I always assumed the AmigaCD32 he destroyed was one that didn't work, or was just a plastic shell made to look like the real thing. Did he confirm somewhere that he destroyed a real one?
Other than that, I liked that episode too, even if some of the humor came from just how hilariously surreal that Kang Fu game was.
I actually avoided watching the Town With No Name episode for a long time, because I tend to not watch videos about games I've seen other youtubers cover, and that one was of course riffed by the almighty Retsupurae (I miss them about as much as I miss Spoony). I realize now that was a stupid hang-up to have, since of course Retsu just riff the footage, while James actually describes how the game plays and how to make the plot advance and gets the "real" ending of the game (or rather, whoever recorded footage got the real ending, but.. you know what I mean).
On this note, I've seen Amiga fans say the Zool games are classics, but I loaded them up on emulator and... eh... I guess you had to grow up with them. Playing them for the first time now, the element I really hate is where you have to collect a majority of the items in each stage before it'll let you continue on.
I was kinda mixed on the Earthbound episode, in particular I was hoping he'd somehow recreate the game's actual ending in his own Nerd interpretation, but instead he acts like the story ends at Ness' dream. I'm also not a big fan of his "it doesn't play like Final Fantasy VI therefore its bad" model of complaints.
Admittedly I've seen a lot of supposed fans of RPGs who don't understand how or why they work, but regardless... the thing is Earthbound is balanced around its limited inventory, the whole point is to incentivize using your items instead of just hording them. Whereas with Final Fantasy, you usually end up with thousands of potions, ethers, rat dicks etc. that you're never ever gonna use because the magic is so overpowered and easily refilled. I can understand how limited inventory can seem bad if you're not used to it, but more people ought to give it a chance.
Apologies if I said this already, but I tend to think AVGN is at his best when he's either discussing hardware (the 3DO or Sega 32X episodes) or is dealing with something potentially nostalgic. It feels wrong for him to talk about something like Life of Black Tiger (I only just watched the ep but I honestly did not like Gottfried, he really felt like he was reading off a cue card to me). I remember feeling like his Incredible Crash Dummies episode was a particular high point. It was also one of those "Oh god I used to actually have one of those damn toys" moments (my crash dummy lost its head on a school playground and I never found it... and I never bought another crash dummy toy ever again).
EDIT: As for a shark-jumping moment, I still think there really wasn't one. I said in past posts that I've always had mixed feelings about AVGN, and some of the complaints about later seasons echo things I remember saying about his "good" years. For me the main factor is just that his earliest episodes are nostalgic as they remind me of a time when Youtube was actually good, while his more modern episodes are only nostalgic in the media they talk about, and sometimes how they discuss them.
The LJN episode wasn't great, but its final moments actually kinda brought a tear to my eye and really felt like a "final AVGN" type deal, like an end of an era. Which, if he really is ditching the Slobs and trying to make it more personal, maybe it really is the end of an era of sorts....
