This year, AVGN began premiering its episodes on Amazon, before eventually making its way to Youtube. This sort of follows the same route that Classic Game Room took with its latest 2085 incarnation, although those episodes are behind a paywall… and in all honesty, may not be worth it, which pains me to say as a longtime CGR fan. The AVGN episodes can be seen on Youtube on delay.
I saw his Earthbound video… or rather bits and pieces of it as it was a rather meaty episode. Given the scope and length of the game, I could understand the long-running time and from what I’ve seen, this was actually an enjoyable little episode that I’d like to sit down and watch the whole thing.
And then his latest episode hit, covering Dirty Harry for the NES… and folks, this has got to be one of the worst episodes of AVGN I’ve seen up to this point.
Okay, okay, it’s not THAT bad… but this was not a good show. It runs at eleven minutes and within that eleven minute runtime, I bore witness to pointless visual gags, unfunny referential humor, predictable jokes… all the shit that people used to mock Irate Gamer and all those other knock-off artists are on full display here and they are not any better.
The quality of the show has seen a considerable dip over the years and sometimes, I wonder if it’s the show or just me outgrowing the material. But man, I go back to those early 2006-2007 episodes and I still get a kick out of watching those episodes due to their rawness and genuine feeling. These feel overproduced, cookie-cutter, and lacks that genuine feeling.
Much like a certain sports entertainment company these days.
All that aside, it’s nice to see that James Rolfe is still kicking and I’m very much looking forward to some of the more personal small films he says he’s working on… but as far as his AVGN output goes… it’s not working for me, brother.
dtm666 