61 Frames Per Second : angry video game nerd

The Atari Jaguar and the Bit Wars

Nadia Oxford — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 03:05:00 GMT

The Angry Video Game Nerd is back, and he's kicking off his resurrection with a two-part series on the Jaguar. Part one offers a brief history of the Jaguar, but doesn't explore its impotent game library at any length. Instead, the Nerd talks about how the Jaguar helped loosen a very powerful advertising ankle trap: the “Bit Wars.”

Putting it simply, if you were a gamer and conscious in between the years of 1985 and 1996, you were led to believe that more “bits” in a console equals a better system. You also fell for it, at least until certain truths started to leak out from pores of the 32/64-bit system race.

The NES was a huge improvement over the Atari 2600. The Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis were a huge improvement over the rinky-dink graphics on the NES. 32-bit systems were capable of orchestrated audio, anime cutscenes and 3D graphics. And that's where the waters started to muddy up.

Before the 32/64-bit race began in earnest, I was going through a small obsessive fit with Capcom arcade games. In particular, Street Fighter Alpha, and (sigh) Dungeons and Dragons: Shadows Over Mystara. I thought for certain I'd see ports on the N64, because, duh, Nintendo's system was going to be the most powerful one in the console race! Why wouldn't it happen?

I posted the question on my high school's BBS and was laughed at by a lot of angry video game nerds who predated the Angry Video Game Nerd.

Storage space, development kits, costs...those meant little to me. It was all about the bits. Even though Squaresoft had thrown up its hands over the N64's cartridges and said, “Nope.” Even though Atari had long since made an ass of itself with the Jaguar.

It took a while, but I came to realise that “bits” were an advertising ruse that was even more effective and long-lived than Sega's infamous Blast Processing. The scope and vision of Super Mario 64 could never be achieved on the Playstation, but all things told, it didn't look much better than a Playstation game, and I had been bred to believe that the evolution of games was marked by its aesthetics.

The Nerd mentions how hard it was to convince his parents that a 16-bit Super Nintendo was actually a whole new experience next to the 8-bit Nintendo. At least the visual jump was evident from the start. My biggest challenge was convincing my parents that a 32-bit Playstation offered a whole new gameplay experience next to the N64. The N64 had Shadows of the Empire and Waverace; the Playstation had sprites, Final Fantasy VII, and Mega Man X4.

Problem was, I had long ago trained them to believe that “up” was the only way to go with bit counts. They weren't about to let me spend hundreds of dollars on a downgrade.

Eventually, I won. And my parents knew for sure they'd been duped when they heard the top-quality voice acting in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

Related Links:

Life Without Playstation
The Angry Video Game Nerd's House of Nintendo Horrors
Wasted Rentals, Wasted Youth: Bram Stoker's Dracula

The Angry Video Game Nerd's House of Nintendo Horrors

Nadia Oxford — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 03:37:00 GMT

There's been a noticeable lull in publicised Angry Video Game Nerd rants. Apparently, Rolfe is waiting for his contract renewal with ScrewAttack, and he's forbidden to yell until the people who sign his paycheques say it's okay. Man, I've been there.

To tide over the masses, the Nerd has published a short YouTube video showing off his NES game collection. How many Nintendo games do you think he owns? Times 'a lot' by a skillion and you'll get an idea.

Actually, I got more out of this video than I thought I would. The Nerd shows us his legitimate games, but in spite of Nintendo's best efforts, the NES had a lot of titles that weren't anywhere close to legitimate. Tengen's “illegal” version of Tetris was only the Purgatory of a twisted plastic hell. Deeper in the forbidden depths, you will see atrocities like cartridges bandaged together with sticky “Sale!” stickers, and cartridges with connectors poking out of their misbegotten heads.

Come one, come all. Two bits a gander.

