the main season is the bulk of the downloads during its release window. And that window gets long with the bi-weekly releases. I think we may experiment with changing that now that the show's own release cadence is [[Changing Things Up for Chapter Select|changing]]. If you happened to miss the written update, from here on out, Chapter Select is only going to be releasing seasons when they are 100% complete. All episodes will be banked, edited, and primed from publication. Even with a year of headway, Season 6 still came down to the wire with *Black 2* and *White 2*. I'm tired of this crunch. And as the master of this show's fate, I decided to remove that frustration. In tandem with this, we'll no longer be promising two seasons a year. We could still hit that, heck, maybe we could do more, but what I do know is that the show will be better, richer, and more polished. With no outward, public facing deadline, I can get all the ducks in a row both sending them down the RSS Stream onto Lake Podcast. Back to the statistics. Apple Podcasts saw a gain of just about 200~ new plays at 1.7K. There are 19 followers, 62 listeners, and 40 of the mysteriously titled "engaged listeners." Spotify hit the gym this season, because I'm noticing some gains. Starts were up to 1,255 over 923. Streams were at 641 up from 459. We had 407 listeners and gained three new followers sticking us with 21. YouTube continues to be a place of growth. Season 6's totals are 1,216 as of January 10, 2024. There was no surprise algorithm shenanigans during this season's run, like [[S5 - Resident Evil Behind the Scenes|last time]]. I've enjoyed making the video versions of this season in particular, but more on that in the video section. Now that [[Max Frequency 2023 In Review (Year Four)|I'm done using Twitter]] to promote the show, we won't be caring about that stat anymore going forward. A new stat we do care about is the number of Super Chapter Select subscribers, which is just one person—a friend—as of this writing. Our goal is 10 subscribers, and I really thought we'd hit it over the course of the season with the back catalog and the new content. This has bummed me out, not in a "Man, I wish this was making me bank" sort of way, but in a "I think we are making a killer product and wish people would see it" sort of way. I wasn't thrilled to share this particular stat with you all, but that's the point of these behind the scenes post. It's time to reflect and see what we can do to improve the show going forward; that includes membership. --- There's a pair of stats I didn't cover for [[S4 - The Fast and The Furious|Season 4 – The Fast and the Furious]] and [[S5 - Resident Evil|Season 5 – Resident Evil]]. I never talked about the time spent watching/playing and production. I imagine I skipped the watching stat because, that's just the movie runtime: it's the same time span for everyone. For *RE*, I guess I forgot? Well, I remembered this time and we, uh, spent a lot of time working on Season 6. - Overall Play Time - 305 hours and 51 minutes - Overall Production Time - 46 hours 13 minutes That's a solid two weeks. Straight. I think the show (and myself) need a break from RPGs. The game time is in line with the average for each entry. That's just what we signed up for when we chose the mainline *Pokémon* games. The production time was *slightly* longer than I expected. Overall, it is in line with my average formula of taking the recording time, doubling it, and then adding a little extra. Some crept outside of that scope though. I wager it is editing in smaller chunks and long times between recording and edit. I'm reacclimating to the edit more than I'd like. It was rare to get in a deep groove when making an episode. # Guests We had the most guests ever this season! A big contributing factor is reaching out early in production and having such a lead time to do so. A side effect of that was being so excited that there were longer gaps between the invitation and the actual recording. I apologize to all our guests that waited longer than we expected. Chris Compendio is a buddy and former co-writer of both myself and Logan from all our DualShockers days. Chris' pursuit of a complete "living dex" made them a perfect guest to invite onto the *Scarlet* and *Violet* episode. It was a treat to dig into the Pokédex and have a small DS reunion. Peter Spezia is a longtime friend and inspiration to myself. We've had the pleasure of recording with Peter [[Millennial Gaming Speak – Episode 52 - Do We Finally Know What the NX Is?