Story

There was this moment where Retrogaming wasn’t as popular as it is now. Old games are now quite popular again since the past few years (let’s say somewhere between 5-10 years ago). I grew up with Dosgames, and I have never really stopped playing them. That’s because I didn’t always have access to the newest stuff back in the day, and sometimes was limited to very old computers during the weekdays (like still doing homework on a 486) when I was 14 (2004). In the weekends I had access to more usable and modern computers and the internet. But not having access to those during the weekdays I was beating loneliness with Dosgames. So yes, this story starts out a little bit sad.

My setup back in 2004, in my old room over at dad’s place.

Later in 2005, I decided to move in full-time over at dad’s place. My mothers husband and IĀ  weren’t able to work things out. In 2007, when I was 17 years old I’ve developed a small interest into video editing. I was messing around with Sony Vegas at the time, which was far from ideal, but it was the best that I could get. The internet was growing to a place where video streaming became a normal thing. I decided to slap together a video of Jazz Jackrabbit’s Cutscenes and put them on Youtube on a channel called “Dosgamert”. I had issues converting the midi-music of one of my favorite Jazz 1 OST’s (Crysilis) so don’t mind the music.

The first Dosgamert video on Youtube: Jazz Jackrabbit – Cutscenes in upscaled 480p.

I came up with the name Dosgamert pretty quick. That’s what started it all. There’s this awful website that has a certain tendentious, unfounded & needlessly hurtful way of bringing certain news topics to the internet called GeenStijl (meaning ‘HasNoStyle’). They were divided into different smaller websites, one even that wrote about game related topics, and that was called “Gamert.nl” (and all things considered, that site wasn’t that bad because they weren’t ranting about politics all the time). I think that my name was slightly inspired by the name of this website. They’ve shutdown years ago, maybe they were already shutdown when I adapted the name Dosgamert. The “Gamert” part isn’t that complex. It’s a Rotterdam-way of saying things (while I’m not even from anywhere near Rotterdam), I live closer to Amsterdam for that matter. It’s a typical Rotterdam-way of naming someone something and add a T to that word, like a cyclist (fietser) could be called a ‘fietsert’. People not from the Netherlands sometimes get confused, they call me “Dosgamer – T”, “He must be named something that starts with T”. I have tried to go by a more general name “Classic Retro Gaming”, but it kind of missed the personality of the channel so within a year I took my old username back over at the new (current) channel.

Youtube seemed to be a pretty cool platform. In the late 2000’s there were different video platforms out there. Most of them offered a lot of limits in file size, number of uploads per week or would cost money to use. Youtube didn’t have any of those restrictions. The only limit that Youtube had was the 10 minutes length limit.Ā  Youtube was really gaining more popularity by the day, so it seemed the perfect platform for my gaming content.

After making that Jazz Jackrabbit 1 Cutscenes video compilation I didn’t do anything. Honestly, I might even have forgotten about it. Until a year later, when I figured out that almost 5.000 people has seen that video. And this was in the era everything on Youtube was of low quality, there was no HD functionality on Youtube, not only because Youtube couldn’t handle this, but mostly because most viewers didn’t had the bandwidth to buffer video’s fast enough. Remember buffering? It was horrible in the early days of Youtube, but I’m getting side tracked here. I was amazed by the number of views so I decided, since my name was Dosgamert, to upload some more content and started with a video Super Frog. I figured out that I didn’t include all Jazz Jackrabbit cutscenes on my first attempt and since Youtube added support for higher quality (real 480p this time) I decided to do a remake of the same video.

Old Dosgamert Channel: Jazz Jackrabbit Cutscenes (Remake).

 

