The Nerd finally reviews one of the games he had received requests for the longest time. Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing, in which he was told was the worst game ever made, but believes it to be an exaggeration. When he loads the game up and plays it, starting on a race, he soon pops the question "so... what were the complaints?" Cue the Nerd expressing a lot of glee of how he is able to drive everywhere in the level, going against geometry, terrain, obstacles, sometimes going through or going over. He argues that this game is a lot of fun due to the lack of rules present, especially once he discovers that he is able to accelerate in blazing speeds in reverse, in a huge truck, even going off the level.
He does collect himself to be more critical towards the game, in particular to its unfinished state, even with the few patches that were released with it, one of which that adds competitive AI which stops just short as to allow the player to win the race anyway. He finds it appalling that the game could even be released in retail stores in such a state, as in people paid money for this game, even noting that members of the ESRB sat through this game to give it a rating. He concludes that this game isn't as bad as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, in terms of functionality, it is an all time low of bad games. He does end the game with a hypothetical commercial for the game, and with answering the question: "How fast can the truck go in reverse?"
Featured games: Penn & Teller Smoke and Mirrors (Sega CD, with Desert Bus packaged in), and Castlevania II: Simon's Quest Redacted (NES, Romhack)
The Nerd opens up with talking about a game that is apparently worse than Big Rigs. Before he goes into the game, he talks about Penn & Teller's Smoke and Mirrors, an unreleased Sega CD game that contains six minigames that exists as the anti-video game. The Nerd goes into the titular game: Smoke and Mirrors, where it is an adventure game that showcases how useless the duo is in the video game world, but it is otherwise worthy of attention due to the abundance of Penn & Teller clips present with the package.
The Nerd then goes into Desert Bus, which is a game about literally driving a bus from Tuscan, AR to Las Vegas. He finds out that you get a point for every 8 hours you spend actually driving the bus, with no real variation in the graphics aside from rocks and signs. The game is literally just a simulator of driving in a straight line at a consistent 45 mph. The Nerd did reveal that the game itself is suppose to be a response to the controversies on violence in video games. The Nerd does point out that the game has done some good for the world, such as a charity drive where gamers would play the game for very long periods of time.
Annoyed by the game, the Nerd then gets the idea to apply the clamp onto his controller to have the bus drive on its own so that the Nerd doesn't need to tend to it. However, the developers anticipated an event like this and had the bus veer to the right, preventing cheating* .
The Nerd talks about how this game left a legacy to warrant it being ported to other systems, and how evidence of this means he had failed his job as a video game reviewer. He had then decided to retire. He scans through his shelf full of NES games, taking another look at Castlevania II: Simon's Quest. Then he notices another cartridge of the game, titled Castlevania II: Simon's Quest Redacted. He decides for old time sake to try the game.
As the Nerd starts up the game, he calls back to his previous criticisms, but finds that this version of the game aimed to fix a lot of the issues he complained about, such as speeding up all the text boxes (which consequently sped up the day-to-night transitions), redid all the dialogue, especially for adding clues to make a lot of the set pieces easier to solve, redesigned the final boss, and even revealed some details never explained in the game, such as how the tornado transportation was never explained in-game until now. Witnessing all these fixes had left the Nerd stunned, thinking that he did leave an impact after all and decides to unretire. He then ponders loudly as to what he should do next to top every thing he has ever done. Then he gives a knowing, determined glare to the audience as the camera cuts to black.
The review on Cinemassacre
This review is taken from the credits sequence of the Angry Video Game Nerd the Movie, reedited in the same format as the other episodes, as well as removing the bland product name equivalent (Eee Tee). For more information, see here.
