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Message: [QUOTE="Gorse, post: 46503, member: 73"] The Angry Video Game Nerd was a really big deal for me growing up. I started watching it when I was 10 years old on the old Cinemassacre website (I remember when the Batman episode was uploaded), and from then on I was hooked. I think my first episode was either M.C. Kids or part 1 of the Ghostbusters trilogy. The show was just fucking hilarious to me as a kid – I constantly laughed my head off at just how creative James got with this swears, and I actually really did learn a lot about retro gaming from it! It probably heavily influenced at least some of games I'm interested in, and some of the other internet content I like to watch. Once I got my friends into it, we were off, and we watched every new episode as soon as they came out (on Thursday afternoons at GameTrailers and/or Screwattack). We'd constantly discuss the show at school – did you like the newest episode? What game is he going to do next!? We were far, far too young to be watching it, but that's what made it so good. After I'd seen every AVGN episode (about four trillion times each), I got into Rolfe's other work, and loved that, too. Outside of AVGN, the original run of [B]You Know What's Bullshit? [/B]and the original series of [B]Board James[/B] were also massive successes with me. (The Mr. Bucket, Shark Attack, and Dream Phone episodes of Board James might just be my favourite things Rolfe ever put out. Me and my friends fucking lost our minds when we saw each of them, and I personally must have seen the entire series a million times over – pound for pound, I like it as much as AVGN.) Up until about 2011 or so, I also kept up with [B]Monster Madness [/B]every year – the [B]Godzillathon [/B]in particular introduced me to that series, and I think some of those episodes are way better than the movies they're about. I remember one day in October 2008, when I had the day off from school, where, after playing with my friends all morning outside, I excitedly rushed home to catch the latest episode as soon as it was uploaded. That was far more than half my life ago. :cry: I also fucking love, love, love Rolfe's most obscure series, [B]Monkey Cheez [/B]– me and my friends quoted it constantly in school and had several in-jokes based around it. All that shit still makes me laugh my head off. I also read the Cinemassacre blog back in the day, and it was actually really good! That was back when James was getting invited to E3 and conventions and stuff, so it was interesting to hear his thoughts on, like, newly-released DS games. (I actually bought Mario and Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story on his recommendation.) Of course, his crossover with the Nostalgia Critic introduced me to that world, too, and that's a whoooole other chapter of my life. I stopped watching AVGN after James switched to an HD camera, which I think began with the Winter Sports episode. Like other posters in this thread have mentioned, the magic died in about 2012 or 2013. I never saw the movie, never really watched James and Mike Mondays, and have only seen a scant few AVGN episodes past that point – none of them really seemed that good. (I did like The Town with No Name and Amiga CD ones, however... Are those both seriously [B][I]SIX [/I][/B]years old!?) I actually listened to a few episodes of the Cinemassacre podcast (including the Doug Walker one), but they were pretty poor. All the fatsos James surrounded himself with really seemed like they were sucking the life out of him. [IMG align="right" width="286px" size="625x1000"]https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81mkwHJ8XgL._UF1000,1000_QL80_.jpg[/IMG]My final interaction with the Cinemassacre brand was listening to the audiobook of Rolfe's biography, [B]A Movie Making Nerd[/B], at the end of 2022. Made a nice coda to that part of my life, I thought. It was really weird... the AVGN is only discussed in, like, a fifth of the book, and the rest of it is essentially a lead-up to a major embarrassment he had in college. (Which was certainly interesting, don't get me wrong.) There's also a detailed description of James' reaction to 9/11, which was an odd inclusion, and a very bizarre passage about Donald Trump where James outright calls him a "horrible man" – that caught me completely off-guard, and I'm about 95% sure his wife (who edited the book) made him put it in. James kind of comes off as an egotist in the book. He seems to think he's some incredible auteur filmmaker, and he has a little paddy on about people who reacted negatively to the AVGN movie. He certainly is a respectable individual (well, heh heh, I'd say he was about 15+ years ago), but, at least in the book, he seemed pretty self-aggrandizing. If that's really him, then, wow... I was very surprised. It's definitely worth a read, but don't expect a ton of actual Cinemassacre internet video stuff. One day... maybe even already... we'll forget James, and AVGN, and Cinemassacre, and everything he's contributed to internet video culture. I liked online videos back when they were more like professionally-produced TV shows instead of video essays, but that era is long gone, and I strongly doubt it'll ever come back. At the very least, I can say that the first 100 episodes of AVGN, and every other Cinemassacre video released during that timeframe, are crucial parts of me. My favourite AVGN episodes, in no particular order, are: [LIST] [*][B][B]Action 52 + Cheetahmen[/B][/B] [*][B][B]The Ghostbusters Trilogy[/B][/B] [*]Both parts of [B]Double Vision[/B] [*][B]Atari Jaguar[/B] [*][B]Halloween (Atari 2600)[/B] [*][B]Dick Tracy [/B][This one should be on everyone's list.] [*][B]Sega CD [/B]and [B]Sega 32X[/B] [*][B]Bugs Bunny's Birthday Blowout[/B] [*][B]Virtual Boy[/B] [/LIST] Also, during summer 2020, me and some college buddies had a little wager: whoever could beat the web version of [URL='http://www.neocomputer.org/ddd/play.htm'][B]Deadly Danger Dungeon[/B][/URL] first would get a round of beers bought for him when quarantine was lifted. I, of course, won that challenge, but all my friends moved away before I could get my beer. :cry: And finally, if you've never seen it – even if you've never seen any of James' work – you really should watch [URL='https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Kc3JqVIIJA'][B]The Dragon in My Dreams[/B],[/URL] which is just a phenomenally-touching video... Easily one of the best pieces of Internet content I've ever seen, and perhaps Rolfe's unsung masterpiece. Cowabunga? Cowa-fucking-piece-of-dog-shit. [/QUOTE]

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