After that I started doing more and more gameplay videos, mainly of the first few levels of games and put those on Youtube. This because Youtube was limited to a 10 minute maximum video length (which got extended to 15 later). It was a random collection of my favorite Dosgames like Jazz Jackrabbit, God of Thunder, Aladdin, Duke Nukem, Hocus Pocus, BoloBall, Skyroads, Yogho Yogho, Lost Vikings, Tubular Worlds, Raptor, Spear of Destiny etc. But then I started playing and recording one of my favorite MS-DOS Puzzle games: The Incredible Machine 2. Not sure why, but one of those videos got over 2.5 million views*. That’s when the channel started to grow. I continued recording gameplay footage. Some of them recorded with Hypercam 2 (screen capture/window software). There was a risk to that. If you wouldn’t have set it on the perfect spot to record you would see that in your recording, same with mouse cursors. Later I tried several other programs like Bandicam (used that for my RCT playthroughs), Fraps and Camtasia but none of them were to my satisfaction. And I didn’t do any upscaling either. So the channel was growing, and I was putting more time into this weird-hobby. Though, I’ve been thinking about adding overlay’s, lower thirds, logo’s in the corner of the screen, intro and outro animations and even have considered try commentaries but have always decided not to use those. This of course was way before the Youtube player added functions like endcards, and the profile icon in the bottom corner (which is of course an digital overlay and not baked in). The reason I never went with any of that is because I wanted to provide gameplay content where you could experience the game as you remember it (though it’s up to you to hook up an CRT, if you’d really want to go all the way). I still believe this is the way to go. If you want to watch a video of something nostalgic, you do not want me (nor anyone) talking through your memory of it or anyone sharing a opinion.

During the early days, I didn’t stop at Dosgamert. Not many of you know that I started a channel with an even more obscure name “Flashgamert” in 2010. No this is not a joke. I wanted to put some focus on Flash games too, since some of them are pretty neat. I started recording some random rubbish. Put it online, forgot that it existed and it came back to me a few years ago. 28k views, 9 subscribers – not bad right? It is what it is. I have lost the login credentials years ago. Can’t remember them. There was even an idea to put up a different channel for PopCap/Casual kind of games as well. Not sure if that ever seen the light of day. Popgamert? Nah.

After a few years of recording and posting hundreds of gameplay videos I never really grown tired of it. It was a fun hobby. When I got my first smartphone in about 2010, whenever I would be out drinking beer or hang out with friends on the most random moments I would receive “Someone replied on your video” e-mails. I always tried reading them instantly, wherever I would be finding some of them really heartwarming. I kept all of these e-mails on my old account. Here are some old comments from the Old Dosgamert channel that I used to receive on a daily base.

Then Youtube started with the partnerships in the early 2010’s. I figured that that wasn’t anything for me. It doesn’t suit my channel nor my content I thought. I couldn’t imagine Youtube wanting to partner up with me. But after doubting for quite a while I thought it would be nice to earn a bit of money while we keep on making gameplay content. I mean people are actively looking for my content. Retro gaming channels are different from others. When a popular (average) channel posts a video that one gets hyped and the rest is ‘forgotten’. On gaming (gameplay) channels it’s the other way around, you have your handful of popular videos and if the newer content doesn’t particularity gets the most attention at all. I just went with it. I got accepted as a partner quite fast and started to enable monetization on all eligible videos. After a few day’s I started to see in Youtube Analytics (the old dashboard, that’s not there anymore since 2019) that I was earning pennies. But like for real. I was talking about this with some class mates too, since they knew about my hobby. I remember recording most of my Freddi Fish and Spear of Destiny videos during class. Some of them made fun of me “look at that 20 year old playing kiddy games”, but to be honest, I couldn’t care at all and most of them admitted that they’ve played it themselves too. One of my classmates that I told about the partnership in the first year after I enrolled for Audio/Visual/Animation studies was not really getting the concept. “So wait, you play games, record them – and Youtube pays you fair money for it? I can’t believe it!” he said. I replied to him about that we’re talking about small numbers. Like eurocents per ad, if there’s even playing one at all. It was new to me too. “So if I would click all of your ads right here, right now- you earn money?”, I replied with “I guess so yeah.”. That’s where it went wrong. Within a few days I received a notice from Youtube that they’ve disabled my AdSense account for invalid click activity. Probably because I was logged on from the same IP (school) as the classmate that clicked my ads. And honestly, if I’d say he clicked ten of them, that’s much. This all took place within a minute. But rules are rules. The rules state you don’t click on your own ads. I learned this the hard way. I wasn’t even a partner for longer than a few weeks, I never earned anything with this channel. I tried to appeal have them reinstate me but that never happened (2011/2012).

It’s okay that I missed out on all of that revenue (if there even was any). We’re making up for that big time now, I mean… Most of the views on my old Dosgamert channel were before partnerships were even a thing, at least – before I heard about them. And I didn’t ever think to make a living out of it or anything, all of it was just considered extra. The reason I’m doing this is not because I would earn money with it, but for the preservation of videogame footage on a public platform.

