Memories

If you spend any amount of time in the video-game centric corners of the Web, you've likely heard of or experienced the work of James Rolfe, better known as "The Angry Nintendo (now more broadly Video Game) Nerd." Short version: Relentlessly-profane, disturbingly-informative reviews/trashings/history-lessons on old-school video games of the deserved-obscure and/or famously-awful variety, posted semi-regularly to GameTrailers and the glorious ScrewAttack.com.

Part of what's made The Nerd an online fixture is that his rants and raves have a certain intimately familiarity to his fans: If you're one of the millions of now-grown gamers who grew up as Rolfe seems to have, i.e. a child-of-the-80s firmly-ensconsed in the video game culture of the time - especially the Nintendo-branded variety, some or even most of his digressions will awaken some pretty powerful nostalgia in you. It has for me, but never so much as his most recent posting in which The Nerd sets aside (mostly) the anger for a pure-nostalgia look back at "Nintendo Power," the Nintendo-published magazine/company P.R. machine that was MASSIVELY popular in it's day and retains a cult following even still.

It seems corny, but I got literally misty watching The Nerd reminisce in detail over the strange ads, letters, etc. of the magazine... which as a kid I would read each of to the point of memorization. Literally every single thing he mentions here I recall, vividly, with accompanying memories tied to it. Some good, some not so. I remember getting my Issue #1. I remember "Howard & Nester." I remember the LETTERS he reads from the letters page. I know, silly... but I found myself honestly moved by this short little webisode. So I'm tossing the clip and link on here, just to share and also to do my part to introduce more people to The Nerd. Give this guy a look, he's a lot of fun:




Thank you, Angry Nintendo Nerd, for a truly pleasant entry into what has been an increasingly mezzo-mezzo sort of week.