|back]] in [[Millennial Gaming Speak – Episode 76 - Breaking Down All Things Nintendo Switch|our]] [[Millennial Gaming Speak]] [[Millennial Gaming Speak – E3 2017 - Nintendo Breakdown|days]] [[Millennial Gaming Speak – Episode 100 - Everyone Has a Story|numerous]] [[Millennial Gaming Speak – Episode 117 - Mellow Chats with Max and Peter|times]]. Peter is one of the biggest *Pokémon* fans I know, especially of *HeartGold* and *SoulSilver*. He was the first person we reached out to. I loved experiencing these stone cold classics with a fan and expert like my friend. Cameron Hawkins is another DualShockers alum. Cam was smart enough to ask if he could play *Emerald* instead of the *Omega* and *Alpha* remakes. This split in what we all played made for one of the more unique discussions we had all season long. Grant Callahan is a dear friend and Logan's former roommate. I knew he loved the *Sun* and *Moon* games, but I had no idea how much so until we recorded. Those games feel like the forgotten generation and it's a real shame. It was a pleasure to have an Alolan expert on the show. Tomas Franzese [[S1E4 - Paper Mario - Color Splash|returned]] to Chapter Select to play another infamous game. God bless Tomas and his love of the Wii U and 3DS. It was great to have someone who really cut their teeth on *X* and *Y* be a voice of reason to balance out Logan and myself. The games may be bad, but they aren't all bad. Tomas helped me see that. # Audio Continuing the trend of not changing the audio workflow, Season 6's production remained largely the same as Season 5. While I dug into the production process of the Super episodes in last season's Behind the Scenes, these *Pokémon* episodes were the first recorded with Super in mind. And with having such a lead time on the earlier episodes, I'd find myself with the files sitting around for a bit before I got to them. I was surprised that this didn't impact the overall editing flow as much as I feared. It kind of made the edit more enjoyable as I got to relive the episode in a way, instead of hopping right into said edit. At the end of the season, I did try switching away from using Adobe Audition to match track loudness. After being let go from my job, the $20/month subscription to solely match loudness seemed more ridiculous than before. I found a method that seems (to my ear at least) work in Logic Pro. I did goof said method in our final episode though, which led to an emergency edit in Audition to quickly fix the published episode. I'll keep practicing and hopefully can live without Adobe in my life. # Video Man oh man, capturing video this season was a journey. Capturing native or official DS footage is not easy. Emulation for *Pokémon* games in particular is a struggle. I went through a lot of ideas and testing before landing on the final method. Let's explore what I tried. First up, I had zero issues capturing Game Boy Advance or Switch footage. I have a myriad of methods for playing and capturing GBA games in HD. The Switch is a non-issue being a modern HDMI console. It was just plug and play for both consoles and the three games that they covered. My real problem was the other seven games spread across the DS and 3DS. The Nintendo 3DS has some hardware mods for capture, but they are not even close to affordable and require serious soldering skills. My Life in Gaming did a video [exploring the topic](https://youtube.com/watch?v=HWTxs7bxhi0) back in 2019 and it seems to be largely the same in 2023. I will admit to trying to stream my 3DS to my Wii U over the network, but that was more for the novelty and curiosity than seeking a viable solution. I also lack a beefy enough PC to emulate the console, which isn't pound for pound accurate. Now let's explore the DS, before circling back to the solution. The Nintendo DS is something I can emulate. And I explored *a lot* of options for emulation. My first stop was the [[Delta 1.3 Thoughts & Impressions|iOS emulator Delta]] I've written about Delta before and love its DS functionality. With touch being a key method of interaction with the platform, playing on a modern smartphone makes perfect sense. It looks and plays great. ![[240110_Delta-Direct.png]] My problem was capturing Delta. I could use the iPhone's built-in screen recorder, but that was at a resolution of 888 x 1920. Plus, using my phone to both emulate and capture would likely rip through the battery. It wasn't a feasible, long term solution. So then I tried recording directly to my iMac. That bumped the resolution up to 1242 x 2688, but tethered me to my computer for play and didn't feel right. I think the [test footage](https://youtu.be/xwNzNM-yXmU) I whipped up looked good though. <div class=iframe-container> <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/xwNzNM-yXmU?si=FN0BZFTbTJ6am2SM" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe> </div> In all my research about Delta, I knew that it used the DS emulator melonDS. I thought, "if I have to be tethered to my desk, why not use my iMac to emulate the games?" That thought sent me down the rabbit hole of [melonDS](https://melonds.kuribo64.net) and [DeSmuMe](http://desmume.org). Emulators can be the