I'm James! A dude from Nova Scotia who's played platformers all his life. So I figured I'd start making videos about 3D platformers, both new and old! Though sometimes I'll cover weird indie games, horror games, or whatever else interests me.
I try to be thorough when discussing game mechanics. I like trying to figure out what makes something work. Though I also try to be fair and optimistic when it comes to reviewing older games. I think it's important to look for interesting aspects of art and design, even if the game isn't very good. Video games are interesting as hell, so I like seeing all the cool little things old janky games can hide.
Email for general inquiries only, NOT INTERESTED IN PAID OFFERS: AskNitroRad@gmail.com
Intro music by: ru-vid.com/show-UC8FlT8Dx3dhEmn5n179L7wQ
I'd like to take a moment here to give a shout-out to gobou, who's made at least one incredibly impressive pixel art Yume Nikki music video a year for the past decade now. If you've seen a clip of Masada dancing to the Secret Area music from Battleblock Theater, that was gobou's work.
You know, it never really hit me that dreams have influenced my life so much. Even as a kid, dreams were my escapism. I could never expect what can happen next, it was always this strange and interesting experience I only got to have before I woke up to another day, maybe even in the middle of a day sometimes. Dreams are what brought me certain feelings in life, certain thoughts and traits. I think I found Yume Nikki through your channel when I was 13. I was fascinated by its weirdness, interested with its potential meanings and worlds, and it remains one of the most important games in my entire life to me. But you know what especially is something I remember dreaming about? One day on August 20th 2022, I had this dream where I was exploring a place, a temple of sorts. Grass was covering the outside, trees were weirdly absent, it was basically split into chunks floating in the air outside of that one entrance. There, it was just darkness. Pure darkness outside of one glowing orb in the middle. An orb I didn't know was guarded by something I could barely see outside of two red eyes staring directly at me once I grabbed it, threatening me. Right as it started moving towards me, likely with intent to kill me, someone grabbed my hand and told me to escape. The temple collapsed, the beast fell with it, and I made it outside. It was only then when I could see who protected me, who saved me from potential death in my dream. It was that girl that appears at 1:18:52. The girl with the hair that poured down like a waterfall, the girl with the ribbon that reached far in the shape of a cross, the girl with the empty eyes that reflect her blankness. It was Mono. The same girl that I am making a game about. The same game that started as a Yume Nikki fangame of sorts. From that one August 20th, my fate was set. This is what I was meant to create from the moment I was born, and will make and cherish for years to come. About Mono. Thank you for introducing me to Yume Nikki all those years ago.
1:14:14 The same thing happened to me with the Gamecube and Luigi's Mansion. The console with the game was displayed in a local story and I was so scared of the game that I couldn't go into that store for a very long time, even when we traveled by it I turned my head avay.
So all this time that 46:05 was just an event? I though it was something important, that I needed to do something specific with an effect or something, It was so hard to get in there and I try a lot of things that did not work, now I know I was just wasting my time. XD Thanks for reminding me that this game is on Steam, I want to actually finish it. :D
Absolutely phenominal video on this game!! I only got into it like last year and I really don't regret it! It did NOT take long for it to become one of my favourite games of ALL TIME. I remember when I first played it for myself... I actually livestreamed it, and I remember... the atmosphere, the ambience, the things I was seeing. All of it really gave me this really uncomfortable paranoid feeling! Its hard to describe! Like of course I didn't think one of the games npc's was gonna come to life and eat me of course, but I remember after I played it I couldn't sleep normally for a whole week cuz I was in a weird paranoid state, and the freakin block world theme was just playing in my head over and over and over and over it was so.... I have yet to play a game to this day that has made me feel that again, like goodness! It was driving me insane, and I loved it, the game def achieved what it was meant to do.
As a grown woman I see Yume Nikki as being so unique to the lived experience of myself and other women. It could be Madotsuki never needed any unwanted touch or intimacy to be so fixated on bodily image and horror, her mind strikes me as one that is so deeply uncomfortable with her sexualized existence. So much of her dreams remind me of a longing for the innocence once held before puberty, before her body changed against her will. The Toriningen could represent the grown women in her life who pressure her into these expectations, where retaliation causes them to act hostile towards her, making her feel trapped and isolated, misunderstood. The phallic imagery and the uterus like creatures and landmarks remind me of the early fears of things like pregnancy that I also faced, being afraid of what your own body could do and what that would mean for yourself. The dissociative view of your body and other bodies feeling so foreign and unfamiliar. So much of it is indicative of female adolescence. Poniko seems to live similarly to Madotsuki and she feels comfort in this, but Poniko is also an unsettling mirror into her own psyche, Uboa is a reflection of everything she's afraid of. It's also interesting to me that almost all of the characters with identifiable genders are women or girls. Most things relating to maleness come in distorted, perverse forms, showing fear or confusion towards the opposite sex, which is also a very common feeling when girls come of age. Especially for Japan, her story is very poignant, like the train car with distorted figures sitting in the seats, representing chikan, the act of groping women and girls in crowded areas like train cars. Even the effects have this same message, this fixation on becoming something that isn't you for fear of being vulnerable and hurt. The ending is interesting to me as well. The dreams Madostuki goes through are a representation of her thoughts as she goes over every life event that has lead her to make this choice. Madotsuki is important to me and I'm sure other women who like Yume Nikki because I have never seen the dilemma of being a woman illustrated so beautifully, yet so tragically. In Madotsuki's eyes, she would rather be dead than face a world where she is not her own person, her body is not her own body, and she cannot control the eyes that perceive her. She couldn't help but long for the time she was a child when none of that mattered.