As the Nerd stands in front of the crowd as they witness him going to review E.T. for the Atari 2600. The Nerd talks about how the game is confusing at first because the manual is required to understand and enjoy it. Even then, he still proclaims how bad it is, given some of the game play mechanics at work. The Nerd finds it odd that the game starts off with E.T. landing on earth, where the objective is to get off of earth. He soon finds the pits that he has to fall into very annoying, especially when you have to fall in them to get certain items, and how you are on a time limit that constantly decreases rapidly depending on the actions you take. He is also annoyed at how the call zone, where you are suppose to take the items to, is randomized, encouraging the player to explore, and yet punishes them for exploring too much. He is also annoyed by the scientist character who will come in to confiscate your inventory.
The Nerd did manage to beat the game. He presents himself the age long question about the game: Is E.T. the worst video game ever made? He answered with "no", explaining that despite its flaws, it is a unique game that is very sophisticated for its time, even arguing that "if you can understand the Temple of Doom, then you can understand E.T.", even going so far as to claim that it holds a special place in gamers hearts, as not being the best game, but being the game that helps bring gamers together and remember the classics, and the not-so classics.
For Halloween, once again, the Nerd decides to review a game based on a movie from his childhood. That game being Beetlejuice for the NES. He had some good feelings about the game at first... until he notices the LJN logo. He laments that the game was made by LJN, although he does take a moment to finally answer the common complaint he had received from his fans: That LJN published the game, while the developers tend to variate. While the Nerd is aware of it, he makes it clear that it's still an LJN game, and they still made it happen. The developer in question is Rare, who was responsible for many great games from then, and to come (such as Donkey Kong Country and Killer Instinct), but they were also responsible for games like Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Battletoads (noting that it is not good as a two player game).
The Nerd finds the gameplay to be quite annoying, such as how he keeps getting knocked around by anything he touches, the faulty level design such as how he can go through walls and how moving the screen up can create bottomless pits (pretty much like fall damage), the background graphics being harmful, and numerous other flaws present such as being unable to attack enemies without a power up that lasts for a very short time and requires stomping on beetles for currency to purchase them. In essence, the game deviates greatly from the source material and is unfaithful, to put it lightly.
In the end, the Nerd decides to throw the cartridge on the ground and curb-stomps it to pieces.
The 12 Days of Shitsmas
Youtube playlist of these episodes The Nerd decides to do something special for this Christmas special. Much like in his Wishlist episodes, he decides to do 12 video game reviews, all requests from his fans. One at a time. The following episodes take place every other day during the month of December.
Already disappointed in this game, he reminds himself that he has eleven more episodes to do, much to his dismay.
The game of focus is Fire Dogs, loosely based on a short where the duo has to find a place to live, finding a fire house that is looking for Dalmatians. The objective is to find all the tools for the fire truck, while keeping themselves painted as Dalmatians, while avoiding fire men who are nigh-impossible to dodge without the use of a power-up (which only stuns them briefly), or using the paint to avoid them, but also needing to avoid showers. The Nerd had to battle with poor controls, picky set pieces, and a strict time limit to accomplish all this, noting that it is too difficult for a children's game. Once he gets to the rescue stage, which is much more simple to play since you just have to bounce as many objects as you can from the trampoline. He supposedly beats it, but finds that the game ends after that.
The Nerd talks about Mattel Electronics' HyperScan, a game system released during the same console generation as the Nintendo Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360. The gimmick is that the system, in addition to the video games, requires cards to activate certain parts of the games, though the scanning is inconsistent where mostly you run it through, except in one game where you hold the card in place. With X-Men, a 2-D fighting game, characters are selected by scanning the respective card, plus a mod card. The game itself is nothing special, and the game is plagued with long, constant load times. Marvel Heroes is a beat-em-up game which is also fairly generic with no real flaws or positives. Interstellar Wrestling League is similar to X-Men, except with a wrestling theme, which does not actually involve any wrestling moves (at least as shown) as it plays exactly like a typical fighting game. Finally, the Nerd plays Ben 10. At first, he finds the game to be entertaining, and even enjoys the idea of using cards to switch characters. Unfortunately, the game suffers from one fatal flaw: the text boxes that come constantly and pause the game, which also removes momentum during the jump, guaranteeing the player to die by pitfalls. The text boxes appear very often, as a tutorial, punishing players for not playing at a slow pace.
