# Chapter Select, [[S6 - Pokémon Behind the Scenes]] Transcript This transcription was completed on March 4, 2026 with the application MacWhisper on macOS. This was done automatically, without human input during the transcription process. The transcription used the Parakeet v3 model. My hope is that by offering this transcription – however accurate it may be done by a machine learning/AI – will help you, the listener. I’d love to offer full, proper transcription some day, but that is not feasible at this time. Thank you for listening and reading. I hope you enjoy the show and that this document was helpful. Enjoy. --- We did it. *00:00* We played every mainline Pokemon game. *00:01* After twenty-one months of prep, play, and production, season six has come to a close. *00:04* It doesn't feel quite real even as I write this out. *00:12* I feel like there's still more to do. *00:16* The last time I wrote one of these, I was just settling into my new office. *00:20* Eloise was just ten months old, couldn't really walk, talk, or go to bed without being swayed for thirty minutes. *00:24* Now my office feels mostly complete and is entirely functional, and as you can guess, Aloise is walking, talking, and goes to bed in the blink of an eye. *00:32* Just like podcasting, bedtime requires consistency and a schedule. *00:44* We had also just launched Super Chapter Select, a membership tier *00:50* of the show. *00:54* It gives folks access to longer shows, bonus videos, and exclusive episodes. *00:55* We designed our Pokemon season to be the launch pad for Super. *01:00* as we thought the two would gel together well. *01:04* Alongside the back catalogue we had already made for members, it costs just two and a half bucks a month or twenty dollars a year, and you can sign up over at listeningwithsuperpower dot com. *01:06* Let's get into the numbers. *01:18* Statistics. *01:21* The following data is as of January 10th, 2024. *01:22* Chapter Select Total Downloads, 11,532 in the IAB, or 58,682, unique. *01:27* Total downloads during the season six release window two thousand and ninety-two and four thousand three hundred and eighty. *01:38* Growth from the end of season 5 is 26% IAB and 12% unique. *01:46* The overall season six total downloads 1310, 3506. *01:53* The top episodes were Pokemon Heart, Golden, and Soul, Silver with 167 IAB, and then Season 6, Episode 2, Pokemon Scarlet and Violet with 701 unique. *02:00* The Twitter followers of Chapter Select by the end of season six were at 32, and Super Chapter Select subscribers, one. *02:14* Season six wasn't as big as I expected. *02:23* The show grew, sure, but not in the way that I thought, being tied to Pokemon and all. *02:26* Season five was a better performing season with almost the same amount of episodes. *02:30* Maybe it's just the timing or the algorithms, I'm not sure. *02:35* I'm almost tired of trying to interpret the data beyond the raw numbers. *02:38* I'm tired as I write this because I haven't had my cup of coffee yet. *02:43* I still enjoy seeing that the main season is the bulk of downloads during its release window, and that window gets along with the bi-weekly releases. *02:48* I think we may experiment with changing that now that the show's own release cadence is changing. *02:57* If you happen to miss the written update, from here on out, Chapter Select is only going to be releasing seasons when they are 100% complete *03:03* All episodes will be banked, edited, and primed for publication. *03:11* Even with a year of headway, season six still came down to the wire with Black Two and White Two. *03:15* I'm tired of this crunch. *03:21* And as the master of this show's fate, I decided to remove that frustration. *03:23* In tandem with this, we'll no longer be promising two seasons a year. *03:27* We could still hit that. *03:31* Heck, maybe we could even do more. *03:33* But what I do know is that the show will be better, richer, and more polished. *03:35* With no outward public facing deadline, I can get all the ducks in a row before sending them down the RSS stream onto Lake Podcast. *03:40* Back to the statistics. *03:50* Apple Podcasts saw a gain of just about 200 new plays at 1. *03:52* 7k. *03:56* There are 19 followers, 62 listeners, and 40 of the mysteriously titled engaged listeners. *03:57* Spotify hit the gym this season because I am noticing some gains. *04:06* Starts were up to 1255 over 923. *04:10* Streams were at 641 up from 459. *04:14* We had 407 listeners and gained three new followers, sticking us with 21. *04:19* YouTube continues to be a place of growth. *04:26* Season six totals are 1,216 as of January 10th, 2024. *04:28* There was no surprise algorithm shenanigans during this season's run like last time. *04:34* I've enjoyed making the video versions of this season in particular, but more on that in the video section. *04:39* Now that I'm done using Twitter to promote the show, we won't be caring about that stat any more going forward. *04:44* 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. *04:50* Our goal is 10 subscribers, and I really thought we'd hit that over the course of this season with the back catalog and all the new content. *04:59* This is bummed me out. *05:08* Not in a man, I wish this was making me bank sort of way, but in a I think we're making a killer product and I wish more people would see it sort of way. *05:09* I