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[Omnipunctual Godot]

I know there are plenty of huge channels out there like Asmongold, Game Grumps, Markiplier(? I assume, I never really watched him), and others, but this thread is for the more hardcore, under-the-radar channels that do it right.

I'm mainly talking about retro gaming channels, which generally seem to be much smaller than their current counterparts. But modern gaming's unsung heroes are also welcome. With that said, here are some of mine.



Hungry Goriya's channel is an absolute hidden gem. She covers a lot of retro games (mainly NES, but others, too) and gives some truly insightful and enjoyable commentary. At just under 40K subs, I feel like her channel is criminally underrated.



Okay, this guy's channel is amazing. He takes you step by step through some of the hardest retro games and gives you winning strategies for beating them. Literally, from Stage 1 to the end, he makes the ultimate guides on some of the toughest and most well-known retro games out there.



Basement Bros. has been such an eye-opening channel for me, just when I thought I'd seen it all in terms of old games. There are so many Japanese PC-88/PC-98/Neo Geo games I've never heard of, and he covers a TON of them. He does regular uploads on Sunday evenings. This and Hungry Goriya have helped me drift off to pleasant dreams so many times.

What about you? Are there any smaller gaming channels that you wish more people knew about?

 

[RickSanchez]

I would like to shout out two:

1. The Hitman Algorithm: https://www.youtube.com/@TheHitmanAlgorithm
He is by far the best creator of guides / walkthroughs for the Hitman World of Assassination series. No preamble, no nonsense, just gets straight into it, keeps his commentary limited to instructing the viewer about the important points of the walkthrough. Just amazing and terribly underrated.

2. PatologTV: https://www.youtube.com/@patologTV
He doesn't cover any single game. But he has a preferred genre / type of game that he covers on his channel. Linear, story based, focused level-based progression, first or third person, shooters or immersive sims. I would call him niche because he picks & chooses his games and he never immediately covers any game that's just come out. He buys the game, plays through it by himself a few times to see if he likes it and if he can cover it in a cinematic way on his channel, and to prepare for proper cinematic walkthroughs. His style is excellent, atleast for my taste - no commentary, covering nearly 100% of collectibles, shows all pieces of lore or easter eggs, cinematic style of movement and exploration, planned paths so that he doesn't repeat a section again & again, extremely skilled in combat and puzzle solving. Basically, watching him play a game is like watching a good TV show. His Doom Eternal playthrough is basically art.

 

[Emedan]

Pretty recently started watching Just Background Noise:

Just Background Noise

Twitch Channel: https://www.twitch.tv/justbackgroundnoise VOD Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfzYg9Xqc70AV5-Y1dc9QHg For business inquiries: JBN@clovertalent.gg

www.youtube.com

Making challenge runs of mostly older Bethesda games like Morrowind, they're great.

 

[old-parts]

F_T_B - covers the very early history of Japanese game development in detail, great channel not a huge amount of content but very well researched.


Majuukar - long form history videos of particular games.


The excellent Video Game Esoterica who posts on GAF, lots of videos and daily news of emulation and other collector related things.

 

[Celine]

+1 for Basement Brothers, F_T_B and GTV-Japan.

EDIT:
Yanik Magnan's Swan Song is the most in-depth series of games review in chronological order for WonderSwan:

 

[Herbspiceguy]

I've been watching a lot of Basement Bros. myself lately.

Here are a few others:

Dungeon Chill

If there's anything even remotely resembling a dungeon, I'm probably chillin' in it.

www.youtube.com

4o3o1

dark / bizarre / obscure things. business ~ 4o3o1@4030company.com

www.youtube.com

William SRD

I'm William and I review video games games related to DnD, Warhammer 40k and other tabletop properties! For business requests, collabs, or for offering leads on games, please contact me via email. For sponsorship offers, please contact my reps via: partnerships@manatalentgroup.com!

www.youtube.com

 

[Omnipunctual Godot]

+1 for Basement Brothers, F_T_B and GTV-Japan.

EDIT:
Yanik Magnan's Swan Song is the most in-depth series of games review in chronological order for WonderSwan:

Yeah, GTV-Japan is a great channel! Dungeon Chill, as mentioned above, is another favorite of mine.

