James Rolfe / James D. Rolfe / Angry Video Game Nerd (AVGN) / Rex Viper and Cinemassacre / Screenwave - Now with not much grieving about a 41-year old man still making videos on YouTube. We're the balls on the dick.

[TVB]

You know, this video kind of feels like the Irategamer.

That's an unfair comparison. At least Chris Bores puts in more effort than whatever Bimmy and the Screenwave chumps had made.

 

[Doctor of Autism]

I'm half way though the Kid Icarus review, and I think the problem is its length. Like if this thing was 10-15 minutes long instead of 20, it would be fine. Rolfe is trying to get his old energy back but he like an engine that will almost start.

I think the issue is not the length but rather that James lacks the same energy and passion he once had and you can tell. For comparison, an average Nostalgia Critic episode is longer but it's not a chore to watch through it since Doug still has passion in what he does.

 

[TVB]

I think the issue is not the length but rather that James lacks the same energy and passion he once had and you can tell. For comparison, an average Nostalgia Critic episode is longer but it's not a chore to watch through it since Doug still has passion in what he does.

I consider Bames' story of his career comparable to both Icarus and Faust. He rose to high but crashed down once he sold his soul to the devil.

Meanwhile, Chris Bores and Doug Walker have respective underdog stories of their own lives, although Doug is still more successful in this day and age.

 

[Doctor of Autism]

I consider Bames' story of his career comparable to both Icarus and Faust. He rose to high but crashed down once he sold his soul to the devil.

Meanwhile, Chris Bores and Doug Walker have respective underdog stories of their own lives, although Doug is still more successful in this day and age.

I don’t know Bores seems like a pathetic clout chaser still and is pretty much a schizo. Like all the AVGN ripoffs became worse for wear overtime.

 

[Dom Cruise]

The way I remember it, there was such a thick line in the sand drawn when the N64 & PlayStation came along that anything primarily 2D was pretty much considered retro by the early 2000s. I remember some hardcore cognitive dissonance back in those days surrounding the graphics, where the best looking SNES games were thought to have worse graphics than even shitty PS1 games, all because they're 3D.

Kinda weird to think about that. There are games over 20 years old now that feel uncomfortable to call retro, like Halo and Max Payne, but Chrono Trigger was retro by its 5th anniversary. Goes to show just how much games have stagnated.

There was definitely a huge schism between 2D and 3D, a huge exodus of gamers that never really kept up with it when that happened (James being one of them?) and massive influx of new gamers once the 3D consoles came along.

However I think we can safely say stuff like Max Payne and Halo is retro now, if 20+ years old doesn't count then what does? But when those games were all around a decade old they were old without being seen as "retro", which is definitely different from how anything 2D was seen after ten years.

Where it gets really weird is to think of games like Bioshock Infinite, Skyrim, The Last of Us and GTAV as "retro", nah, try back in at least another decade, especially stuff like Skyrim and GTAV kept getting re-releases so they never really went away, things have definitely stagnated.

But I think most people think it's safe to say PS2, Xbox and GameCube are retro now, in fact just recently I tried revisiting Rockstar's Smuggler's Run 2 and it's downright crude when compared to say RDRII.

Yeah, pretty much - I mean, there's only around 700 games in the NES library alone and while some are really bad (or really good), most are just kind of mediocre where they're not amusingly bad and just mostly forgotten for a reason. It was never going to be a lasting concept, even with expanding it to Hong Kong '97 doesn't work because there's no one who has any real nostalgia for that game.

He should retire the series, but of course it brings bread to the table so... meh. I get it, just like I get why The Simpsons keep churning out new episodes. With that said, he should've kept off revealing himself as a Chris Chan-tier tard.

There's still plenty of amusingly shitty games on the PS1 and N64 that James could cover, but he's always been hesitant to really deep dive into it.

I'm still disappointed he never covered the Army Men games or any of the 3DO (at least that I can remember) before the Screenwave era.

They were seen as retro back in 2001/2002 or so. It wasn't just x number of years passed but it was also the graphics that factored into it.

Makes sense.

Most people would have seen something like Earthbound as "retro" by the time of Super Smash Bros Melee even though it was less than a decade old.