wasn't thrilled to share this particular stat with you all, but that's the point of these behind-the-scenes posts. *05:18* It's time to reflect and see what we can do to improve the show going forward, and that includes membership. *05:24* There's a pair of stats I didn't cover for season four, The Fast and the Furious, and season five, Resident Evil. *05:30* I never talked about the time spent watching, playing, and production. *05:36* I imagine I skipped the watching stat because that's just the movie runtime. *05:41* It's the same time span for everyone. *05:46* And for Resident Evil, I guess I forgot? *05:48* Well, I remember this time and we uh spent a lot of time working on season six. *05:52* The overall playtime for myself was 305 hours and 51 minutes *05:59* and the overall production time of editing was forty-six hours and thirteen minutes. *06:04* I think the show and myself need a break from RPGs *06:11* The game time is in line with the average for each entry. *06:16* That's just what we signed up for when we chose the mainline Pokemon games. *06:19* The production time was slightly longer than expected. *06:24* Overall, it is in line with my average formula of taking the recording time, doubling it, and then adding a little bit extra. *06:28* Some corrupt outside of that scope though. *06:36* I wager it is editing in smaller chunks, and long times between recording *06:38* an edit. *06:43* I'm re-acclimating to the edit more than I'd like. *06:44* It was rare to get into a deep groove when making an episode. *06:47* Guest. *06:52* We had the most number of guests ever this season. *06:53* A big contributing factor was Reaching Out early in production. *06:56* and having such a lead time to do so. *07:00* A side effect of that was being so excited that there were longer gaps between the invitation and the actual recording. *07:02* I apologize to all our guests that waited longer than we expected. *07:10* Chris Compendio is a buddy and former co-writer of both myself and Logan from all our Dual Shockers days. *07:14* Chris's pursuit of a complete living dex made them a perfect guest to invite onto the Scarlet and Violet episode. *07:20* It was a real treat to dig into the Pokedex and have a small DS reunion. *07:27* Peter Spasia is a longtime friend, an inspiration to myself. *07:33* We've had the pleasure of recording with Peter back in our millennial gaming speak days numerous times. *07:37* Peter is one of the biggest Pokemon fans I know, especially of Heart Gold and SoulSilver. *07:42* He was the first person we reached out to. *07:48* I loved experiencing these stone cold classics with a fan and expert like my friend. *07:50* Cameron Hawkins is another Dual Shockers alum. *07:57* Cam was smart enough to ask if he could play Emerald instead of the Omega and Alpha remakes. *08:00* The split in what we all played made for one of the more unique discussions we had all season long. *08:06* Grant Callahan is a dear friend and Logan's former roommate. *08:12* I knew that he loved the Sun and Moon games, but I had no idea how much until we recorded. *08:16* Those games feel like the forgotten generation, and it's a real shame. *08:22* It was a pleasure to have an Alolan expert on the show. *08:26* Tomas Franzizzi returned to Chapter Select to play another infamous game. *08:31* God bless Tomas and his love of the Wii U in 3DS. *08:36* 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. *08:39* The games may be bad, but they aren't all bad. *08:46* Tomas helped me see that. *08:50* Audio Continuing the trend of not changing the audio workflow, season six's production remained largely the same as season five. *08:53* While I dug into the production process of the Super episodes in last season's behind the scenes post, these Pokemon episodes were the first recorded with Super in mind. *09:02* And 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. *09:11* I was surprised that this didn't impact the overall editing flow as much as I had feared *09:19* 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. *09:24* At the end of the season I did try switching away from using Adobe Audition to match track loudness. *09:32* After being let go from my job, the $20 a month subscription to Solely Match Loudness seemed more ridiculous than before. *09:37* I found a method that seems to, to my ear at least, work in Logic Pro. *09:45* I did goof said method in our final episode though, which led to an emergency edit in audition to quickly fix the published episode. *09:50* I'll keep practicing and hopefully can live without Adobe in my life. *09:59* Video. *10:05* Man, oh man. *10:06* Capturing video this season was a journey. *10:08* Capturing native or official DS footage is not easy. *10:11* Emulation for Pokemon games in particular is a struggle. *10:17* I went through a lot of ideas and testing before landing on the final method. *10:21* Let's explore what I tried. *10:26* First up, I had zero issues capturing Game Boy Advance or Switch footage *10:28* I have a myriad of methods for playing and capturing GPA games in HD, and the Switch is a non-issue being a modern HDMI console. *10:33* It was just plug-and-play for both consoles and the three games that they covered. *10:41* My real problem was the other seven games spread across the DS and 3DS. *10:45* The Nintendo 3DS has some hardware mods for capture, but they are not