Related Links:

The Angry Video Game Nerd Says a Bad Word: Deadly Towers
Periphery: The Angry Video Game Nerd Edition
Wow, Superman 64 Really Was Terrible

FMV Hell: Moses and Me

Nadia Oxford — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 01:04:00 GMT

Last week, a member of the Gamespite forums put together a Let's Play for Link: The Faces of Evil. I can only guess he's tired of life. I suppose living has lost its lustre for me as well, as I followed his progress throughout the weekend.

The CD-i's Zelda atrocities are heckled at every opportunity, and with good reason. The controls are intolerable, the characters are abominable, and the cut scenes are indescribable. But I was shocked to learn through this particular Let's Play that the CD-i slopped its userbase with worse material through its “career”.

See, the CD-i's Zelda library could at least legitimately be called games. Not good games or even functional games, but games nonetheless. There were items to collect, a goal to reach, terrain to navigate. Moses: The Exodus on the CD-i, on the other hand, didn't offer any gameplay aside from “Sing along to songs that are too bland for Sunday School.” Admittedly, that was a clever way to skirt around the controller issues that plagued Faces of Evil.

The Angry Video Game Nerd already made a passing mention (rather, a passing rant) about the dreary song collection, but its champion, “Moses and Me” is worth another look. The song is about a school kid who's pressured into whispering test answers to his lazy-ass classmates. The choice is clear: do as they ask, or “end up all alone.”

Much as I hate to admit it, “Moses and Me” tackles a conundrum that every kid finds himself in sometimes, particularly shy, brainy kids desperate for friends. Unsurprisingly, the song pitches forward and lands flat on its face with its proposed resolution: believe hard enough in Moses and he will somehow come down from Mount Sinai to protect you from bullies like a shiny Gyrados.

I showed this video to some of my friends, and we asked each other important questions:

-Is Moses responsible for the graffiti at the start of the video?

-Why didn't the yard monitor come running when a wrinkled old Moses cosplayer showed up in the vicinity of young boys?

-Is Moses buddies with this guy?

I suppose only the Lord knows.

Related Links:

FMV Hell: Star Studded Casts: Do You Give a Crap?
FMV Hell: Mega Man X4
FMV Hell: Sonic CD

Wasted Rentals, Wasted Youth: Bram Stoker's Dracula (SNES)

Nadia Oxford — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 01:33:00 GMT

The Angry Videogame Nerd has posted a Halloween Game Shitfest just in time for Satan's birthday. The first installment focuses on all the bad Dracula-themed games spanning back to the beginning of time. Turns out there are a good number of Dracula-bombs out there, and we're not even counting any of the lesser Castlevania titles.

Angry Nerd even takes a brief look at Bram Stoker's Dracula, which saw release on the NES, SNES and the Game Boy. I kind of feel like cringing into a ball and sucking my thumb when I say this, but I've played Bram Stoker's Dracula on the SNES and Gameboy. The experience was like biting a hangnail; oh so painful, but enjoyable in a masochistic way.

Hark! A flashback!

Most weeks, my parents allowed my brothers and I to rent a video game. We had to take turns, and my younger brother picked out Bram Stoker's Dracula one week. I wanted to throttle him.

The logical thing to do when a shit game is in your presence is to not play it, but I had kind of an obsession thing going on. Nintendo game in front of me? OMG, must play, no matter how painful. Actually, maybe there was a bit of a spite thing going on here, though all of this might have something to do with my childhood love for eating the syrup-covered styrofoam that used to line packages of butter tarts.

Bram Stoker's Dracula was pretty awful, though I have to give Jonathan Harker props for acting so calm under pressure. Man, just look at that confident strut. Look at that smooth knife action. Maybe he's just resigned himself to death, seeing as his "dagger" has the range of a newborn kitten's claws.

Dig those rad sound effects. Harker has to deal with Dracula's cloned angry hun army in the first level, in addition to their identical puppy mill pitbulls. If you can endure the pain and burrow beneath the constant "RUH, RUH!" you'll actually hear a half-decent soundtrack. Later levels had some creepy tunes, too.

