Year 6: July Update

The YouTube channel has finally reached 1,000 subscribers which means I can monetize it. YouTube had already been placing ads on the channel to generate money for itself and I'm not sure if by monetizing it I'll be increasing the amount of ads or if they'd remain the same. I'll probably put skippable starting ads on some videos though I really don't expect it to generate more than a few dollars per month. I did decide to remove the one web ad on this site because, despite the limitations I put on them, I was still seeing some content I'd rather not have on here. I finally got around to posting SimCity gameplay on the Commodore 64 this month and yesterday was the 5th anniversary of the first video posted on the Vault 1541 YouTube channel. Here's another item from Maxis that is fitting for the hot summer month of July: a SimAnt brochure-style ad.

Just after I posted the last update back in April some big game and toy news hit. The Tomb Raider franchise, along with Deus Ex, was sold by Square Enix to the Embrace Group (it owns many game companies like THQ Nordic and Koch Media) which is a sale that surprised myself. Deus Ex has been dormant for a while but Tomb Raider is, of course, one of the best known gaming properties. LEGO and Hasbro announced a transformable Optimus Prime set ($169.99) available now and more recently LEGO unveiled a build of Nintendo's Bowser ($269.99) releasing October 1st.

Toward the end of every year GameMill Entertainment and Outright Games tend to release a handful of video games aimed at kids and most or all of those have been revealed. GameMill is bringing out a third entry in the Nickelodeon kart racing series, Little League World Series Baseball 2022, and a sequel to its Cobra Kai game. Outright Games is releasing a game based on the DC League of Super-Pets movie today and has four games in development that are based on Star Trek: Prodigy, DreamWorks Dragons, L.O.L. Surprise!, and PAW Patrol (Outright's 4th PAW Patrol title will be a kart racer).

Thanks for visiting,

Jonathan