even close to affordable and require some serious soldering skills. *10:51* My Life in Gaming did a video exploring the topic back in 2019, and it seems to be largely the same in 2023. *10:59* 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. *11:08* I also lack a beefy enough PC to emulate the console, which isn't pound for pound accurate. *11:17* Now let's explore the DS before circling back to the solution. *11:24* The Nintendo DS is something I can emulate, and I explored a lot of options for emulation. *11:30* My first stop was the iOS Emulator Delta. *11:38* I've written about Delta before and love its DS functionality. *11:41* With touch being a key method of interaction with the platform, playing on a modern smartphone makes perfect sense. *11:45* It looks and plays great. *11:51* My problem was capturing Delta. *11:54* I could use the iPhone's built-in screen recorder, but that was a resolution of 888 by 1920. *11:57* Plus using my phone to both emulate and capture would likely rip through the battery. *12:03* It wasn't a feasible long term solution *12:09* So then I tried recording directly to my iMac. *12:13* That bumped the resolution up to 1242 by 2688, but tethered me to my computer for play, and that didn't feel right. *12:16* I think the test footage I whipped up looked good though. *12:26* In all my research about Delta, I knew that it used the DS emulator Melon DS. *12:29* I thought, if I have to be tethered to my desk, why not use my iMac to emulate the games? *12:34* That sent me down through the rabbit hole of Melon DS and D Smoo Me. *12:40* Emulators can be the bee's knees. *12:44* You can use the power of your computer to bullet plastic original spec. *12:47* I was taking DS Games 8X or 9X past their original resolution and displaying multiple screens beyond the two. *12:51* The catch with an emulator though is they may not be 100% perfect. *12:59* You can see in this particular screenshot the black lines and specs. *13:04* I wanted an accurate capture, and these DS emulators weren't going to be able to give me that on my Mac. *13:09* Plus, I didn't love the idea of using my mouse and keyboard. *13:15* While DS games make perfect sense on the iPhone, *13:18* I just feel like using a mouse is nowhere close to real touch. *13:22* So I wanted a big screen emulation solution for playing the Pokemon games. *13:26* Something official, kinda like the Game Boy player was to the GameCube. *13:30* Man, if only they made a DS player for the Wii U. *13:36* Wait, uh they did sort sorta. *13:40* Enter my quest down the Wii U homebrew and DS emulation path. *13:45* I briefly mentioned this in my post about recent homebrew efforts adopt hot, fresh, homebrewed consoles. *13:51* I said this up top. *13:58* Last March or so, when Logan and I picked Pokemon to be season 6 of Chapter Select, I started researching how to best capture those DS-only titles for the show. *14:00* That took me down the Wii U homebrew rabbit hole so I could load my own DS ROMs onto the Wii U and tap into Nintendo's official emulator. *14:09* It turns out that, A, Pokemon games don't run too well on Wii U. *14:18* Ellipsis. *14:22* Not to give away the end before we've even begun, but yes, the Pokemon games are some of the few games that don't run 100% *14:24* I was getting similar black specks and visual glitches like the emulators. *14:30* I desperately wanted to use the Wii U. *14:34* I love the idea of using some form of Nintendo hardware to capture. *14:37* I think that some of the layouts look great, and I even replaced the background with a chroma keyable color to make editing and scaling and post-production easier. *14:41* Those visual bugs hunned me up though. *14:50* I didn't want a subpart in accurate capture, so I opted for the only way I had to film real hardware running the game. *14:54* I shoved a camera above the DS and hit record. *15:02* Sometimes the simplest option is the best option. *15:06* It was not the most comfortable choice. *15:09* I care about capturing gameplay off my consoles that I brushed off off-screen capture, but this was the best option that I had. *15:12* With the iPhone 15 Pro Max, I was able to capture 4K footage of the fights and then crop into 1080p for a clean sharpest presentation. *15:22* I settled into a routine of recording Victory Road and the Elite Four in each game. *15:31* I like having a captured version of my runs against these key moments in Pokemon history. *15:37* You can't hear it in the video, but my heart was thumping. *15:42* during my battle against red in the Heartgold episode. *15:45* And this was the same method I used to capture our battles for the Super Chapter Select Member Special. *15:49* It was the only way to pull it off. *15:54* Again, it wasn't the most comfortable angle, especially for battling against Logan. *15:56* But I made it work. *16:01* The most tedious effort was our battle in Heart Gold. *16:02* We happened to be together for the battle in November of 22 and fought in person. *16:06* We mounted my iPhone above and tried to capture both screens. *16:11* It's pretty illegible. *16:15* I still would have used it, but at the end of the battle, I noticed a prompt asking me if I wanted to save the footage of the fight. *16:17* I hit the yes button and figured that I could use an emulator to upscale and record the battle. *16:24* And it worked. *16:30* Except that the battle