One important thing in my opinion was that there weren't endless ports/collections of previous gen titles sold on every new systems. The only way(other than emulation) to play these games was to hook up an old system for anyone that wanted to play a hugely successful game like Donkey Kong Country, a game didn't have a version for modern consoles until the Wii. Same for the older Zelda's. Pure SNES games(not old arcade games) like FF6/Chrono Trigger coming to the PSX was a real "wow/what" moment for fans of the originals, that sort of thing never really happened.

There were a slew of SNES ports on the GBA, including Donkey Kong Country, which is one reason why I was thinking SNES wasn't quite fully retro in the early to mid 2000s, but on the flipside, something like Altered Beast was definitely retro by the 2000s.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole 2]

There were a slew of SNES ports on the GBA, including Donkey Kong Country, which is one reason why I was thinking SNES wasn't quite fully retro in the early to mid 2000s, but on the flipside, something like Altered Beast was definitely retro by the 2000s.

Those were Advanced game boy reinterpretations of the games, not the original game. Originals had to be played on real hardware or emulators. That's besides my point, there were many SNES games that just weren't available outside of second hand cartridge sales until the eShop. The PS2 did a fantastic thing with backwards compatibility that pretty much killed my idea of "retro".

 

[DinnerDates]

There's still plenty of amusingly shitty games on the PS1 and N64 that James could cover, but he's always been hesitant to really deep dive into it.

I'm still disappointed he never covered the Army Men games or any of the 3DO (at least that I can remember) before the Screenwave era.

Because James not passion enough about random video games or video games in general. His passion is mostly on movies. He does have a passion on video games but if I have to guess it's only a handful of them (Contra, Castlevania, Dr. Jekyl and Mr Hyde, Doom). And we can see his video quality when he pick random video games to cover. It's not as good as the ones that he have passion for. That's where Mike comes in because games department is his passion. Till this day you can see on his channel that he's still playing random fucking games that nobody knows about.

 

[Gravityqueen4life]

what i liked about the older episodes is how informative James is with the game and products he interact with. you could tell he has personal history with the games and my favorite episode is still the Sega genesis , Simons quest and Nintendo power episodes. maybe its Mikes writing that dose the heavy lifting.

 

[Shirō Ishii]

to go off of @DinnerDates , James not being a gamer is why he hasn't touched on those other consoles as he has no clue about them nor does he care to even seek them out. A lot of Nerd episodes also came from games which Mike remembered sucking. It's not like he has to stick to NES games like other gaming youtubers have covered several generations of games and not necessarily just the ones which they grew up with. He could even make more episodes about good games either as the Nerd or as himself like Earthbound or Majora's Mask. Like, Doug Walker has gone on to review good movies and not just the terrible ones. But as someone else said earlier, why bother trying when what he's doing is still making him enough to support himself?

 

[byuu]

to go off of @DinnerDates , James not being a gamer is why he hasn't touched on those other consoles as he has no clue about them nor does he care to even seek them out. A lot of Nerd episodes also came from games which Mike remembered sucking. It's not like he has to stick to NES games like other gaming youtubers have covered several generations of games and not necessarily just the ones which they grew up with. He could even make more episodes about good games either as the Nerd or as himself like Earthbound or Majora's Mask. Like, Doug Walker has gone on to review good movies and not just the terrible ones. But as someone else said earlier, why bother trying when what he's doing is still making him enough to support himself?

Didn't James have a C64 too growing up?
There are a ton of crap games on the C64.

 

[Dom Cruise]

Hell, there's funny shit on the 360/PS3 he could cover (like Vampire Reign), all of which is over a decade old now, so "he's gonna take you back to the past" would still fit, but you'd never see him do that.

Because James not passion enough about random video games or video games in general. His passion is mostly on movies. He does have a passion on video games but if I have to guess it's only a handful of them (Contra, Castlevania, Dr. Jekyl and Mr Hyde, Doom). And we can see his video quality when he pick random video games to cover. It's not as good as the ones that he have passion for. That's where Mike comes in because games department is his passion. Till this day you can see on his channel that he's still playing random fucking games that nobody knows about.

