We finally move into 2016 and Season 10 of The Angry Video Game Nerd. This is a bit of a special one, as it is in part of a celebration on 10 years of The Nerd on YouTube. For me as a fan, however, this episode marks the beginning of the most current era of the Nerd — what I would in retrospect refer to as the “New House” era. While, yes, James had actually moved into his new home sometime in 2015 and the last few episodes from that year were actually filmed in the re-created Nerd Basement (which is actually a custom made set in his garage) this wasn’t really acknowledged until this episode.
The Nerd explains this as saying he upgraded many things in his life — his phone is now an early cell phone, his record collection is now on cassette (arguably a downgrade, but I digress) and he got himself one of those “new rectangular TV’s” so he can play 8-bit games in High Definition.
This includes him having changed his video switching layout some, and includes, of course, the fucking Framemeister, an analog to digital upscaler that Mike Matei and other retrobro’s (used to) obsess over. No doubt the use of this in the Nerd’s new setup was directly because of Mike, as I’m sure James would have rather have kept things like they were in the basement.
As I mentioned, this new set is in his garage and while you don’t notice it too much at this time, it’s quite a bit smaller than the old basement and pretty cramped — the movement of the old “SCREENWAVE” TV to the movie rental room was likely to simply save space and not an intentional decision by James, given that even with equipment like the sacred Framemister there are issues with connecting old analog gaming equipment to flat-panel television systems.
Anyway, this episode is about Mega Man games. The Nerd begins by complimenting the quality of the 6 NES titles and just how much he, and much of the gaming populace (including me) love them. He does admit that by the 6th game the formula had gotten stale but that it was revived on the Super Nintendo with the Mega Man X series.
Mega Man X, however, does begin to go off on its own tangent of, as we move into the PlayStation era, the games become more story driven, to the annoyance of the Nerd. We eventually have a fourth-wall break where the text boxes and explosions from the game invade the Nerd Room, pushing him to the point of just being sick of it all and quitting completely.
With a montage of the Nerd throwing away his game collection and a Mega Man 2 style end sequence of the Nerd walking through as the seasons change we, somehow, find the Nerd thrown back to 2007 and his Independence Day review.
That’s right, it’s Nerd meets Nerd. Through the use of old footage and some typical Cinemassacre editing, the current Nerd talks to his 2007 self about his future, surprising his old self by referencing episode 100 and suggesting that he quit now.
The conversation gets interrupted by current Nerd seeing a copy of Mega Man for DOS in 2007 Nerds room. We cut to the review where we have a CGA pallet mess that somewhat resembles Mega Man 2 but plays like garbage on screen, which the Nerd doers address. Joystick doesn’t work, keyboard controls barely work, there’s a toll-booth because why the hell wouldn’t there be in a fucking Mega Man game, and after quite the battle he finally makes it past the intro screen to the choice of 4 robot masters to fight. As you can imagine, it’s shit.
Enter Mega Man III on DOS. Yep, they skipped II, likely to keep the numbering scheme in line with the most recent NES releases of the time. It’s better than the first game, but not by much, with poor level design being the main complaint, beyond the most likely continued shitty controls.
After suggesting that 2007 Nerd play some shitty Simpsons games, which he does do as the next video, current Nerd goes to 2006 during the Nightmare on Elm Street cloning sequence. With a rather screaming introduction, he talks with the dream clones about what’s been going on, and what’s to come before trying to suggest to them to give up by showing them Mega Man Legends on PlayStation. This gives the clone Nerds the idea to change the name (this is still during The Angry Nintendo Nerd era) which is indeed what would happen soon after the 2006 Halloween episode.
Anyway, on to Mega Man Legends. Now, I love this game. It’s clunky, but a very solid title once you get it figured out. That being said, it’s not for everyone, and the Nerd finds the tank controls, the constant speech boxes, and all the other trappings of a then cutting-edge 3D game quite annoying. OF course this is the introduction sequence so it does explain the game to you, but still, it annoys the Nerd.
He spends time focusing on the aforementioned controls, saying that the N64 release was a little better but still the game doesn’t control the way it should. If I may digress, I find the control scheme works for how the game is designed, and while it does take some adjusting to, it works well.
The Nerd then goes to criticize the games world, including the shopping area where he happens to find an easter egg of a dirty magazine on the rack — current Nerd as well as the clones being surprised at this idea — quite amused. Current Nerd leaves for yet another time period as Freddy comes and kills the dream clones
Now we go all the way back to 2004, with the Nerd finishing his rant about Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde… by talking into a stuffed holiday bear. He surprises 2004 Nerd by asking for his help. After a bit of a chat regarding Jekyl and Hyde, the Nerd finds a copy of Mega Man X7 on PlayStation 2 which, back in 2004, was a new game!
Giving the game a go the first thing he notices is the Guns N’ Roses band member name easter egg in the X series. While he finds that amusing, the rest of the gameplay is, as expected, not that good to him, with a hybrid 2.5D / 3D play area, auto targeting, and a whole mess of new features that just don’t work for the Nerd. In summary, this really barely feels like Mega Man to him.
In parting with 2004 Nerd, we have a bit of a meta moment where current Nerd talks about Mega Man being a dormant franchise in 2016, with 2004 Nerd saying that a franchise shouldn’t be forced to continue, but one shouldn’t also just outright abandon such if people continue to want it. He then laments not having a series of his own and, as current Nerd leaves, he looks into his small box of his then-entire game collection, sees a copy of Karate Kid, and has an idea. Of course we know the idea is more episodes of what was then the “Bad Video Games” series, coming in 2006 as “The Angry Video Game Nerd” on YouTube — the very thing this video was made as the 10th anniversary celebration of.
Of course we know it was Mike who suggested James do a 3rd video and who helped James get the first two onto YouTube, but let’s just enjoy the story in-universe. It’s a bit touching, and I think is genuine — James still tried with the Nerd in this era, even after the relative failure of the AVGN Movie.
With that, we have the Nerd back in 2016, with Bugs Bunny taking over his Nerd role. Ye[p, we once again have Mike as that fucking Rabbit and, as usual, he and The Nerd fight. Naturally the Nerd wins and he goes back to playing shitty games. He picks up a SNES cartridge to see Mega Man Soccer. Yes, that is a game that exists. There is no review, at that point the Nerd lets out the classic “What were they thinking?” and jumps out of his window. End episode.
Final Rating: 3.5/5
When the episode premiered, it was neat, but I personally felt a little miffed by the room change — had I known then that he had moved, I don’t know how I would have reacted, but I felt like him switching to a more “modern” retrobro gaming setup marked a permanent change to the series that I might not totally gel with.
ignoring that, however, the episode hit the right spots for nostalgia at the time and while the random Mega Man game reviews just spattered along felt kind of odd (especially since, last I checked, Mega Man didn’t involve time travel) all in all it worked out well enough.
Still, it isn’t an episode that draws me to watch it again too often, if ever — I don’t think I’ve ever intentionally went to watch it past its original release and for this review, but it’s not bad by any means.
It just, is… sadly a trend that will continue in the series.