did not run in real time. *16:31* Which makes total sense for the hardware and game. *16:34* So I edited out the battle frame by frame to time it with our overhead shot to look like this. *16:38* I never want to edit a video like that again. *16:46* But it was worth it for the series. *16:50* The member-only battles are seriously my favorite thing that I made last year. *16:54* You can watch the first one for free and then sign up for Super Chapter Select to see the rest of them. *16:59* Speaking of them though, they used to look like this. *17:04* This didn't feel up to snuff with what I was making for season five Resident Evil, so I sought out new backgrounds. *17:07* I landed on this border on Etsy by Starberry Vi. *17:13* It's clean, customizable, and only cost me a few bucks. *17:16* I loved it so much and had the time that I went back and added it to the first three battles that we filmed. *17:20* Now the entire series is uniform and looks stellar. *17:26* Art. *17:31* Much like the video capture, the art took a journey this season. *17:33* As we went along, I wrote little notes in a timeline. *17:37* November 7th, 2022, struggling with art concepts. *17:41* May 3rd, 2023, still struggling, but have made one season art temp. *17:46* July 9th, 2023, still struggling, have start screen concepts. *17:53* The Twitter banner I made, I really enjoy. *17:57* july thirty first, twenty twenty three. *18:01* Going with the start screen modification with exclusive console borders. *18:03* My gut reaction concept is tied back to this fan R concept I saw years ago. *18:08* But after more than a beat to think about it, this was far too similar to season two God of War, with its real-life photography, and season four's Hot Wheels Bonanza. *18:15* I try hard to make sure each season art stands out, and this just felt too samey. *18:25* In May 2022, I found and bought the Johto Mono font by Pascal Pixel over at Super Pencil. *18:31* It is a beautiful font that captures the Pokemon Game Boy font styling. *18:36* With that in mind, I toyed around with the idea of using the borders of the game consoles that each game originated on. *18:40* The initial drafts were simple. *18:47* They were also illegible as R inside a podcast player. *18:49* I like the intent and would ultimately gravitate toward a version of this. *18:53* In a similar vein, I pursued the idea of the art being modified cartridges. *18:58* This is only an okay idea for the Game Boy carts, since the smaller advance and even smaller Switch carts *19:04* don't scale well up to a square. *19:11* Although I did have fun using my scanner on my collection of Game Boy cards. *19:14* I was struggling to come up with something unique and within my grasp as an artist and designer. *19:19* It wouldn't be until a month before release that I stuck a stake in the ground and went with the start screen and console concept. *19:26* Pokemon has a storied history of special edition consoles dating back to the beginning of the franchise. *19:33* So I tapped into that history to create borders for the games and their respective hardware. *19:39* As for what to put in the middle, I stuck with a focus on each individual entry, focusing on the start screens. *19:44* This gave me a solid framework with the ability to recreate and stylize the logos with chapter select in a fitting style. *19:51* That was honestly the most fun part, seeing the show's name in a wide variety of fonts and aesthetics. *20:01* From going down the rabbit hole of figuring out the font used for the word color in the Game Boy Color logo for *20:07* season six episode three Pokemon Heart Gold and SoulSilver to recreating the three DS game icon for season six episode eight Pokemon X and Y. *20:13* Each piece of art was an exploration in the franchise design at the time. *20:22* My favorite out of them all has to be season 6 episode 4 Pokemon Sword and Shield. *20:27* I went through a lot of effort to recreate the Sword logo, and I think it came out real clean. *20:33* As we go into the new future for Chapter Select, I'm not as energized as I was at the end of season 5. *20:39* I am more hopeful though. *20:46* Recalibrating the production cycle and release schedule gives me hope that the show will be even better. *20:48* 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 *20:54* I'm hopeful about the next two seasons. *21:02* The slate of guests in Castlevania alone does have me amped. *21:05* I am hoping and aiming to give the series, guests, and you the best show that I can possibly make. *21:09* Reflecting on Pokemon itself, I no longer have that fun fact that I never played the bulk of the mainline games. *21:16* I'm a Pokemon trainer through and through now. *21:24* Just like any of those stories or ashes on the TV show, I started out as a complete Pokinovice. *21:27* I've grinded, struggled, and triumphed over the course of three hundred plus hours. *21:34* I felt the biting stain of defeat and the elation of victory snatched from those aforementioned jaws. *21:39* I look forward to the day of sharing these pocket monsters with Eloise and seeing her go on her own Pokemon journey, should she want to. *21:46* At almost 30 years of age, I've gone back and finished what 10-year-old Max started. *21:54* Okay, maybe not finished, Pokemon will never end, but I am on the path to being the best version of me, like I never was *21:59*