It has been a long time since I plumbed the depths of YouTube for covers of video game tracks. Once upon a time, long before the pandemic began and my work situation got more tense, I used to spend part of every day building elaborate playlists of my favorite video game tracks by various artists across the internet. Back before I used Spotify, before I swapped to Tidal, I used YouTube. It’s not as viable on a free account anymore, thanks to all the advertisements, but I used to have playlists that would last entire work days, playlists of the same song covered by different artists, various covers from the same game, and even a few themed around entire franchises. These days, when I go to YouTube for music, I typically listen to one of a couple of collections of songs rather than my old playlists of songs. Partly because of the advertisements making it difficult to enjoy (even with an adblock), but also because it makes me sad. So many of those old videos have disappeared or unlisted their music. Partly because of Nintendo’s famously litigious nature, I’m sure, but the internet is such a different place now, in 2026, than it was back in 2017 and 2018 when I was started to slack off on this. Harder to make any kind of income as an artist, much more hostile, and less easy to get attention unless you play the specific games the platforms want you to. Which means, that out of all my favorite groups, only a small handful are left active at this point. To varying degrees of “active,” anyway.