My praise ends here, though, at a full-stop--not unlike the stone wall that stymies Harker early in the game. A wasted rental, overall. One of many, many, many.

Related Links:

What Is a Man? More Than a 4chan Meme
The Angry Video Game Nerd Says a Bad Word: Deadly Towers
Chiptune Friday: Do the Monster Mash!

Alternate Soundtrack: Battletoads vs. The Blood Brothers

Derrick Sanskrit — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 14:30:00 GMT

Here's another one born out of discussion in the comments. Hooray for audience participation!

Battletoads is the notoriously challenging beat 'em up platformer developed by Rare before their more questionable forays into the worlds of pre-rendered apes, Mii substitutes and anthropomorphic candy sacks. Though conceived as an over-the-top competitor to Konami's popular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games, the extreme attitude and legendary difficulty of the games made them a pop culture phenomenon of their own right in the early 1990's. I was happy to leave this one alone for a while, but the Angry Video Game Nerd reminded me of my biggest problem with this game, that the catchiest music on the whole cart is on the pause screen! This situation must be rectified.

This sounds like a job for the Blood Brothers, post-thrash-hardcore quintet of skinny screaming poets who, much like Battletoads, hide incredible complexity behind a brash and loud exterior. Their final album, "Young Machetes," was released fifteen years after the game, so the 'Toads would probably be of appropriately angsty years to appreciate lyrics like "the taxi's are jaguars throwing fits, subways are subterranean bullets," and "don't look away from the clouds leaking rust, the kingdom of heaven reeks of burning witches and dust." Yeah, go ahead and make fun of how cliché it sounds, but that's pretty f'ing extreme right there, and imagery that perfectly describes the horrifying sci-fi nightmare the Battletoads inhabit. Just be sure to pause the music along with the game to rock out to that sweet pause music.

Related articles:
Common: Rare Makes Bad Games
The Angry Video Game Nerd Says A Bad Word: Deadly Towers
Alternate Soundtrack: Super Star Solder vs. MSTRKRFT
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Aliens and Games and TV, Oh My: The Jace Hall Show

John Constantine — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 22:00:00 GMT

Videogames, they’re played on televisions. Well, they’re played on computer monitors too, but those have all but turned into televisions in recent years, right? Right. Of course, 61 Frames Per Second has been pondering and expounding on the relative merits of televised programming based on and about videogames of late. As our very own Amber Ahlborn made the point the other day, videogame television aimed at avid players is typically schlock ridden garbage, marred by a need to come off as both cool enough for the cool kids and geekily informed enough to appeal to the really cool kids. Amber’s spot-on in saying that the best game television is on the internet. When it comes to quality, the comedic characters created by Yahtzee and the Angry Video Game Nerd are joined by the first truly successful preview/review show, The 1up Show. Ryan O’Donnell and Jane Pinckard found the winning formula of scripted dialogue, personality and informed journalism lacking in every other attempt at the form, and O’Donnell has kept it strong for three years running.

The golden rule of entertainment is that when you make something that works, someone is going to imitate you on the quick. Until today, I had all but forgotten about the recently launched The Jace Hall Show, relegating to the section of my brain labeled “Mildly Interesting Things N’Gai Croal Wrote About and Failed to Hold My Attention Oh Look Metroid Fan Fiction”. For anyone unfamiliar with the name, Jace Hall is the founder of Monolith Productions (creators of F.E.A.R. and Condemned: Criminal Origins) and has been a significant player in the games industry for over a decade. I watched my first full episode of the show today because Hall was visiting Gearbox for a look at both Borderlands and Aliens: Colonial Marines. The show’s slick production works well and its premise of sneaking quick looks of games still early in development – the pilot had a-sneeze-and-you’ll-miss-it look at Duke Nukem Forever – is a novel hook. But it’s hard not to notice its attempt to mimic The 1up Show’s casual tone and the similarity is a little off-putting. The coverage is there, but it still needs a personality of its own to thrive.

