Moving along to the other video in James Rolfe’s 2004 “Bad Video Games” video series, we come to a now-legendary game, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde for the Nintendo Entertainment System. This video marks the first time we see the nerd character, albeit in a sloppy form of what he would become – Not the “nerd” yet, but certainly a nerdy character, fitting of the idea he was portraying in these videos of a guy who for some reason still cared this much about 20 year old video games.
Our first look at the nerd.
This time, instead of game play, the video focuses on the Nerd discussing the game, trying to explain why it is so terrible, but being unable to put it into words. Not only does this episode first show off the Nerd character, as sloppy as he is at the time, it also established the tradition of the Nerd drinking Rolling Rock, something that James, according to his own comments, just happened to have in the fridge at the time.
This is another oddly unique episode in that James just points the camera at the TV – no footage was captured and edited in, it was all shot live. This gives the video a unique look compared to others since it contains no direct footage, and at no other time in the series does he record his screen in such an off angle.
He didn’t even bother to actually capture footage.
He pretty much just talks over the game as he plays, more like a let’s play than anything else, only spending just a moment actually giving it a try. Once he gets a game over, that’s it. He just doesn’t care, and goes on ranting about this most hated of games.
Beyond that, the way the Nerd speaks in this video is different from most others – James would do these kinds of monologues at the end of later videos, but they would never go on for this long or be this rambling; indeed, this video seems quite organic and raw, like he just set up the camera, shot it, edited it together and that was that.
Final Rating: 3.0/5
A perfect contrast to the 1st episode. I guess that’s all it needed to be, as the later episodes blend the general style of the 1st and 2nd episodes into something that’s just right.
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