Infinite Critique

A couple of years ago I read a post on a computer games forum recommending people check out a handful of videos by someone called The Angry Nintendo Nerd on a video games website called ScrewAttack. The videos featured James Rolfe portraying an obscenely crass American guy giving some humorously over zealous negative reviews of some particularly poor retro Nintendo video games. With Rolfe’s colourful language, a catchy theme-tune and some home-made special effects, the angry nerd ranting about ridiculous and annoying parts of games in his reviews quickly became a big hit with gaming enthusiasts on the web. As time went on a lot more angry nerd videos were made and to avoid any trademark issues there was a name change to the Angry Video Game Nerd (AVGN for short) as well as a shift to review games on other non Nintendo retro consoles too. Last year the AVGN show reached a much bigger audience when it (along with a couple of other ScrewAttack net shows) was licensed by GameTrailers (an MTV online company) and it now has a fairly large international audience and fan-base.

The AVGN videos are all very funny and if you’re interested in video games they can genuinely be quite informative. However, though it’s all in jest, the videos feature a lot of obscene language, so probably aren’t suitable for younger viewers or anyone who’s offended by such things. And, while it’s not necessarily a must, some knowledge of video games/gaming will help in understanding why particular parts of them are frustrating or ridiculous.

Rolfe is a big film fan and an amateur film-maker and has his own website (CineMassacre) and a couple of YouTube Channels where he discusses and showcases his work (including the AVGN videos). Several of his video game reviews have had a film related theme. His most recent AVGN review is of some old Indiana Jones games to mark the release of the new Indi4 film, here’s a direct link to the review: http://www.gametrailers.com/player/34277.html, it’s longer then most but it’s a good example of why the AVGN videos are so popular.

If you’re interested in video games and don’t happen to know about ScrewAttack or GameTrailers, there are links to each site in their titles in this sentence and both have lots of video-game related news, information, chat and stuff. Also, for anyone interested in films, here are links to James Rolfe’s website and YouTube channels featuring some of his other videos and short films and information about them and himself. Website: http://cinemassacre.com/, YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/Cinemassacre, http://www.youtube.com/user/JamesNintendoNerd.

(On a side note: I had and do plan to write more and more frequently on aaoti and other subjects for Infinite Critique, but have been a bit ill over the past couple of weeks and haven’t got round to any writing. So you can thank me being ill for not having to skip my posts to get to the better stuff on Infinite Critique, but I’m feeling fine now so roll on me wasting more seconds of your valuable time.)