You can catch the whole first season here on Crackle.com or on your Xbox 360 via Live Arcade.

Related links:

Video Game TV: Can It Ever Be Good?
Yahtzee Says, Support Your Local Independent Developer (He’s Right.)
Video Game Television the Canadian Way, Eh?
Horrors That Time Forgot: GamePro TV
Game Over, Man: Aliens – Colonial Marines Penned By Battlestar Galactica Writers

The Angry Video Game Nerd Says a Bad Word: Deadly Towers

Nadia Oxford — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 23:04:00 GMT

Sons and Daughters of the 8-bit Gods, it is time. The Angry Video Game Nerd has summoned the power of his inner heart and our contributed swears to bark back at the evil that eclipsed our Nintendos so long ago: Deadly Towers.

Note that the audio on this movie is Not Safe For Work in any regard. Things get pretty raunchy at record speed.

Personally, I think I would have preferred a complete review instead of a bunch of strung-together swears, however foul (wait, I am talking about the Angry Video Game Nerd, right?). Deadly Towers is a game that doesn't come by often. It's as rare as Dracula's centennial resurrection and fifty times more frightening. Most "bad" games are merely mediocre, or they fail for very obvious reasons like making the controller come to life and bite you on the thumb. You say to yourself, "This game is an unfair piece of crap" and you throw it out the window in good conscience.

But when you play Deadly Towers, your brain goes numb. You know you're playing a terrible game, but you're helpless to turn away. It's like those nightmare stories about paralysed patients waking up on the operating table and lying frozen while the scalpel cuts into them.

When you turn on Deadly Towers, you're subject to a long and rambling story that's obviously been translated by apes with twisted optic nerves. The graphics are grey and washed-out. The challenge is indescribably hard and the bonging MIDI music will drive you naked into the street, brandishing a butcher knife. But a lot of NES games can be described as grey, forgettable adventures that are difficult to navigate. Somehow, Deadly Towers takes all these adorable traits, amplifies them by a thousand and throws them all together to mate in an orgy of flying cock-swords that stab you in the ear twenty times before you begin to fathom what's going on.

In other words, the Nerd has put up with a lot in the past by playing all the way through games that no one wants to touch. It's obvious he couldn't bring himself to pass Deadly Towers' initial Pit of Horror and Dispair (aka Level One) and I'm not about to hold that against him.

Related Links:

Periphery: Angry Video Game Nerd Edition
The Nerd Needs You!
Wow, Superman 64 Really Was Terrible

The Nerd Needs You!

Nadia Oxford — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 23:33:00 GMT

If you thought the Angry Video Game Nerd probably pulled something or lost some vital part of his soul while reviewing the truly wretched Superman 64...you'd be right. That's why he needs us all to chip in, ease him onto his crutches and help him review another digital terror: Deadly Towers for the NES.

How does a mortal gamer even begin to describe Prince Myer's wack adventure? Let's turn to Seanbaby. Seanbaby is not a mortal, but actually a demigod and the all-purpose warrior that arts and crafts booklets are referring to when they tell you not to turn on the oven or use scissors without an adult present. Because Seanbaby's intestines are lined with lead, he was able to play Deadly Towers and place it at its deserved #1 spot in his list of The 20 Worst NES Games Of All Time:

"Deadly Towers. This game was originally called, "Shitty Towers," but when seventeen play testers went on a homicidal rampage, its name was changed to remind us all of that cold, bloody morning.

"Don't try to make sense of it. Just do everything in your power to not play this game."

How does the Angry Video Game Nerd plan to take on that is accursed in the sight of God? One thing's for sure: it'll be a pretty big project and the Nerd is asking everyone for their best swears. He's stocking up for the event like an '80s family hoarding tinned food for the Apocalypse.

For the record, I have played Shitty Towers. I can't properly relay the experience because my brain is still trying to purge the poison. I can liken it to this much, though: have you ever read volume two of Brian Lee O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim? Do you remember when started having screaming flashbacks brought on by the sheer weirdness of Honest Ed's Department Store? It was a bit like that, except a gremlin also popped out of my stomach and asked me why I had breath while his daughter lay stone dead in my colon.