In 2012 the original developpers of Carmageddon 1 & 2 bought back their IP and announced that they were working on a new game; Carmageddon Reincarnation. I backed the Kickstarter instantly and couldn’t wait for the game. I was following the development blogs and livestreams constantly. During the development they shared a few Pre-alpha of the game with the backers. I recorded some gameplay footage as soon as I was able (and allowed) to. Some of those gameplay video’s (unlisted now) picked up quite some views and helped my channel spike a little bit.

Carmageddon: Reincarnation – Dusty Trails

Somehow it got to me, I’ve been thinking about starting a new channel on a new account – rebranding, starting over, shifting focus not only to MS-DOS games, but maybe include some other platforms too. I was thinking about it way too long. The longer I waited, the more time I would lose rebuilding a new channel.Ā  It took me years to finally do it. I was bummed out about being blocked from AdSense. I was thinking to myself “Every day you don’t start over your regret is getting worse.”. So I finally decided to start the new Youtube channel in 2014. I went by the new name “Classic Retro Gaming”. I started reuploading some content from the old channel but added quite some new content too. It’s the same channel that I use right now by the name of “Dosgamert”. I changed the old one to “Old Dosgamert Channel – Come to my new channel!” to have people realize that the old one is non-active anymore. Though people are still subscribing to the old channel till this day. I’m not really active on the old channel, but every now and then I browse through the new comments.

Classic Retro Gaming – [Old New Channel Trailer]

With the new channel I needed to do new stuff. I started writing for a blog and wrote some reviews for Duke Nukem, Whizz and The Smurfs. I decided to convert those reviews to Youtube videos too in English and Dutch. Those never really got the exposure that I wanted for them. I was hoping they would maybe open some doors. They were fun to make, but they were not very efficient to make. Though, I still enjoy watching them – “Duke ain’t a vegan!”, who came up with that? Seriously.

Duke Nukem – Review [English]

The new channel got accepted for the partnership pretty quickly. It took me a year to reach the payment threshold of ā‚¬ 70,- (2015). But I was totally fine with that. Things were slow, but my hobby was earning a bit of revenue which isn’t that bad if you think about it. Besides, you really don’t want to know how much time goes into recording gameplay footage sometimes. It’s insane. After one year I decided to brand myself back to the name of Dosgamert since it was missing the personality. I didn’t really want to put a face to the name, since it should be about the games, not about me. Things started to accelerate really slow from here. About gameplay videos itself: I of course stopped using cheap and old capturing software like Hypercam too. I adapted a new way of recording Dosgames. For the last few years I’ve been using DosBox’s internal recorder (which has always been there). Whenever you’re recording footage from DosBox like this it records the emulation one-on-one. That means that if your machine lags somehow, you won’t be able to find that lag in your capture since it’s capturing the state of the machine, and not real-time. I really had to get used to this method since it’s pretty complex if you haven’t got any experience with recording, conversion and codecs. DosBox produces some sort of AVI files which are using the ZMBV-codecs. The file sizes are pretty small, but so is the resolution. That means that after recording you have a 320×200 or a 480×360 sized video file, which you can’t even open without the right codec installed in your Windows. After recording gameplay I transform my footage with VirtualDub into something larger than 1080p (mostly with a height of 1200). Whenever I convert footage I enlarge it to 600% with a “nearest neighbor” resizing filter that will keep it crispy and sharp. After that I have to edit the footage a little bit (like cut off some parts of saving and loading in between recordings). This is done in Adobe Premiere Pro. But it has quite some issues handling those AVI files that VirtualDub puts out, so before editing I convert all of them once more to a MP4 with H264 codecs (with Adobe Media Encoder), now we’re ready to edit a video. This process took me years to figure out. It’s quite some hassle, but I still think it’s the best way.

For other more modern games I use Nvidia’s GeForce Experience (formerly known as Shadowplay). Finally found some recording tools that work fine. No huge file sizes, it has no issues capturing fast high framerates and it doesn’t hog up the whole GPU/CPU. Though I have to say it still has it’s flaws, especially when you work with Ultra wide monitors like I do. You can’t really configure everything I would like. I even invested in a Avermedia capture card with HDMI and VGA, but it’s no good. It’s not even supported in Windows 10 anymore. I have tried countless of adaptors and capture devices – but the only one that I still use is the Elgato HD60, that one is pretty solid.

