You are correct The guy voicing Cave Johnson in this mod is indeed NOT J. K. Simmons

Yep, when Mel originally came out there were a lot of complaints that the mod was too hard. So they made changes to the majority of the test chambers and some behind the scenes areas to make it easier. The easier mode then became story mode, and the original mod became advanced mode. The puzzles in advanced mode are really hard so I only recommend playing it when you feel more confident in your puzzle solving skills. Maybe play Portal: Reloaded or Rexaura 1st, those are pretty tough.

3:00 This is acutally canon! The mod developers just put the assets from the original game in their mod. You can find the exact same newspaper and "shower salesman trophy" in Portal 2, (Spoilers ahead) right after opening the big door and hearing the first voice line from Cave Johnson.

3:21 These spheres ARE where the tests were held. Take everything from the story elements, like the "outdoors" area and the sleep pod as fanon.

You've not gotten worse, Mel is just a LOT more difficult than what you've played so far.

The Aperture being in a salt mine in Michigan is cannon. You find the same newspaper in Portal 2 same with the shower curtain salesman award. Cave Johnson ran a shower curtain business and made his fortune supplying shower curtains to the U.S. military during WW2. After the war he bought the salt mine in Michigan some time between 1945 and 1947. He rebranded Aperture Fixtures his home fixtures company to Aperture Science Innovators and began construction on the facility. in 1960s the older test shafts were sealed and abandoned in an attempt to hide the dangerous tests while Aperture was under investigation over countless missing people. As this was going on Black Mesa did have people on the inside leaking information to Black Mesa. Things such as the Gravity Gun and HEV suit were originally developed by Aperture and were stolen by Black Mesa. Black Mesa also may have stole the Aperture turret design and created their own to beat Aperture to the punch with a military contract. Aperture had far better and far more advanced tech compared to Black Mesa but Aperture was always too cautious and because of it Black Mesa was always able to beat Aperture to military contracts. By 1980 Aperture is going bankrupt due to their overly cautious release of tech and most Aperture tech was stuck in the testing phase. The portal project had been in development since the 50s and Black Mesa was quickly catching up. Its possible Aperture had access to Xen long before Black Mesa but they decided to shut that down due to how unsafe it was. In the 70s Aperture had been testing the ability to teleport entire ships and they had successfully teleported their ship the Borealis underground and back to the surface. Eventually this ship went missing and has not been found this is that boat that was referenced. The GLaDOS project was begun in the 1980s and she was brought online in the late 1990s after countless emergency shutdowns when she put Aperture on lockdown and began pumping neurotoxin into the Enrichment Center. Luckily they had the Red Phone contingency where she would immediately be shut down if she tried to put Aperture on lockdown. Her access to security and Neurotoxin was disabled and she was brough back online. At some point in 2003 she was allowed to use neurotoxin for a test and she immediately put Aperture on lockdown and pumped neurotoxin into the Enrichment Center killing most of the Aperture staff. The Red Phone contingency failed because she locked the control room. The surviving scientists were able to finish and install the morality core to stop her from pumping neurotoxin into the facility but she still had the facility on lockdown. Slowly she would trap the remaining staff killing them off all except for one. He was the person who wrote all those notes in the games and he suffered from schizophrenia which is why they always seemed like psychotic rambling. Only a week after Aperture's lockdown the Black Mesa incident happened which is why nobody came to Aperture in that time. After the Combine invaded they tried to infiltrate Aperture but GLaDOS killed all of them. The Combine after this point completely ignore Aperture likely labeling it a danger zone. Also most of the Aperture lore in this game is cannon. Oh yeah that octopus worker from another realm is cannon. Aperture figured out how to access the multiverse and they regularly steal test chambers from alternate Apertures. Not test chamber designs they literally steal the physical test chamber from the alternate Aperture.

Also Mel and Revolution are prequels to portal 2 which is why glados' demise got referenced in them both. with characters completely different from chell the main character in portal 1 & 2

Portal: Reloaded and Aperture Tag are both good choices. Want Portal, but with a THIRD portal that travels through time? Portal: Reloaded. Want Portal, but WITHOUT portals and instead solve puzzles with the gels? Aperture Tag.