Related Links:

Periphery: Angry Video Game Nerd Edition
Wow, Superman 64 Really Was Terrible
Up All Night: Trojan

Wow, Superman 64 Really Was Terrible

Nadia Oxford — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 23:33:00 GMT

The Angry Videogame Nerd isn't beloved by everyone, but I find comfort in his disjointed rantings. It's definitely a hit-or-miss affair, but when he latches onto a game that's actually worthy of his unbridled rage, fun for everyone ensues.

Somewhere in the back of the Bible, God warns us against mixing the Angry Videogame Nerd with Superman 64 for fear of igniting an early Apocalypse. We did not heed His warning and instead encouraged the union. Thankfully, we all survived the result and we all had a good laugh about our near-deaths.

I found the Nerd's rant particularly educational. We've gotten used to seeing Superman 64 near the top of every "Worst Games Evar" list, often second only to the Atari 2600's E.T.--the title that touched the game industry's with a glowing finger that killed rather than healed. But I never realised how ghastly Titus' disaster actually is. Superman 64's very existence offends me. It does not have the right to be matter. Why should it exist when worms and bugs die every day?

Sorry for the dramatic streak, I'm just having a bit of fun.

I often review games and manga in exchange for bags of weevil-ridden flour and vials of heroin--er, I mean, vials of not-heroin. Maybe I'm soft-hearted, but I rarely dole out failing grades. There are many, many mediocre pieces of work out there, but (in my opinion) few failures. In my book, you get a grade for having the determination and stones to put pen to paper and keep on going until you have a finished product.

There is not one speck of effort in Superman 64. It completely earns its failure. It revels in it like a little boy who picks his nose to gross out his elders. I guess it's possible at least one developer missed his kid's birthday because of deadlines, but I'd be surprised. Look up the game's intro on YouTube, where Lex "throws" some of Superman's loser friends into some virtual reality world...by standing completely still. His victims stand even more still. Hell, Lois Lame poses for the event like it's a glamour shot.

There's something to be said about Superman 64, though: it will always live on as one of history's worst examples of a video game. That's arguably preferable to sinking down into Mediocrity Mire* and never being heard of again.

(*Misery Mire's slightly more tolerable twin bog.)

Related Links:

Periphery: Angry Video Game Nerd Edition
Common: Rare Makes Bad Games

Periphery: Angry Video Game Nerd Edition

John Constantine — Thu, 15 May 2008 17:00:00 GMT

I like to think, in my more ponderous moments (read: stoned), that gods are born constantly. It was probably the steady diet of British fantasy I consumed while being an ornery Catholic school student during my formative years that led to this continuing line of speculation. Working on the internet every day, I’ve started to spot the reigning deities of the Web 2.0 pantheon. The Angry Video Game Nerd is one of them. I’m not wholly convinced James D. Rolfe was ever a human being at all; he was born straight from the net, a spiritual conjuring made of Youtube users, fandom, and nostalgia addictions. His followers are legion too. Just look at the sheer number of blatant imitators sacrificing their dignity at his altar, the numerous acolytes playing his theme song across Myspace and Facebook. The Nerd’s latest is a look at the myriad licensed peripherals for the original Nintendo Entertainment System and while his acerbic wit takes recognizable oldies like the NES Zapper and Power Pad, he mentions a few that are truly obscure. The Roll & Rocker? The Speedboard? I’d never heard of them either. But as the Nerd reminds us, they certainly do suck.

And since this is filed under Periphery, 61 Frames Per Second’s regular look at gaming peripherals, you should know that Nintendo’s track record of terrible add-ons continues to this day. That Mario Kart wheel is, as the man would say, ass.

Head over to the AVGN’s homepage at Cinemassacre Productions and his home away from home with Screwattack on Gametrailers.com.