 

[TintoConCasera]

Running Shine:

 

[Fbh]

Hardly "small" with 500k followers.
But Mossbag isn't that big and he is great for Hollow Knight Lore. Well done videos with a bit of humor sprinkled through.



Looking forward to his Silksong content

 

[Werewolf Jones]

I liked this video a while ago.

 

[Radical_3d]

Anyone from the Civilization community.

 

[Dacvak]

Game Sack, baby!

I don't know how "niche" that channel is considered at this point, but it's always been more on the fringe compared to "top" YouTubers.

Joe's style and work ethic hasn't changed since the day he started the channel, even against the persuasion of the almighty algorithm. It's still, without question, the best general gaming channel on YouTube.

Game Sack

I'm Joe. I talk about video video games that I find interesting and a few that may not be so great. Long-ish new episode every other Sunday (at minimum) released at 12:00am mountain time (US). Thanks for checking out Game Sack! Game Sack PO Box 150366 Denver, CO 80215 USA

youtube.com

If you want another good one, this dude Sean Seanson does some incredible work covering PS1 almost exclusively. He's got very well-written scripts, and a captivating Irish accent. He's been slowly growing, but still is shy of the 50k mark.

Sean Seanson

Long videos to fall asleep to. (Ps. I don't have a speech impediment, I'm just Irish.)

youtube.com

 

[Holammer]

GTV is kinda small and he deserves much more. His stuff is well researched and includes interesting tidbits and deep lore information you don't find elsewhere.
I believe the guy used to be a television presenter before he moved to Japan. Hence the excellent speech delivery.

 

[BlitzCraig]

Majuular does some great deep dives into old RPGs as well as old and obscure PC adventure games. Absolutely fascinating!

 

[Omnipunctual Godot]

Majuular does some great deep dives into old RPGs as well as old and obscure PC adventure games. Absolutely fascinating!

Majuular is great, but I thought he might be popular enough to not be considered niche. If that were the case, I'd definitely add Gamesack and Electric Underground. Probably SsethTzeentach as well.

Another great channel that hits the niche category would be Pixel Cherry Ninja. He is one of the absolute best sources of information for FPGA gaming news.

 

[ColonialRaptor]

Legend of Total War - Total War games (mostly Warhammer)

LegendofTotalWar

I'm Legend of Total War. I primarily play Total War, but not every game in the franchise. At the moment I'm entirely dedicated to covering Total War: Warhammer 3. My content is broken up into: - Disaster Campaigns - where people send me their save files on the verge of campaign defeat and I...

www.youtube.com

uThermal - SC2

uThermal

Welcome my friends :) Mostly Starcraft 2, sometimes other RTS games

www.youtube.com

aGameScount - Competitive Tetris

aGameScout

Videos about the Classic Tetris scene.

www.youtube.com

Growling Sidewinder - DCS / IL2 (flight sims)

Growling Sidewinder

Twitter: https://twitter.com/GrowlingAim9 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GrowlingAim9 Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/GrowlingSidewinder Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/growling_sidewinder/?hl=en

www.youtube.com

Kevduit - Entertaining (not sure if niche though)

Kevduit

Watch my videos and you'll find out

www.youtube.com

FairTX - Makes interesting Tarkov videos (also not sure if this counts as niche)

fairTX

👕 Merch - https://fairtx-shop.fourthwall.com

www.youtube.com

Karl Jobst - Speed Running

Karl Jobst

Speedrunning is amazing. The strategies that come out of this niche are nothing short of genius. If you want an easy way to keep up to date with all of the incredible discoveries speedrunners find out about classic games, subscribe to the channel.

www.youtube.com

Watch every video, never play SC2 but uThermal is a gem. Legend I also enjoy a lot but Total war is the only game I play these days (rarely maybe a few hours a day for a couple weeks in a year).

Growling Sidewinder is the best DCS / flight sim channel IMO.

Kevduit just makes really entertaining videos and his sense of humor makes me laugh a lot.

Karl Jobst, speed running channel. Feel like the whole billy mitchell thing put a stink on him though so he's lost a lot of respect needs to rebuild trust.

Dunno if these really count as 'niche' but I enjoy them.