bee's knees. You can use the power of your computer to blow past the original spec. I was taking DS games 8x or 9x past their [original resolution and displaying multiple screens](https://youtube.com/watch?v=zH_JEzHam_Q) (beyond the two). The catch with an emulator though is, they may not be 100% perfect. You can see in this screenshot the black lines and specs. ![[240111_melonDS.png]] I wanted an accurate capture and these DS emulators weren't going to be able to give me that on my Mac. Plus, I didn't love the idea of using my mouse and keyboard. While DS games make perfect sense on the iPhone, I just feel like using a mouse is no where close to real touch. So I wanted a big screen, emulation solution for playing the *Pokémon* games. Something official, kind of like the Game Boy Player was to the GameCube. Man, if only they made a DS player for the Wii U... Wait! They did! Sorta... Enter my quest down the Wii U homebrew and DS emulation path. I briefly mentioned this in my post about recent homebrew efforts dubbed [[Hot, Fresh Homebrewed Consoles]]. I said this up top, >Last March or so, when Logan and I picked *Pokémon* to be Season 6 of Chapter Select, I started researching how to best capture those DS only titles for the show. That took me down the Wii U homebrew rabbit hole, so I could load my own Nintendo DS ROMs onto the Wii U and tap into Nintendo’s official emulator. Turns out that A) *Pokémon* games don’t run too well on Wii U... Not to give away the end before we've even begun, but yes, the *Pokémon* games are some of the few games that don't run at 100%. I was getting similar black specs and visual glitches like of emulators. I desperately wanted to use the Wii U. I loved the idea of using some form of Nintendo hardware to capture. I think some of the layouts look great. I even [replaced the background with a chroma key-able color](https://youtu.be/1gIoXAu22U0) to make editing and scaling in post-production easier. Those visual bugs hung me up though. I didn't want a subpar/inaccurate capture. So I opted for the only way I had to film real hardware running the game. I shoved a camera above the DS and hit record. <div class=iframe-container> <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/Yi717gGEHLg?si=fjVzsEy6UB9-IrwI" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe> </div> Sometimes the simplest option is the best option. It was not the most comfortable choice. I care about capturing gameplay from my consoles that I brushed off off-screen capture. But this was the best option I had. With the iPhone 15 Pro Max, I was able to capture 4K footage of the fights and then crop in to 1080p for a clean and sharp-ish presentation. I settled into a routine of recording Victory Road and the Elite Four in each game.[^1] I like having a captured version of my runs against these key moments in *Pokémon* history. You can't hear it in the video, but my heart was thumping during my battle against Red in the *HeartGold* episode.[^2] And this was the same method I used to capture our battles for the Super Chapter Select member specials. It was the only way to pull it off. Again, it wasn't the most comfortable angle, especially for a battle against Logan, but I made it work. The most tedious effort was our battle in *HeartGold*. We happened to be together for the battle in November 2022 and fought in-person. We mounted my iPhone above and tried to capture both screens. It was pretty illegible. I still would have used it, but at the end of the battle I noticed a prompt asking if I wanted to save footage of the fight. I hit the yes button and figured I could use that in an emulator to upscale and record the battle! And it worked! Except that the battle did not run in real time, which makes total sense for the hardware and game. So I edited out the battle frame by frame to time it with our overhead shot to look like this. ![[240111_Gold-Battle.png]] I never want to edit a video like that again, but it was worth it for the series. 🫠 The member-only battles are seriously my favorite thing I made last year. You can watch the [[Max VS Logan, Pokémon Battle 1 – Super Chapter Select|first one for free]] and then sign up for [[Chapter Select|Super Chapter Select]] to see the rest. Speaking of them though, they used to look like this: ![[240111_Old-Battle.png]] This didn't feel up to snuff with what I was making for Season 5 – *Resident Evil*, so I sought out new backgrounds. I landed on [this boarder](https://www.etsy.com/listing/1061102088/twitch-stream-overlay-pixelated-pokemon) on Etsy by StarberryVi. It's clean, customizable, and only cost me a few bucks. I loved it so much and had the time, I went back and added it to the first three battles that we filmed. Now the entire series is uniform and looks stellar. # Art Much like the video capture, the art took a journey this season. As we went along, I wrote little notes in a timeline.