20 years ago James Rolfe uploaded an edited video of himself playing Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest onto YouTube. This was supposed to be an injoke between two of his college friends Mike Matei and Brendan "Bootsy" Castner from their college days staying up drinking beer and playing classic games.
Suffice to say he was popular. Mad popular. So popular that it had spawned games, a crowd funded movie, T-shirts, and DVDs. And served as a key inspiration for A LOT of content creators throughout the early 00's and teens.
Like most people I loved AVGN when it was first released. It served as edu-tainment as it was glmpse of how gaming was in the past compared to now. I never had an Atari 2600 or suffered through the difficulties of LJN's developed games on the NES, but James was able to keep his videos educational and entertaining at the same time. I fell off the series soon after the movie and being bought by ScreenWave. Like most people I felt that selling to a larger corporation took a lot of magic from his videos.
I recently got the audiobook of his autobiography 'A Movie Making Nerd' and loved every bit of it. It really fleshes out the creator over the character. James isn't an angry nerd. He isn't that outspoken. And he definitely isn't a business guy either. He is literally a guy that loves to make movies. Listening to his upbringing, his struggles to connect to people, but also the lengths he goes to make films is honestly one of his most admirable traits. He loves movies, he loves making movies, and the nerd was the thing that gained traction. He was in the right place at the right time.
So for those that remember the nerd please raise a Rolling Rock in his honour (as next year the series will be able to drink!), and those that haven't heard of him before I highly recommend his GhostBusters NES trilogy, Die Hard, and Friday the 13th/Nightmare on Elm Street/ Power Glove trilogy.
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