Norman Caruso, better known as the Gaming Historian on YouTube, has decided to step back after more than 15 years of in-depth videos. With over a million subscribers, Caruso has done deep dives on the biggest names in gaming, such as Mario, Tetris and Wolfenstein, to odd ball peripherals like the infamous Power Glove. Despite the growing success, Caruso was experiencing what was clearly burn out, opting to bow out than continue to stretch himself thin.
“Today I’m announcing I will no longer be making Gaming Historian videos,” says Caruso in his farewell recording. “There’s nothing dramatic behind it, I promise.”
He goes on to explain that since publishing a video on the Oregon Trail in 2024, he began to feel tapped out, struggling to find the energy to pursue new videos or be fair to other aspects in his personal life. Maintaining the kind of quality and accuracy, even in short videos, can take years of diligent research. Caruso toyed with the idea of doing the channel part time, promising new updates, generally keeping the lights on as the channel continued to grow. “I assumed that after a few months I’d get the itch again and make new videos,” says Caruso. “All the while, to my surprise, that itch to make a new video never really came back… My heart just wasn’t in it.”
A difficult choice to be sure, but Caruso says he felt like if he continued to force it he feared his output would not meet the kind of standards he’s become known for. The Gaming Historian channel made its debut back in 2008, chronicling retro gaming foibles, but aiming for more ambitious, first-hand sourced approaches to research as the project grew.
In his parting video, Caruso gives his fans one last gift. He was revisiting the lawsuit between Nintendo and Universal Studios from 1984, where the movie makers accused the arcade hit Donkey Kong of infringing on King Kong. Nintendo won the suit. Their lawyer, John Kirby, would become the namesake of another gaming icon. Nintendo and Universal have become much friendlier in recent history. Caruso had visited archives to dig up court documents of the case, which included transcripts, game design bibles and even doodles from Shigeru Miyamoto. While this new video will not be coming out, Caruso is donating his scans to the public, making them available through the Internet Archive and the Video Game History Foundation.
Though sad to see Caruso leave, it is good that he does so on his own terms. The online video landscape has changed significantly in his tenure. When he began, Caruso was within the environment of Angry Video Game Nerd crankery. Now gaming history is covered from many fascinating, niche angles from dedicated historians, such as Basement Brother’s PC-88 perspective, GTV’s pop cultured approach, NoClip’s extensive making-of docs, Jeremy Parish’s in-depth chronologies to Critical Kate tracking down the only known footage of Nintendo’s original Wild Gunmen.
