I could remember first coming across this manipulation in the Super Mario 64 emulators in 2007, specifically with YouTubers like Megaman765, MatthewGU4, and ACDCGamer; and with Scatman John's music and castle-jumping being the memes that coalesced them into a community dedicated to nostalgia. In that time, they were called "Super Mario 64 Bloopers," which gave the appearance that they were not included in "the real game" because of "technical issues," which included a Mario figure with a suit with a different color going on weird misadventures.
These Super Mario 64 in-game footages are manipulated through not the direct console, but the emulators. They are referred to as "machinimas," which are portmanteaus of "machine" and "cinema." Specifically, machinimas are game-capture videos that serve the same purpose as a film or television series does, hence the "cinema" in the name. There was a website where these videos were also uploaded also called Machinima.com, before it became defunct in February 2019. As such, YouTube is the only prominent site where this sub-culture exists.
You could say that I am reminiscing the days of watching these machinimas ten years ago with "Those were the days, man!," but I am always interested in what experimentation can push a 20-year-old game beyond its limits. Even MatthewGU4 himself was amazed by the progress that was made for ten years and his contribution to it.
Because there are different ways of manipulating the simulators, they lead to YouTubers developing different machinima styles. Whereas M. Jacob Barker is more cinematic, Kaze Emanuar is more experimental. In his recent videos, SMG4 employed more character models from his digital animation team than from the animations within the simulators themselves, but what made him successful with 3 million subscribers was when he combined the absurdist plots of his episodes with popular memes (of course as a result, his episodes and arcs have edgy humor).
Although most are not at risk of being removed, even these machinima videos are not immune from being muted or taken down. In the case of the retro game emulation site, Emuparadise, they were threatened with legal action by Nintendo to pull their website and stop distributing emulators. At the time it was taking place, there was a debate as to whether emulators either encourage piracy or preserve the past.
Since machinimas remain an active niche on YouTube, they help to preserve the past but also redefine it. By finding the flaws and pushing the limits, a myriad stories can be uncovered. Not only can they be accomplished, but entire communities and niches would center around them.
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