While growing over the years I have even done some nice collaborations (voluntarily). I once got an e-mail from a guy called Clint from the United States. Never heard of the guy. Asking if he could use my Wolfenstein 3D footage for a review he was working on. I usually don’t really agree to these kinds of requests, and I’m not sure why I did now. Months later I found the following video on the internet, on witch at the end I get proper credits and he even pronounced the name right! Over the years I shoot Clint an e-mail every now and then and he’s been actively chatting with us on some of the livestreams too. Clint’s a really nice guy, with a great taste of games. The quality of his content is great. You can clearly see his camera, light and storytelling skills evolving by the year. He puts in a lot of passion.

LGR – Wolfenstein 3D – DOS PC Game Review:

And a Dutch Youtube channel that visits and interviews Dutch voice actors asked if they could use my footage of Freddy Fish. I took the liberty of re-recording Freddi Fish 1 & 3 in Dutch for them, with the music turned off. Afterwards I even recorded the OST’s of Freddi Fish too from the game and sent it over to them. I figured that would help them out in the edit. They did properly credit me at the end of the video with my real name a.k.a. Dosgamert. If you want you can check that video here, but it’s all in Flemmish.

De Stemmen van Toen: Freddi Fish (Flemmish)

In December 2016 Victor Bart (from Retro Machines) came by my house to help me configure and tweak my MS-DOS gaming rig. I didn’t know that he was going to bring a Voodoo 3D graphics card and a Awe64 audio card to put in my machine! That was a really nice gift. He made a special video about upgrading the machine and testing some games on it and put it on Youtube. I’m still grateful for that day since the machine still runs pretty good, though it could use a solid state upgrade doesn’t it?

Building a MS-DOS Game computer with Victor Bart

Besides playing old games, I sometimes play new games too. Once I bought my Xbox One in 2015 I was hooked. I started playing a lot of Battlefield 4 and Battlefield 1 (the one that came after BF4 about the WW1) online with friends. I started to familiarize myself with the OBS software (I tried Xforce too). I tried streaming some of it to Twitch. Games like Battlefield, RocketLeague – with the challenge of capturing myself on a greenscreen and trying to have my buddies on the other end of the audiochat while maintaining a high quality livestream. It wasn’t always easy. Loads of technical difficulties rose. But I learned a lot from it. I don’t remember anyone really watching those livestreams, so they felt a bit pointless. I still keep a lot of this footage hidden (unlisted and private) on a Youtube channel that I’m not active on so I didn’t have to keep all of it on a hard drive. I’m letting Youtube store it for me. If it for some reason disappears some day, that wouldn’t bug me at all.

Then some night in December 2017 I tried doing a Jazz Jackrabbit 2 livestream (6 hours long), hosted it on Youtube instead of Twitch and just improvised. Streaming to Youtube was pretty new, and there weren’t that many people doing it yet. I even made a custom animated design that matches the game. My streaming activities and Dosgaming has been two separate things until this day. There was a very small crowd. I had to get used to the interactivity with viewers, but I liked it. Though I keep admitting; the Livestreams are the opposite that believe in. Earlier I wrote about not adding logo’s, overlay’s, commentary, intro’s etc. – The livestreams are the exact opposite of that. But the interactivity with the people is so good and people really seem to be enjoying the streams (who figured, right?!). For me, it’s like playing videogames with your best friend on the chair next to you, watching your every move. But in my case I got more of those friends (you guys), and they’re more like Gordon Freeman, they don’t speak much, they only text me (chat) and when I get stuck, they help me out! Every once in a while, whenever I had the time or just felt like it I did a retro gaming livestream. After a few years Maxime suggested I should pick a night to do livestreams on – on a regular base. That was scary, but I picked the Monday’s, not even sure why I did. But it worked out. More and more people came and of course some regulars left too. But I never expected huge amounts of people to be interested in Dosgaming, nor watching me play games, drink beer and have fun. The games that I play are nowadays a niche, especially in the livestreaming genre.