I finally got this game cause of you and i love it so far I played it with my grandma and she thought Ty was so cute and i have to agree, he's just such a likable character! And it's just a really solid game with some really fun levels. I LOVED the forest one
I'm not a game developer, but I'm writing a novel trilogy inspired by Yume Nikki. (Well, it's more directly inspired by 2kki and .flow, but obviously that still means it's inspired by the original game.)
the first game I played was super mario 64, but the game that made me feel was the legend of zelda Majoras Mask. Oh my GAH the end of the game was amazing.
Glad to see you return to Yume Nikki! For a huge long deep dive video! Always love hearing deep dives into Nikki and it's ideas and themes. Your presentation and they way you actually talked about it this time around felt more like a friend online ranbling to you about the subject late at night. Super cozy. Loved seeing you bring up the YNOproject! It's been the way I've played 2kki ever since I found it! I didn't think I'd ever play it originally due to the hassles of setting up the original game, so the YNOproject was a huge deal. And yeah, Collective Unconscious as of now is only on like version 2.1 or something close but it's incredibly high quality and almost feels like a celebration of YN fangames in itself in a way. And HUGE for me at 1:25:27: "Sun, Moon, and Star to These I bid Adieu" shown for even a second in the bottom left corner! It's a really good Roblox based fangame with a bunch of interesting ideas under the lid when you get past it's semi-jokey pretense of being just an average YN fangame! It's got a spinoff already made and an upcoming RPGmaker game too!
I love the way you talk about this game. It's exactly how I feel about it, its like ethereal, hazy, yet oddly comforting despite how intense it can get sometimes. It's almost...personal, thanks for opening up and sharing your thoughts on such an incredible game. Especially in such a personal way. :)
I used to play Yume Nikki so much that the locations from the game would bleed into my dreams Especially the wilderness, the desert, the train and the Aztec Easter egg on the tv
After watching the first chapter I decided to check if I could find it for my 3DS, and since it was I decided I'd give it a try for myself! Currently trying to beat the ghost village in chapter 3, and I've got to say, this game is *really* fun. Hard, but fun! I've never been one for super old games, but I'm having a blast with this one. Thank you for making me aware of it! Gonna be coming back to watch more as I progress through the game!
Thanks for the review, always happy to think about this game, seeing different perspectives and stuff. I'm currently trying to start my career as a gamedesigner, and oh, Yume Nikki will always be that one special game that is near and dear to my heart. Was happy to see my fangame on the wikki's list, it's called Openlid (3d yume nikki fangame), I'll definetely return to it later on, considering I always think about Yume Nikki's formula and what makes it so special and what not. Cheers~
i love this game so much. i named my cats after it. i have a tuxedo girl with allergies that gives her a leaky eye and shes a polydactyl with extra toes, and i named her monoko. and i have an all black cat named kiki, both after kikiyama and kiki's delivery service
fun fact the corner glitch is a reference to Earthbound in the Japanese version it's a glitch known for breaking your game and being quite random it's even capable of breaking the cart entirely so it being a nightmare in dream is quite fitting
I think rating each power individually misses the point. The game is wonderful because it use so many, and a few are only in a single level. Those levels are then designed to explore the powerup to its fullest, then the game moves on. An incredibly respectable move.
i still think sexual trauma is a part of yume nikki, but you put it into a different perspective for me of the dreams representing madotsuki’s life in general instead of one traumatic event. uboa possibly represents a single event, but there are many things (kyuukyuu, the hands, phallic imagery, the weird blue face) that just remind me of general things women can experience; unwanted touch, unwanted sexualization, vulnerability in public spaces, always looking behind your shoulder. the toriningen remind me of older female figures (family, teachers, strangers) who uphold damaging gender norms. the type who shame you for wearing slightly revealing clothes instead of telling boys to not be weird. but of course, madotsuki is not just entirely sexual trauma. there’s themes of social isolation & anxiety, and i didn’t think about gender dysphoria but i’m glad you brought it up (:
Thank you for talking about the ending and the very different ways the dreams and imagery could be interpreted. I frequently hear people saying what the game is "absolutely" about with no room for other theories.
Its kinda interesting that during the glitch that happens around 59:00, shes in front of the number 4 which if im not mistaken means death in japanese? So she falls asleep(dies) and then your computer crashes. Its obviously just a coincidence like you said espscially with the fact you can still wake up but thats the first thing my brain came up with when I saw it.
36:05 - The fact that only the traffic light triggers this, plus her eye and kind of splatted out appearance has led many to assume she was hit by a car and died. Possibly a friend of hers.
I think that what makes this video so great is that fact that it highlights how art can work. A weird unfinished abstract game have so deeply inspired James in his life, but also a lot of other people and artists. Maybe the interpretations are way deeper than what the creator even thought themselves. And I think that's part of what art is. Great video.
I found your channel through your original yume Nikki video! I have been a fan of yume Nikki since around 2010! It’s probably the game I played most. In late middle school early highschool I kept a journal of everything I did. The wiki was active then but I didn’t really have stable internet. RPGMaker games always will mean so much to me. They were small and could be downloaded off of public WiFi and for a poor kid that would bring my school provided laptop to the mall to download rpgmaker games, it helped me experience so many unique stories. Though Yume Nikki, .flow and Ib will always be my favorite from this era.
