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.

[TV's Adam West]

I think this is a hard question to answer because I don't think James could do most proper responses. It's common knowledge now that James isn't really a gamer and much of the AVGN stemmed from his childhood experiences. The easy answer of digging into more obscure titles and relatively newer releases couldn't work since James doesn't care much about them, and like them or not people like Nitro Rad and Scott the Woz, who are much more into video games in general, have largely picked up where the AVGN left off during its peak popularity. I also think James could've leaned into the historical/informative angle like the Swordquest and Nintendo Power episodes, since that's still a thriving genre while gross out/vulgar comedy has been withering on youtube, but that would again require James to be passionate about a medium he clearly isn't.

The most important thing you can do for a project is bring passion to it.
If someone is passionate about something, they can make it interesting. Fucking, there's a dude on YouTube I watch who reviews hentai games. Do I watch hentai? No. The videos are just well edited and funny that I don't care it's extremely degenerate.

Raw fucking passion is the secret ingredient to good content. You bring a fire in your heart and at least ONE person would enjoy your fucking videos. The fact Bimmy is just a walking corpse of the AVGN shows how the spark has died. From creating an entire genre to the balls on the dick.

 

[innocent jogger]

Armake21 was the only other 'angry reviewer' I ever got into and he had like a dozen fucking accounts over the years, IIRC his original account got deleted by an ex-girlfriend or something. He's now deceased but I'm kinda surprised by how many people remember his videos, that fucking Gilligan's Island review he did is still hysterical.

I never heard of him until I read your post and checked out an archive channel of his stuff. Holy shit, that Gilligan's Island video is great. I'm going to have to check out that rabbit hole now.

Have you ever checked out Bithead1000? You would probably like his videos too. I haven't watched any in a while but his stuff always entertained me.

 

[Captain Gomez]

I never heard of him until I read your post and checked out an archive channel of his stuff. Holy shit, that Gilligan's Island video is great. I'm going to have to check out that rabbit hole now.

Have you ever checked out Bithead1000? You would probably like his videos too. I haven't watched any in a while but his stuff always entertained me.

Bithead is an acquired taste, youtube recommend me one of his videos years ago, I watched a couple of minutes, thought it was shit and forgot about him. Then Chris from CGQ wouldn't shut up about him, I gave it another shot and it just clicked for me.

There's something magical about a middle aged, blue collar maniac telling outrageous stories, complaining about his wife, opening fan mail and playing badly emulated games while smoking inside of a tool shed at 3 a.m.

 

[innocent jogger]

Bithead is an acquired taste, youtube recommend me one of his videos years ago, I watched a couple of minutes, thought it was shit and forgot about him. Then Chris from CGQ wouldn't shut up about him, I gave it another shot and it just clicked for me.

There's something magical about a middle aged, blue collar maniac telling outrageous stories, complaining about his wife, opening fan mail and playing badly emulated games while smoking inside of a tool shed at 3 a.m.

And his bottle of Jack Daniels every Christmas.

My biggest problem with him is most of his videos are just too long and fluffed out now. His time-lapse invention videos are amazing (clear NES, fishtank SNES, fire-spitting N64, Mrs. Gash-O, etc..) and some of his old stuff is comic gold like videos dedicated to destroying sports games.

 

[TVB]

If we're still talking about mid-to-late 2000s game reviewers, who remembers Ebeeto's Angry Video Game Fag?

https://archive.org/details/Ebeeto

His videos were removed a couple years ago, but someone thankfully saved it on the Internet Archives

 

[c_120]

If we're still talking about mid-to-late 2000s game reviewers, who remembers Ebeeto's Angry Video Game Fag?

https://archive.org/details/Ebeeto

His videos were removed a couple years ago, but someone thankfully saved it on the Internet Archives

Out of all the AVGN clones, The Angry Pissed Off Hardcore Gamer was one of my personal favorites.. Eric Abramov is to be praised.

 

[TVB]

Out of all the AVGN clones, The Angry Pissed Off Hardcore Gamer was one of my personal favorites.. Eric Abramov is to be praised.

Don't forget to include these gems

It's a crying shame that he moved on from these type of videos and (as of current) has focused more time on doing religious prayer videos.

 

[Poopy Pants Swastika Boy]

If someone is passionate about something, they can make it interesting. Fucking, there's a dude on YouTube I watch who reviews hentai games. Do I watch hentai? No. The videos are just well edited and funny that I don't care it's extremely degenerate.

This is how i feel about Vinesauce Joel. That guy can make anything into an interesting stream. Even a playthrough of desert bus.