First official Dosgamert Livestream: Jazz Jackrabbit 2 – December 12th 2017

When I started doing the livestreams I was doing them from my room (the best attic ever) over at dad’s place. Sometimes dad would be downstairs watching my livestreams, which was a bit weird somehow, in an awkward way. Dad seeing me like that. But when I moved out a few months later when I found my own apartment nearby, dad kept on watching them. He’s a great motivator, supporter and grew to be a legend within the Dosgamert community. People in the chat refer to him as “dad”, “Dos dad” or “Dosfather”. His ongoing support really helped me getting where I am right now, not only with doing livestreams but in life too. It’s those little things you know. When I was working from home producing animation videos as a freelancer, sometimes dad would just drop by with his newspaper, read it and listen to me rant. I don’t think it was ever meant to be supportive, but yet it was. Sometimes being there is enough. I have to thank dad for getting me into gaming. Dad’s always been a nerd with tech. That’s why in the early 90’s we had a home computer. It started with a 386 Colani which got upgraded to a 486 later, with Windows 95. Dad always came home with the best games. Though some of them were to scary. “Another World” was way to graphic for me back in the day, with that one you scared me dad.

Dosgamert’s 6th birthday

In 2018 my Youtube ad-revenue exploded. I had some videos that were already live for over an year of Pac-Man Adventures in time, and two of them really gathered some views as they got picked up as suggested videos at a highly watched Youtube channel that caused to lead quite some viewers to my content. This was easy money that I didn’t have to do anything for. This lasted for about 2 months before the views started to drop again. It was absurd! But as you can see in the analytics, it gave the Youtube channel a real boost! I was grateful for that. I should have done more with it. Maybe record more Pac-Man related stuff at the time, but I never did.

After a while one of the viewers named $ilver$oldier decided I needed a Discord channel. So he created one, handed it over to me and made me admin and made himself a moderator. This was a great forum to discuss about upcoming livestreams and discuss various related topics. This Discord has already grown to over 500 members, of which some of them have been active over there for years. Thank you Stefan for setting me up to use Discord, it’s part of my life now.

Later Youtube added the functionality to add custom made emoji’s to the chat. So I did. After adding those I figured out that people have to get a $4,99 membership for those (that was before you had the tiers). I couldn’t imagine people really taking such a membership and then one guy suddenly did. EddieShadow was the first member ever (almost 3 years ago), I don’t think he’s still around anymore, maybe he’s only lurking every once in a while. After that more people started joining and that would enable more custom emoji slots. Later they added the addition of different tiers of memberships where a member can get extra perks. But there’s one promise: The regular livestreams shall always be free for anyone to watch (if it’s up to me that is).

Quite some running gags followed as the community grew. Hilarious GIF’s, snaps from livestreams, certain highlights… I love it all. Once Mushy had Photoshopped me to the “God of Dos”, a picture of me with long hair pasted on Jesus. A pretty rushed Photoshopped thing but hilarious. Another member converted this to a embroidery pattern a few years later. My father decided to make it a thing. He’s been working on it on and off for months now. But’s it’s coming along nicely. Other stuff happened too. Maxi tricked me into believing Youtube had send me something for reaching the 10k subscribers. She made the ‘crappy’ Youtube Play Button. A unique thing that no other Youtuber has gotten of course. You guys don’t know how much jokes like these mean to me. Just like receiving packages filled with games and beer to the brim and cards for my birthday… It’s just plain amazing.

10K Subscriber Special – Youtube Sent Me This Play Button Creator Award

I wasn’t even streaming on a regular base yet when I came up with the shout outs. Since I have a full time job, am a freelancer in Motion Graphic Design, record quite some gameplay and I try to have a little bit of a social life too I can’t really hold up to everyone’s expectation. But I did want to do something in return – something that no other live streamer does (as far as I am aware of). I invented the shout-outs. I wanted to create a custom handmade animated overlay for viewers that return on a regular base and even contribute by having a membership of $9,99 or more. There weren’t that many members at that time so that wasn’t that big of a deal. Though, at first when I introduced the idea of the shout-outs I lowered it the $4,99 tier, so I could produce some of them, you guys would see how cool it is to have one of your own and then raise the shout-out perk up to the $9,99 tier, but I never did. I wanted to keep them quite simple, but before I knew it – I went all in on some of them. Some of the shout-outs took me hours to make. Took me a while to figure out how to integrate them in OBS too.