8:17 Kill it! It’s evil. 15:40 Virgil yells at you no matter what route you take. He’s angry if you take the stairs, he’s angry if you take the elevator, he’s angry with you if you take the other rock path. 20:55 This one is Mel. I played through challenge mode, it was pretty difficult. It still has the story, story mode just has easier puzzles (challenge mode is how it was originally designed, it got nerfed and story mode was made). 22:33 Mel is inbetween portal 1 and 2. As you can tell from the post-credits scene, directly before portal 2. 31:21 I had basically the exact same experience in this section.

Mel plays in between portal 1 and 2 like portal revolution

The “Boat” Virgil was referring to is the Borealis. In the lore of portal it was made as a response to Black Mesa’s teleportation experiments. However something happened and cause the teleportation devices on board to malfunction and it teleported to the Artic.

I think the "boat" reference may have been an allusion to the Borealis from HL2:E2, who's dry dock you can can find In Portal 2 if you know where to look.

Love Portal Stories Mel! It was really fun to see your reactions to it. Agreed that the puzzles are pretty tricky. I shamelessly used a guide at several points, though was proud of myself whenever I did figure a room out on my own. As for future Portal mods: I highly recommend Portal Reloaded! It uses a new portal gun with a third portal that adds time travel into the puzzle mechanics. It’s wildly creative, brain twisting, and fun.

you gotta remember that portal stories mel was the 2nd FULL mod to come out for portal 2 and is pushing 10 years old at this point.

Mel was supposed to be the main character for portal 2 and left glados dead , but instead they continued with chell and glados in portal 2, so this is the scrapped story idea for portal 2 , and the boat mentioned in video was the Borealis witch was found in half life it was an aperture science ship that was portaled

11:08 if i am NOT mistaken it is talking about the borealis

The music you put in 2:18 fits PERFECTLY undertale has W ost

Portal Stories Mel- as an FYI- is supposed to INITIALLY take place before the resonance cascade in Half Life/Black Mesa(depending on which variant of that game you play- ultimately same primary story tho for that one.) which is before the events of Portal 1. However, it quickly after the beginning transitions to a period of time basically just after Portal 1- and just before Portal 2. It is safe to say that the time span between Portal 1 and Portal 2 is within the span of a couple of decades at most. Maybe a decade at least. considering Chell was probably in her early 20s when she first went to Aperture- which must've been before the events of Half Life 1- been in stasis for a lil while, woken up by Ratman, and then after the events of Portal 1- is put back to sleep for roughly a decade- which is around when Mel chimes in in this mod- and thus paves the way for Chell to be reawakened proper. Overall to me at least- and I know to some others- Portal Stories Mel is one of those portal mods that we would love to consider as part of the lore- despite it being unofficial and not made by Valve (however if Valve ever recognizes it as a viable part of the main lore for the Portal series half of the Half Life Portal universe- it would be amazing.) Also the reason Virgil in the beginning after you wake up from your long slumber of probably at least half a century to close to a century... speaks roughly like Cave Johnson- is to not cause Mel- lore wise anyways- potential death by being too jogged from a complete difference in well... everything. Put simply Virgil was doing it as a precaution just incase in terms of lore. If you need any other things within the game explained- I can probably answer. (being someone who has maybe played this game one too many times lol.) Also as clarification to what you just asked about at 21:23 regarding the Challenge variant of the chapters... It's still the same story and whatnot as normal- except harder. AKA the original levels as they were before final main release or whatever onto Steam essentially. Only really effects certain puzzles that were extremely hard and deemed unfit for the average player, and therefore the normal set of chapters is the revised set with modifications to those chambers that were simply too difficult for the average player. If you want a challenge(and respectively brain aneurism) I'd definitely recommend it as it's more true to the original mod when that was released on Moddb originally prior to the Steam release of the mod.

3:26 "everything said has to be taken with a large grain of salt, as this is a mod" Not to mention a salt mine :P

That ending with sunset, music, birds and destroyed, collapsed buildings it looks beautiful event the background main menu screen. Also the echo at the ending: "...you have been in suspension for 9 9 9 9 9 9....." ❤ The best mod I ever played and still nothing has beaten it