[^3] - 11/7/22 - Struggling with art concepts. - 5/3/23 - Still struggling, but have made one Season art temp. - 7/9/23 - Still struggling. Have start screen concepts. The Twitter banner I made, I really enjoy. - 7/31/23 - Going with start screen modification with exclusive console boarders. My gut reaction concept is tied back to [this fan art/concept](https://i.imgur.com/aGgVg.jpg) I saw years ago. But after more than a beat to think about it, this was far too similar to both [[S2 - God of War|Season 2 – God of War]], with its real life photography, and Season 4's Hot Wheels bonanza. I try hard to make sure each season's art stands out and this just felt too same-y. In May 2022, I found and bought the [Johto Mono](https://superpencil.com/en/work/johto-mono) font by [Pascal Pixel](https://pascalpixel.com) over at Superpencil. It is a beautiful font that captures the *Pokémon* Game Boy font styling. With that in mind, I toyed around with the idea of using the boarders of the game consoles that each game originated on. The [[S6-GB-Concept.jpg|initial]] [[S6-GBA-Concept.jpg|drafts]] were simple[^4]. They were also illegible as art inside a podcast player. I like the intent and would ultimately gravitate toward a version of this. In a similar vein, I pursued the idea of the art being modified cartridges. This was only an okay idea for the Game Boy carts, since the smaller Advance and even smaller Switch carts don't scale well to a square. Although, I did have fun using my scanner on [[Green-and-Blue-Scan-1.jpg|my collection of Game Boy carts]]. I was struggling with coming up with something unique and within my grasp as an artist/designer. It wouldn't be until a month before release that I stuck a stake in the ground and went with a start screen and console concept. *Pokémon* has a storied history of special edition consoles, dating back to the beginning of the franchise. So I tapped into that history to create boarders for the games and their respective hardware. As for what to put in the middle, I stuck with the focus on each individual entry, focusing on the start screens. This gave me a solid framework with the ability to recreate and stylize the logos with "Chapter Select" in a fitting style. That was honestly the most fun part, seeing the show's name in a wide variety of fonts and aesthetics. From going down the rabbit hole to figure out the font for the word "Color" in the Game Boy Color logo for [[S6E3 - Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver]] to recreating the 3DS game icon for [[S6E8 - Pokémon X and Y]], each piece of art was an exploration in the franchise design at the time. My favorite out of them all has to be [[S6E4 - Pokémon Sword and Shield]]. I went through a lot of effort to recreate the *Sword* logo and I think it came out real clean. --- As we go into the new future for Chapter Select, I'm not as energized as I was at the end of [[S5 - Resident Evil Behind the Scenes|Season 5]]. I am more hopeful though. Recalibrating the production cycle and release schedule gives me hope that the show will be even better. It already has paid off in the way we are producing episodes and I've gotten to play games outside of the show's scope. I am hopeful about the next two seasons. The slate of guests in *Castlevania* alone does have me amped. I am hoping and aiming to give these series, guests, and you the best show I can possibly make. Reflecting on *Pokémon* itself, I no longer have that fun fact that I have never played the bulk of the mainline games. I'm a Pokémon Trainer through and through now. Just like any of those stories or Ash's on the TV show, I started out as a complete Poké-novice. I've grinded, struggled, and triumphed over the course of 300+ hours. I've felt the biting sting of defeat and the elation of victory, snatched from those aforementioned jaws. I look forward to the day of sharing these Pocket Monsters with Eloise and seeing her go on her own *Pokémon* journey, should she want to. At almost 30 years of age, I've gone back and finished what 10-year-old Max started. Okay, maybe not finished—*Pokémon* will never end—but I am on the path to being the best version of me, like I never was. --- [^1]: Except for *Black 2* where I entirely forgot to film Victory Road, so I just looped the Elite Four twice in the video version. Please don't be mad. I ran out of time. [^2]: Yes, I did have the original walkthrough flipped to the relevant page and a Game Boy looping *Pokémon Silver*'s title screen in the background of that episode. I am proud of that set decoration. [^3]: As a reminder, we started playing the games in March/April 2022. [^4]: Back to [[S4 - The Fast and The Furious Behind the Scenes#The Super Logo|my Katakana roots]], I used the Johto Mono Katakana to put "Chapter Select" beneath. I still really like this touch.