The amount of shout-outs grew quite fast. Some of them disappeared because some members didn’t stick around – which is totally fine of course. But at first I was activating them with a hotkey combination. During the livestreams I kept my notepad nearby with all the shortcuts on there. But there became more and more animated shout-outs and overlays, like the confetti, the ‘sponsor me a beer’ and the block that sums up the perks of being a member. The list grew longer and longer. I was discussing this with one of the viewers, you might know him as EqutiX, he offered to build a custom made app that I could run on a different device, preferable with a touchscreen on which I could send commands over to my computer during a livestream, taking over the need to remember any of the hotkeys. I started to look for cheap old tablets, but while still discussing the plans about this app my mother-in-law told me she wanted to chuck an old HP laptop, which happens to function as a touchscreen tablet too. The timing couldn’t be any better. The application is still being worked on every now and then, but it is already working very well for me. Whenever a brain fart comes to either of us we propose to add it to the application, like the latest addition: The death-counter. Therefore I have to thank EqutiX.

Back in 2019 I was trying to figure out a way to play more games during livestreams. So I introduced the “Wheel of Fortune” livestreams. The concept is easy. I had invented a digital wheel that would spin at the start of the stream which would pick one randomly chosen game. After that a timer would start running. The chosen game was the game I would play for the next 20 minutes and after the timer would deplete I’d finish the life or the level and continue on with the next game. I had those streams in different themes like Halloween, Shoot ‘m Ups (Top Down), Racing and Obscure Platformers. On that last theme I encountered quite some rough diamonds like “Skunny Saves Our Pizzas“. I hated it instantly. Therefore the more reason for one of the viewers, Intrinia, to work on something evil. He decided to program and create his own unofficial spin-off and devote it to me – to play it for the first time during a livestream. Other viewers contributed some voice-over lines and assets to make it even more hilarious. When people do fun stuff like this, I go all in. I made an over the top announcement trailer for the livestream and even bought a squirrel suit, it’s pretty warm and fuzzy. The day came and that was the first time I hit a concurrent viewer count of 42, of which one of them was LGR! We had the best night of our lives. Again a great example of one dedicated viewer that went all in. I love you guys for that (Funfact: The same week this event took place Copysoft took down their website. Serves those guys right for making shitty games and stealing Wacky Wheels).

Trailer: Skunny Games Livestream

During livestreams I don’t always play games that I am familiar with. Some of you have requests. And lately I’ve been taking more and more. There’s a huge list of games that you guys would like me to play and I’d love to play all of them, but I just can’t. I’m very grateful for all the patience you guys had with me, watching me play games that I’ve missed out on when I was a kid. Some of them I would have loved when I was a youngster. But I’m really happy that I get to play them now. Some of these titles were Crystal Caves and Secret Agent.

The reputation of being a Dosgamer grew quite fast from there on. People started to ask me more interesting things, sharing Steam-keys hoping I would play their games and make videos about them. But like the reviews, I don’t think I can really cover a lot of ground with videos what I think about games, like I tried before. In 2020 Apogee started to ask around for me where they could contact me. That moment I got really excited. I mean one of my favorite publishers, responsible for like some of the best games from the 90’s wanted to talk with me about something. If you would tell that to the 5-year old me, I’d be my own idol. They reached out to me because of they were back to shake the ground. A guy from Slovenia sent a tweet a while ago to Apogee with a mock-up of their Crystal Caves game, with slightly upgraded graphics. They liked it and started negotiating about making that into a real playable game and if he would be capable to do so. Near the end of the project they wanted to involve me into playtesting their game. I asked nothing in return. I just wanted them to deliver the best remake they could, and have my name attached to it! Why did they ask me? I seemed to be the go to guy if you think about Crystal Caves. Because one of the viewers kept pushing me to play them a few months prior to this event. On 3 different livestreams I did full blind playthroughs of every volume of Crystal Caves. And a few weeks later I decided to record the gameplay of all three volumes too. Thanks to those experiences I knew the game quite well. It was an honor to have helped out. I’ve requested if it was possible to receive some keys at the launch of the game to give away during a livestream – which was so much fun to do. People were really happy to win a Steam-key for Crystal Caves. A few months later we did the same for the next logic thing to do: Secret Agent HD. And last year at Halloween they came with Monster Bash HD. I was involved in all 3 off them, but for Monster Bash HD I was “Lead Q&A”. We created so many tickets for Primoz of Emberheart Games so he could fix all of our findings. We even came up with some of the achievements together. This was great fun – but it really took me a lot of time to playtest, especially from a volunteer. But I was so honored to be evolved in this.

