A Brief History

A Brief History
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Hosted by	Rick Desilets John Selig C/J Haley Ben Mooney
Original run	January 19, 2015 – present
No. of episodes	16
Episode length	1–41 minutes
Playlist	link
Total length	4:21:32

A Brief History is a video essay series created by The D-Pad in 2015. While early episodes were designed to serve as short intros to the channel's Franchise Plays, highlighting the formative years of the companies behind the franchises, the series soon became a platform for longer videos delving into specific aspects of certain games or media. As of January 19, 2025, 16 episodes of the series have been released.

Episodes

ABH#	Title	Series	Length	Host(s)	Release date
1	"A Brief History of CAPCOM"	The Mega Let's Play	1:59	Rick, John	January 19, 2015 (2015-01-19)
2	"A Brief History of HAL Laboratory"	The Dreamy Let's Play	4:42	Rick, John	March 25, 2016 (2016-03-25)
3	"A Brief History of SEGA"	The Super Sonic Let's Play	5:28	John	June 20, 2016 (2016-06-20)
4	"A Brief History of Comcept"	The Mega Let's Play	3:16	Rick	June 22, 2016 (2016-06-22)
5	"A Debrief History of Comcept"	The Mega Let's Play	13:37	Rick	July 31, 2016 (2016-07-31)
6	"A Brief History of Michael Jackson's Sonic the Hedgehog 3"	The Super Sonic Let's Play	22:54	Rick, John	October 20, 2016 (2016-10-20)
7	"A Brief History of Sonic Mania"	The Super Sonic Let's Play	10:47	Rick, John	August 16, 2017 (2017-08-16)
8	"A Brief History of the Infinity Stones"		27:15	Rick	April 28, 2018 (2018-04-28)
9	"Downward Spiral: A Brief History of SEGA's Console War"	The Super Sonic Let's Play	26:37	Rick, John	June 25, 2018 (2018-06-25)
10	"A Brief History of The Legend of Zelda"	The Legendary Let's Play	9:40	Rick	August 23, 2018 (2018-08-23)
11	"A Brief History of Hyrule"	The Legendary Let's Play	41:22	Rick, John, C/J, Ben	September 8, 2018 (2018-09-08)
12	"DASHes to Ashes, Trust to Dust: A Brief History of Mega Man's Fall from Grace"	The Mega Let's Play	27:16	Rick	October 4, 2018 (2018-10-04)
13	"A Brief History of Tiger Electronics"	The Mega Let's Play	18:34	Rick	April 5, 2020 (2020-04-05)
14	"A Brief Timeline of Sonic the Hedgehog (2006)"	The Super Sonic Let's Play	19:05	Rick	September 18, 2021 (2021-09-18)
15	"A Brief History of Metroid"	The Screwy Let's Play	14:25	Rick	October 11, 2021 (2021-10-11)
16	"A Brief History of the Mega Let's Play, 2023–2024"	The Mega Let's Play	14:35	Rick	January 19, 2025 (2025-01-19)

Trivia

• "A Brief History of the Infinity Stones" is the only A Brief History episode thus far to not be part of any of the channel's Franchise Plays.
• The Mega Let's Playhas the most episodes of A Brief History out of the Franchise Plays, with six. The Heartless Let's Play and Let's Play Dead are the only Franchise Plays to contain no episodes.