The Nerd is lacking the last game, a Spider-Man game, but other than that, he covered the whole library of five games. He considers the whole console to be even worse than the Virtual Boy... but not as bad as the R-Zone (nothing could ever be worse than that... or could it?).
The "rides" are actually mini-games, consisting of Back to the Future (drive the DeLorean to stop Biff in another DeLorean), Jaws (attempt to stop Jaws from destroying the ship; the Nerd actually thinks this is even worse than the LJN-made Jaws NES game), Jurassic Park (a simple rail shooter where you stop dinosaurs from destroying the jeep), E.T. (where you bike past many obstacles from start to finish; the Nerd again thinks this is even worse than E.T. for the Atari 2600), and Backdraft (extinguish the fires in a burning building; which is barely playable due to the poor controls). The only exception to the mini-game part is Waterworld, which is a CG recreation of the climax of the actual Waterworld attraction at Universal's theme park. All of these tend to be fairly difficult, and are over rather quickly.
In the end, the Nerd was very baffled to see what should had been an excellent idea, wasted to an unimaginative series of mini-games, where the ultimate goal is to collect stamps from winning each game.
After the review, he mentions that he has one present left. He decides to take a peak by tearing off a piece of the wrapping paper... only to find the LJN logo, dreading the next episode.
In his moment of shock and disbelief, he discovers in front of him that LJN made a video game console (he considers having the hardware that requires a plug-in controller and removable cartridges to count as a console, similar to the Odyssey). He hesitated to actually set up the device, going so far as analyze the Styrofoam. He is also left unimpressed with the prongs that are required to screw onto a television set (a mechanism he had a problem with on some of the Pong consoles in the past). When he powers the console on, he is annoyed by the white noise for audio and has to mute the TV. Without a cartridge, the Nerd is treated to a blank canvas to work with, and with the cartridge packaged in, a bunch of pre-done drawings are included, with none of them filled in. While there are a variety of colors, the Nerd finds the controls to be overly sensitive and awkward, with the cursor going all over the place with the slightest tilt, and the button located on the top of the stick (which is suppose to simulate pressing the pen down, but it only makes it more awkward to control), and the only two face buttons present are just to lock the cursor into a horizontal or vertical lines. There are no other paint tools, such as a paint bucket too (very glaring considering all the pre-done drawings can be filled in, but there is no simple way to do so). The Nerd isn't even able to keep the cursor in a line, or create any visual gags, may it be actual effort involved or joking around. He was able to accomplish a lot more with Microsoft Paint, and even Color a Dinosaur for NES. He even compares it unfavorably to an Etch-and-Sketch (which is even possible to draw a circle, a task that is impossible with LJN Video Art). He declares that the only possible thing that could make the console even worse than it already is would be if you played it with the Roll & Rocker.
The Nerd does try to be fair with the console, considering it was released in 1987 and was the first of its kind. He would briefly talk about Art Alive and Wacky World Creativity Studio for the Sega Genesis systems, which came out later, but he would go on more about Mario Paint for Super Nintendo, which is a lot more accessible, has a lot of options, and a bunch of bonus features such as a midi-composer, a save feature, lots of pre-done drawings, and a fly swatter mini-game. While he does admit that the game has not aged well, he is impressed with the presentation of the game. It all came a long way from the LJN Video Art, which the Nerd does not consider to be fun. In the end, he says that, assuming you consider it to be a console rather than a productivity device, it surpasses the R-Zone as the worst console in history.
After all that talk about video games, he would ponder as to why he and the audience are sentimental over bad games, but then goes into a talk about how he's grateful for the audience to continue watching him and hoped that he made people laugh, in spite of what they may be going through right now, and gives a shout-out to the upcoming year of 2015. He then, as previously mentioned, attempts to play the console using the Roll & Rocker, but loses his balance and falls backwards onto the couch.
