Awesome / James Rolfe

• The Angry Video Game Nerd
• James & Mike Mondays
• Board James

• There's one for James Rolfe: His Star Wars review videos, a surprisingly deep analysis of the iconic film series. Most of us will come out of watching those videos seeing Star Wars in a whole new light and gaining a greater appreciation for what it stands for.
• How about his annual Monster Madness videos? A movie review everyday in October, the 2008 edition all the Godzilla movies. The amount of work put into them every year is astounding, and he still does AVGN episodes.
• His description of "rewriting history" regarding the 16mm-film version of King Kong in his Same movies, different formats video.
  • Another impressive 16mm film in James Rolfe's collection is a first run print of Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, which dates to 1943.
• His final comments on his Top Ten Sequels That Aren't as Bad as Everyone Says. For him to say to go against the crowd and to think for yourself when it came to movies was truly something, especially considering that most internet critics say otherwise, is enough to win over almost any cynic.
• Perhaps the MOST EPIC COFFEE SPITTIN' EVER! can be viewed here.
• James' story of the day he beat Contra.
• James And Mike Play Mario Paint. Sure, it's mostly comical, but the long montage at the end of Mike using the SNES Mouse to draw all sorts of surprisingly (for the hardware) well done artwork of games such as Mickey Mania, Super Mario Land, Punch-Out!!, Star Fox, Street Fighter, Turtles In Time, Metroid, Bubble Bobble, Donkey Kong Country, Batman, and Doom, complete with the appropriate music playing during each segment, is just amazing, especially how he pulled it off with an SNES mouse on Mario Paint of all things. His drawing of The Nerd at the end, even if it was erased prematurely, was also pretty good. Mike himself mentioned in the comments that each drawing was done once a day and took roughly an hour. He also mentioned that each time he was finished with one, his hand became very sore. As he put it, "Man was not meant to draw on a Mario Paint mouse pad!"
• In episode 3 of Cinemassacre Mailbag, in between laughs, he declares a line from one e-mail directed to him to be "the greatest fucking quote [he's] ever read." The line in question: "Live like a windrammer as you fuck." Overlaps big-time with Funny Moment.
• The Dream Phone episode of Board James being released on April 1st and not being an April Fool's Joke.
• Getting zombie guru George A. Romero to make a quick cameo in his Dawn of the Dead Monster Madness review.
• For his movie The Curse of the Cat Lover's Grave, he dug a 5-foot hole in the ground by himself during a blizzard!
• In his SNES vs Genesis videos, James as a little kid is trying to defend Nintendo by pointing out the Tiger Games, posters, Power Pad, Zapper Gun (or as he called it, the Power Gun), walkthroughs, characters, and the fact that the controllers have stickers on them. Later, he defends the SNES by pointing how how its graphics scale and have high resolution—or as he says, "resoluation." As his younger self gets more and more into it, James pauses and says he went over his present-day self's head.
• The very fact that the AVGN movie premiered in Hollywood at the Grauman's Egyptian Theatre! Considering that James is an aspiring filmmaker who dreamed about making films since childhood, it's safe to assume that this was truly an enormous accomplishment for him.
• During the Double Dragon review with Mike, one time he gets to two "Abobo" in Mission 3. He survives with just a sliver of health.^note Ie. not enough to display the HP bar.
• It's impossible not to feel awesome while watching this.
• James has finally beaten the Battletoads Turbo Tunnel.
• James' rather random appearance in a banned Super Bowl 2011 commercial for Doritos has turned him into a One-Scene Wonder.
• In "Name That Tune: Metallica", James correctly guesses "Cure" off of Load from a fraction of the opening drum beat. Even Mike is extremely surprised, considering the vagueness of the provided sample. James correctly guesses not just the song and the album, but the original artist (it's a cover), the year, and even the album disc.
• After years and years, Mike finally beat Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (NES)!
• James saying that he will not see Ghostbusters (2016), which takes serious balls when you consider that most of, if not all of, the criticism towards the movie is dismissed as sexism and misogyny. Even better is how calmly he assesses the situation and explains his position - in stark contrast to the backlash that he unfortunately received immediately after releasing the video.
  • One for fans, doubling as a heartwarming moment. After the video was released, a number of online publications and a few well-known celebrities took to the internet to call James and his AVGN series sexist. The outpouring of people defending James was massive to say the least, and now the video sits with the likes vastly outnumbering the dislikes, which really goes to show how much respect he has earned from people.
  • To put into perspective, the comedian Dane Cook criticized James for assuming he disliked the movie because it had women in it. Everyone's response? Everybody who've seen the Instagram post lambasted Dane and calling him out by how hypocritical he is (if you know Dane, he's quite taken by females) and how he's a dated comedian (remember, he's already a controversial figure in the world of comedy). The comment leveled at James was so unfair that even Dane's fans called out Dane. Dane has since removed the comment; however, since this is the Internet, it's safe to say Dane Cook is not gonna live this down for quite a while.
  • Also, a point for being quiet and respectful towards those involved in the production of the new movie. In fact, he only mentioned the gender-flipped casting once - and he did so just to point out that, because the new film calls itself "Ghostbusters" without a subtitle differentiating it from the original film, people have been calling it "the female Ghostbusters" just because they need a way to tell it apart. He didn't attack the film for starring a team of women AT ALL.
• While Linkara beat him to the punch on talking about Power Rangers, James was still willing to make a video about the franchise and give it a fair try. Not only did he enjoy it, but there's one thing in the video that Linkara will likely never do: he expresses an interest in watching the source material. While only time will tell if he makes a video on Super Sentai (or, for that matter, Kamen Rider or the Ultra Series), it's still nice to see him talk as James Rolfe and not the Nerd.
• Cinemassacre 200, a documentary about how he started making movies. He goes over the many innovative ways he made his short films, despite having very limited resources. It really is inspirational, especially to aspiring filmmakers, to see what he accomplished with no budget, no sets, no modern editing software, and oftentimes no actors aside from himself.
• In 2011, James and his wife April went on a road trip across California to seek out locations and landmarks that were used in his all-time favorite film, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. The hunt ends with them going to Peck Park in San Pedro, the location of the "Big W" palm trees. Out of sheer luck, James was able to enter and document the park because the current owners were fans of his work. At the end, he manages to discover the remains of the Big W, a single slanted tree stump as tall as a human knee. This was three years before the tree was bulldozed completely, so it's good to know that James was able to see it before it vanished forever.

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