I know, but my point was a decade ago when Mike was still part of it an Army Men/3DO episode could have been really funny, but that ship has probably sailed.

 

[Shirō Ishii]

Didn't James have a C64 too growing up?
There are a ton of crap games on the C64.

James didn't grow up playing C64 games outside of a few like Taxman. He was an Atari/NES and SNES kid. Even when a system has terrible games, it won't change the fact that James is not a gamer who only does AVGN as a way for easy money. It would be the job of the slobs to go out of their way to find crap games.

Even though the slobs did a C64 review recently, I would rather watch rather any video on the Commodore 64 from someone like LGR than from James.

EDIT: This is talking about current AVGN and not what AVGN was a decade ago when he still putting out must see bangers

 

[All becomes gunt]

Man i remember this dude. He comes from the era of angry=funny and the 1 million Hitler in the bunker parodies, which was a great era btw. Now he is kinda like balls on a dick, which sucks.

 

[Super Nemesis 64]

That's an unfair comparison. At least Chris Bores puts in more effort than whatever Bimmy and the Screenwave chumps had made.

You know what? Your right...
I never finished the Kid Icarus video, as it was so boring. So I decided rewatch something I have not seen in years, Irate Gamer's Kid Icarus video.

Irate gamer's Kid Icarus video is far superior to the AVGN version. Bores mainly focuses on the game and doesn't waste a lot of time using ancient mythology for jokes. Later, I watched a newer Irate Gamer video, Jurassic Park for the NES, and was basically the same as his old stuff. Made me miss the simpler times.

Hell, there's funny shit on the 360/PS3 he could cover (like Vampire Reign), all of which is over a decade old now, so "he's gonna take you back to the past" would still fit, but you'd never see him do that.

I agree.
This year the Xbone and PS4 will be a decade old, and the 7th generation was very long with the 360 being released in 2005. Early to even mid (2009/2010) 7th gen games should be considered retro at this point. I mean look at Dead Space, its remake was released two console generations and 15 years after the original.

 

[Stupid Sexy Flanders]

The issue with the Kid Icarus video is that it's a decent game for its era with ok controls from memory. It's not actually bad; but it's not stand-out good either. The only really interesting trivia is how tied in with Metroid its development was.

 

[modern horrors]

He should retire the series, but of course it brings bread to the table so... meh.

He could shake things up just by playing good games for a change. "I'm sick of all these shitty games, I'll relax by playing one of my favorites." Mike could help with game footage and autistic trivia. And don't yell and cuss so much.

 

[Shirō Ishii]

He could shake things up just by playing good games for a change. "I'm sick of all these shitty games, I'll relax by playing one of my favorites." Mike could help with game footage and autistic trivia. And don't yell and cuss so much.

Considering his love for games like Donkey Kong Country, it would work. He doesn't even have to be angry and just talk normally about games as the Nerd. I get that Angry is in the title but not like it matters. Times changed and that schtick has long since been retired

 

[Geddy Lee's Fee and See]

Even though James has long since given up on making good content 2006-2010 AVGN is fucking great and I highly recommend people rewatch it. It's comfy and it's kino. You can say the guy is pretentious (he is) and lazy (he is) but he did at one point make good videos.

I remember that one video where he filmed his childhood playground and talked about how he got his passion for film malong. It was made in that era (or a coulpes years afterwards in 2011 or 2012). That was literally the best video he ever made. Also, there was some good stuff afterwards until 2014/2015ish but after the movie, his content absolutely shat the bed. I still watch it because I really don't care all that much, but the jokes go on for too long during the review and aims for too much comedy versus an actual review.

 

[BigRaxx]

I'm half way though the Kid Icarus review, and I think the problem is its length. Like if this thing was 10-15 minutes long instead of 20, it would be fine. Rolfe is trying to get his old energy back but he like an engine that will almost start.

I’m definitely trying to stay as optimistic as possible with the quality of new AVGN episodes, some of the recent ones were serviceable enough for me.

While I know the classic episodes will never be topped, I still hope to see something decent.

This Kid Icarus episode though dragged on for too long, it needed to be much more condensed.

 

[demicolon]

From what I remember "retro" entered the gaming vocabulary around the late 00's. The term used more often back then was "old school."