 

[Mordecai "3 Finger" Brown]

Honestly, what do people think would have been a good cutoff point for James?

After his Earthbound AVGN review.

That's the last AVGN I recall enjoying.

I'm also heterodox in that I liked James and Mike Mondays more than even classic AVGN itself, even the phoned in ones after COVID.

I would've been perfectly fine if AVGN got canned instead around the time J&M put the Let's Play on temporary hiatus in ?fall 2020, continuing with the buddy edited gaming content where Mike mansplains games to Bimmy while the latter sits there like a boomer dad.

 

[skykiii]

what do people really want to see for a modern AVGN episode?

Honestly for me, I'm fine with him doing what he's doing. I watch less because the episodes are good and more because his show is kind of a nostalgic throwback to the old days of reviewing. When that dies, an era will have officially ended.

I'm actually not sure AVGN could change. It might be too late for him to attract new fans, and doing anything too radically different might just alienate his existing fans.

Irate Gamer ironically exists in a similar niche and seems to have embraced being this sort of throwback to the old days of reviewing.

 

[TVB]

Irate Gamer ironically exists in a similar niche and seems to have embraced being this sort of throwback to the old days of reviewing.

It's weird that both Chris Bores and Doug Walker have been hated upon forever, yet the two are winning, and Bimmy keeps losing is very interesting to me. If only Alexander Badr returned to the video game reviewing scene with his Game Dude character.

 

[skykiii]

It's weird that both Chris Bores and Doug Walker have been hated upon forever, yet the two are winning

Speaking of which, I just discovered this gem:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDVrP7GPakY

I actually did try to watch the actual AVGN movie, but I lost interest at the point where it tries to have the Nerd being heartbroken upon finding out the girl was playing him. Doug's review there actually took the movie and made it actually entertaining.

 

[mlanguishi]

Wow, rough joke here. And holy crap.

 

[Doctor of Autism]

Don't forget to include these gems

It's a crying shame that he moved on from these type of videos and (as of current) has focused more time on doing religious prayer videos.

Yeah but he at least provided these modern classics

It's weird that both Chris Bores and Doug Walker have been hated upon forever, yet the two are winning, and Bimmy keeps losing is very interesting to me. If only Alexander Badr returned to the video game reviewing scene with his Game Dude character.

Chris Bores is only winning in just being more obscure and not being the target of ridicule. Otherwise, he's barely making any views nowadays whereas Bimmy can throw a low effort video and get millions of views if it has the AVGN label on it. But Doug definitely has been doing better nowadays.

 

[BrunoMattei]

Wow, rough joke here. And holy crap.

I took a look at this and Screen Wave seems to go out of their way to grab the shittiest and most suspicious sponsor for James' videos:



He's shilling some kind of cloud/VR/headset thing where the idea is that you hook up a bunch of shit to your console or whatever and can play the games by wearing the headset and having the glasses on as a display. The whole thing looks like one of those cheap Chinese POS items you see in a midnight infomercial or lining the shelves at a discount store.

The James & John videos are not very good as well. A lot of forced and fake laughs being made by James and the whole thing is just really awkward to watch.

 

[Harm]

Wow, rough joke here. And holy crap.

This is so fucking uncomfortable. Not the hair joke, but the controller shenanigans that follow. James accidentally takes John's turn, so John starts treating him like a child and not allowing him to even hold the controller. This only makes James more uncomfortable, but he can't bring himself to confront John about this. How sad. James & Mike Mondays was awkward but not in a "this man is suffering" way.

 

[xXx: State of the Union]

John is the man April needs in her life

 

[Honka Honka Burning Love]

Honestly, what do people think would have been a good cutoff point for James? Just like how James is the Simpsons of internet reviewers I think a lot of the issues with the recent episodes are just simply through tedium doing this for so long.

The first Adpocalypse? Honestly the answer to this is "Whenever Mike got fed up with dealing with youtube's horseshit and decided that streaming was more fun"

 

[skykiii]

Honestly, if AVGN was gonna retire, Episode 200 (the LJN clipshow) would've been the time to do it. For all its problems that episode, whenever I watch it, does feel like a climactic, satisfying ending to the "story" of AVGN, with him finally coming to terms with why bad games get made and being able to forgive and move on from what was once considered his greatest nemesis.

Keeping the show going past that point--to use a ridiculously nerdy comparison--is like keeping Avatar going after Aang defeats Firelord Ozai, or keeping Dragonball going after defeating a villain who literally takes the combined ki of planet Earth and ends up being the one time in the entire series that the Spirit Ball technique actually works.

 

[TVB]

John is the man April needs in her life

John seems to be more of a chad than James