I'll pretty much what youtube videos about any topic if the maker is entertaining to me and I enjoy the content. I would love to hear recommendations that I might like, always looking for cool new channels.

Will bookmark this thread.

 

[nkarafo]

Ok, here are some actually niche English speaking channels with less than 20k subs from my own subscriptions list.

Seb's Place

A place in the cosy corner of YouTube that will tickle your nostalgia bone for all things 8 and 16-Bit related. Mainly ZX Spectrum with a bit of the others chucked in. Some occasional nostalgia hits for toys and board games too.

www.youtube.com

British guy talks mostly about the ZX Spectrum among other 8bit computers. Has that nice "80's computers in Britain" vibe that i really like.

osukarui

I am a speedrunner who mostly focuses on obscure N64 games. I also like to glitch-hunt and route games. Twitch channel: https://www.twitch.tv/osukarui Channel for Extra stuff (speedruns, glitches, documentation): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0APTRbdEHCRTyI5260raZw Unlisted videos on main...

www.youtube.com

Really obscure channel that focuses on speedrunning N64 games that are niche themselves within the Speedrunning community. The production values though are amazing and put even the biggest speedrunning channels to shame.

Tod's Video Games and More!

Console games, arcade games, store displays and kiosks! Join Tod as he hunts down the rarest Nintendo, Sega, and Atari games for his extensive collection. Also kick back and enjoy the golden era of arcades as Tod brings back games from the dead and restores them for another generation of play.

www.youtube.com

A guy who restores arcade cabinets. I think it's the best restoration channel so far for me, despite being so small atm.

PandaMonium Reviews Every U.S. Sega Saturn Game

Reviewing every North American Sega Saturn game by order of release date to document its strange and difficult commercial journey in the western world. Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/pandamoniumnick Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/pandamoniumnick Also a proud member of the Sega Saturn, Shiro...

www.youtube.com

The BEST channel about Saturn reviews/documentaries and one of the best channels in retro gaming IMO. And i'm not even a Saturn fan. It's criminal this guy still has so few subscribers.

 

[SomeNorseGuy]

Dungeon Chill

If there's anything even remotely resembling a dungeon, I'm probably chillin' in it.

www.youtube.com

I recommend Dungeon Chill aswell, great content.

If you want another good one, this dude Sean Seanson does some incredible work covering PS1 almost exclusively. He's got very well-written scripts, and a captivating Irish accent. He's been slowly growing, but still is shy of the 50k mark.

Sean Seanson

Long videos to fall asleep to. (Ps. I don't have a speech impediment, I'm just Irish.)

youtube.com

Sean Seanson is a treasure, always a blast watching his PS1 videos.

Many great suggestions here that I'll look into.

I reccomend Finntrovert, somewhat thick accent but I enjoy his retrospective content very much.

Finntrovert

Finntrovert is a Finnish gamer, playing and reviewing various video games.

m.youtube.com

The same goes for Aqua Walrus, a bit more retro review angle. But a fun selection of games.

Aqua Walrus

I break down full playthrough's of retro video games into shorter packages, mixing in my own personal sense of humor with low-quality edits. Relive the games of yesteryear in a more exciting and engaging way than a simple let's play. Uploads every other Saturday! I have a huge list but I am...

m.youtube.com

And lastly I'd reccomend Gilgamechasaur aswell, great selection of games.

Gilgamechasaur

Looking at interesting overlooked, underappreciated, unavailable or otherwise noteworthy games.

m.youtube.com

 

[Walliwallipaloo]

HungryGoriya, Early Bird, Grimbeard, Majuular. Not in that order, necessarily.

Ah, yes, Dungeon Chill. I can't believe I watched that whole video about the weird-ass vampire game. But hey, that's a credit to the guy.

 

[Doggyred]

HappyConsoleGamer, Petedorr, The Game Chasers

 

[AngelMuffin]

Bithead1000

The greatest video game program in the history of human civilization.

 

[Gamerfan81]

This guy talks about him and his dad started collecting video games and their love for the hobby starting in the 80s to mid 2000s and other topics of gaming around that era. Not that large of a channel around 170k subs. https://www.youtube.com/@MyRetroLife

 

[Shubh_C63]

I love every Killian Experience video. Especially the hour long ones.