Crystal Caves HD Livestream

Besides all of the requests and suggestions for games to play during livestreams people wanted to challenge me and play games together too. It takes quite some time to set it up sometimes, but we’ve done streams together with games like Wolfenstein Enemy Territory, Re-Volt, Worms Armageddon and Unreal Tournament 2004. UT2004 took quite some figuring out how hosting works with custom maps etc. We had 3 nights of testing before we went on with the livestreams just a few weeks ago. The day this all was scheduled to happen Epic took down the master servers to move them to a different place for more stability in the future. Another name that I’d like to mention here is SmashDash. He might be a silent type but he’s been around quite some while and always offers anyone a helping hand whenever he can. When it comes to networking he always comes up with the best solutions. Therefore my thanks to you, for always trying to help. It’s good to have you around – even lurking in the background or for target practice, he’s so much fun to hit with Instagib. He came up with some solutions that this stream wouldn’t be canceled or rescheduled. When the stream started, quite some people joined. There was even a moment where I had to extend the maximum player capacity from 20 to 32. I didn’t expect so many people to show up. It was so much fun playing Unreal together with people that are frequently watching the livestreams. So this means were gonna do this more often of course.

Unreal Tournament 2004 – Online Multiplayer Livestream

Some viewers are from the Netherlands like I am. And I decided I wanted to meet some of you guys in real life, since we share the same passion: old computer games. The Cartridge Gamer, also known as Marty, once dropped by our place to play games together. When Marty went to the South America to ride his bike for a few months he was still very active in our community, which I didn’t expect from someone that was gonna be on the road a lot in a different time zone. So we kept contact and decided to meet when he would be back. It was so much fun! After that we met again at his place and DJ Kama (Jeroen) joined us too, they happen to be friends. Meeting people over the internet like this is a weird way to make friends, but so good. Later I had game dates with AJBuwalda and EqutiX too. Such nice guys!

Last year we were close to where Marlilijntjeeeh lives, and decided to shoot her a message. She’s been a member of my Youtube channel for the longest period, we even sent her an award that we even sent to a wrong address 50 kilometers from her, oops. We met up in Eindhoven and ate burgers and drank a lot of beer. Marley can seriously handle her beer like a professional. It was like meeting someone for the first time, but you already know a lot about them. A few months later she came by again to play games, stay for the night and drink even stronger beer till it was early in the morning. Marley grew out to be a fantastic friend in real life, too bad we live quite far apart. We even decided to meet up in Schiedam at the RetroGameBeurs where you can buy some games for all of your consoles. It’s just fun to go there and nerd with the guys all day long. Last time we met we even combined everyone together for my birthday. And the month after for Maxi’s birthday! Most of them always stick around till it’s way past midnight – that probably means everyone is having a good time right? I’d love to meet more of you guys in the future!

360′ degree photo at my 32nd birthday!

And lastly I’d like to thank Maxime. She’s been an ongoing support during this whole rollercoaster ride. The patience, the constant talking about ancient computers and games and her interest in what I do is higher than I could ever suspect from anyone. Thank you for motivating me! She’s been working on those awesome pixel-art characters that you see behind me on every livestream as an housewarming gift before we started dating (officially). And she’s sharing them with the world now. She really enjoys working on them, it triggers her creativity.

I still think that this is a lifetime thing for me. Were this is going? I got no clue, this has already grown into something bigger than I could ever think off. As long as people stay interested in what I do, I shall try to continue. I hope you stick around to see where this childhood dream is going. The livestreams to me are a great exhaust and I always look forward to them. The positive feedback I get from you guys is amazing and some of the replies of people really looking forward to the Monday’s mean the world to me. Every Monday is a surprise.

I might edit, add or remove certain parts on a later point in time. But this is it for now. All of this is a nostalgia trip to me too. Thank you for reading.

Bart Remmers // Dosgamert
April 6th 2022

*= This video does still exist on Youtube but is set to private for the same reason as motioned below.
**= It doesn’t say +10 million views (anymore) on the ‘Old Dosgamert Channel’, that’s because I deactivated a lot of video’s a few months ago so people would visit my new channel instead of the old one. I see that the old channel is still being visited very often. That’s why most content shown on the channel page links to the right ‘Dosgamert’ channel.

 

One thought on “Story

  1. DosRescue

    Just discovered your vids and read your amazing story. thanks so much for sharing, chronicling, and doing what you do. I too grew up with dos games and while I only experienced them via Shareware I too spent many hours invested in completing those levels. Your journey is one shared by many though your unyielding passion has led you far in Dos and life. Thanks again for sharing your passions with the world. We all look forward to whats next.

    Reply

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