Quote Originally Posted by Gameguy View Post
I never really watched Nostalgia Critic much, maybe a few early episodes years ago but not that many. His earlier reviews tended to focus on actual bad/mediocre movies or obscure ones, like the various animated Titanic movies as an example. Today he basically reviews recent popular movies as they'll get more searches and therefore more views compared to anything obscure. But those popular films are actually good, so there's really less to make fun of. He's started reviewing well loved movies like Disney's Hercules, what exactly can you make fun of with that? So his overall quality went down, especially since he added sketch comedy to his reviews awhile ago. He really wanted to be done with the character but just couldn't be successful with anything else so he had to keep going with it.
Admittedly at first I wasn't a huge NC fan either, because like AVGN he tended to be unfair to movies, often doing the cinemasins thing of acting like something isn't explained when it actually is, among other things... and also because I found that NC was only occasionally funny. Like for every one "made me laugh out loud" video, five or ten would be just "mildly amusing."

Comedy in general is a weird thing. If I've been away from it for awhile and then I go watch certain funny reviews or whatever, it'll be the most hilarious thing ever... but as soon as I look for more it just starts to feel tired. I have this experience with Phelous a lot... I'll watch enough of him to get bored, but then months later will come back and be reminded just how insane Dingo Pictures movies are.


There are definitely much better reviews for games by other reviewers, even back 10+ years ago I found much better reviews for old games. I found the Friday the 13th map confusing when I played the game years ago, but that was mostly because the controls were backwards and going left ended up moving right, etc. I'm sure I could have got used to it if I needed to but I just moved onto better games instead.
For some reason the whole right-and-left thing just never confused me, I don't know why.

While we're mentioning other reviewers, if you remember the Game Dude, he disappeared awhile ago and actually used to post here on the forums to promote his videos years back. All those threads are now locked because of spamming. I actually wanted to post an update to them as apparently recent documentaries came out following up on what happened to him. Long story short, he started stalking his ex girlfriend who cheated on him, started confronting law enforcement at the same time, and fled the country to avoid prosecution.
It sounds like he was the Game Dude, he was so rude, he played the worst games with a bad attitude...

Yeah I heard of him. I actually first ran across him because of this series of Youtube videos called "I Can't Believe Its Not AVGN!" who mostly just plastered text over game reviews to criticize them, sometimes with some actual video editing. I Can't Believe... tho was a big fan of Channel Awesome and like them, just loved running gags--in particular I remember this recurring clip of a kid who said "I didn't know!" whenever someone would state the obvious.

Anyway, my first encounter with Game Dude is he actually did a response to one of I Can't Believe...'s videos, and there was a sort of feud between them for awhile. I also do recall at some point seeing Game Dude's posts here and how he spammed. He struck me as a guy with problems back then, so when I later learned of his legal troubles, I was like "figures."

Sort of similar to all these e-celebs who are now involved in controversies... in a lot of cases, the signs were there.

I'm still looking for the first Taito Legends as well, eventually I'll find a cheap copy locally.
I used to own both of them on PS2, wound up selling them some time back. I've heard that Japan's version, "Taito Memories" (of which there are four discs, not just two, and they include a lot of games Legends does not) are way better... but I don't have a modded/import PS2 to play those on.

These days, since I've had money troubles, I'm more keen on emulation for this type of thing, and I tend to find that in most of these compilations there's only like four games I like. One thing that bothered me right off the bat is that the Legends version of Space Gun has no option to use an actual light-gun... you have to play with a controller. Granted, ever since my CRT died, that could be construed as a plus...

Very true, those recent ones are much better, though I would say basically on par with his earlier reviews rather than better. With age he's mellowed out a bit too so his fake rage just isn't as extreme as it used to be, which is partly why I say he's too old now for the part. It was also funnier when old games were less of a real collectible and most people just thought of the cheap/crappy games as disposable, like you wouldn't feel bad using a crap NES game as a drink coaster back then. Now every game is a part of history and needs to be saved and respected.
Honestly this brings me to something that annoys me.... Rolfe is AFAIK not even really a gamer, yet he has all this gaming swag I would love and cherish. Sometimes even redundancies (he has TWO copies of Phantasy Star II on Genesis, both with case!)

Like, he could put that on ebay and make lots of money if he needs it, and it could wind up in the hands of someone who would actually want to use it.

And then I see reviews like Crash Dummies where he seems to have destroyed an actual cartridge, or worse, episodes where he destroys consoles... I can only hope that those are some sort of camera trickery or that he's only breaking things already proven to not work. Seeing someone break these just for a damn youtube video these days is kind of grating.

That and you could argue the AVGN is a huge part of why retro game prices went through the roof.