The Angry Nintendo Nerd

July 9, 2007 1:03 AM

Remember the old 8-bit Nintendo glory days, when you'd save your allowances to buy an overpriced cartridge for $49.99 only to discover that it was a piece of crap? If you've been nursing hatred and remorse in your soul all these years, then The Angry Nintendo Nerd has got your back. I find his profanity-laced rants on such turds as Simon's Quest and The Karate Kid to be strangely cathartic. Best of all is his two-part nostalgia trip that sums up what everyone our age thought of the ill-fated original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie trilogy. Part I, Part II.
posted by ELF Radio (49 comments total)

Our age? You may find that a few MeFites were old enough to realise that TMNT were ridiculous shite when they came out.
posted by chuckdarwin at 1:06 AM on July 9, 2007

when you'd save your allowances to buy an overpriced cartridge for $49.99 only to discover that it was a piece of crap?

And these are the same fools you see today queuing up to buy iPhones. Some people never learn.
posted by three blind mice at 1:18 AM on July 9, 2007 [3 favorites]

I saw the TMNT movie on tv recently, and in disbelief I said to myself "Is that Elias Koteas?" It was like seeing Crispin Glover on a rerun of Happy Days, really weird.
posted by bobo123 at 1:27 AM on July 9, 2007

What's funny-- at the end of the Karate Kid review he goes on about what a horrible game it is and puts it in the toilet, but the camera cuts away just before it hits the water. Could it be that no matter how much he hated it he just couldn't bring himself to hurt the game? Collector's disease...
posted by alexei at 1:29 AM on July 9, 2007

Wow, I relate to the Top Gun rant. With trial and error (doing it 500 times over) I managed to get lucky and hit the landings and refuels and made it to the last level, to blow up a russian space shuttle or something.

My dad had to go pick up my sister somewhere and would not leave me at home to finish the game. NO, MOTHERFUCKING, PAUSE BUTTON IN THAT GAME.

Never managed to get that far again till the emulators with saving came out. God bless NESticle for curing years of angst and regret.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 1:37 AM on July 9, 2007

"Remember the old 8-bit Nintendo glory days, when you'd save your allowances to buy an overpriced cartridge for $49.99 only to discover that it was a piece of crap?"

God, do I ever.

My first console was the ol' lunchbox, and the first game I got with it was the original Ninja Turtles game. I spent so much money at the bowling alley playing the Ninja Turtles arcade game and so when I heard that the Ninja Turtles game was on the NES, I begged and begged my parents for one until they relented.

I remember that Christmas well, plugging in the NES and getting ready to play the arcade game I loved, at home, for free, any time I wanted... only to be horrified when instead of the arcade experience I found a top down + side scrolling beat-em-up adventure. It was crap compared to what I was used to, but dammit, I owned an NES now and I was determined to stick with it. I finished it, and to my shame I even came to find a way to love it... but the disappointment I experienced that Christmas was a memory I can never shed.

An even worse horror was yet to be bestowed on me when I saved my pennies to buy a game called Mach Rider. It promised futuristic motorcycle action. Instead, it delivered one of the worst games I have ever played.

Avoid oil slicks. And other hazards. Shoot enemies. Repeat ad infinitum. All to a dull, endlessly repeating soundtrack which I still can't purge from my mind. I know it well because I played it forever, thinking that for my massive investment of money I should at least try to finish the damn thing. I played for hours, but still no end sequence appeared. Finally, my will broken, I payed $5.95 a minute to call the official Nintendo Helpline (ah the days before the internet and FAQs made such plum jobs obsolete) only to be told there was no ending. I immediately ceased playing it and unleashed my rage by stomping on a few dozen Goombas in Super Mario Brothers.

The lesson here is always read the reviews... which I soon began doing on a monthly (!) basis, as I became hopelessly addicted to UK import magazine Mean Machines (Australia had no console magazine to call its own back then and EGM was a bloated, overpriced US piece of crap which was more advertisement than a review source).

I loved my NES. It made me the Nintendo fan-boy I am today. I like that I can relive some of the great games it had to offer for an outrageously expensive price on the Wii's virtual console. But do I remember those glory days and the dissapointment I experienced when one of those games was utter, utter crap. Yes, yes I do.

Thanks for the post.
posted by Effigy2000 at 1:37 AM on July 9, 2007 [1 favorite]

ChuckDarwin: When i say "our age," i meant that you were in 5th or 6th grade when the first TMNT movie came out. If you were a boy, you liked it. The end. If there were any kids that age who honestly turned up their noses and declared, "Ninja Turtles? How trite! I would prefer to see Barton Fink..." then i would be very impressed. I did go to a pretty crappy inner-city school....
posted by ELF Radio at 1:58 AM on July 9, 2007

when you'd save your allowances to buy an overpriced cartridge for $49.99 only to discover that it was a piece of crap?

And these are the same fools you see today queuing up to buy iPhones.

If anything, $59.99 (Cdn) for the home version of Vanguard taught us that it's never as good as it looks in the ad.

Then again, much later, my first experience with both Max Payne and Deus Ex would be from discovering them in a single bargain bin for $5, having never heard of either. I consider it a wash.
posted by dreamsign at 2:16 AM on July 9, 2007

I've been watching some of his videos before, and I really can't stand the guy. Occasionally he's funny, but there's only so much of a one-note joke I can take. It'd be better if he was creative and articulate in his cursing but after a few videos his schtick stops being funny and starts feeling really repetetive.

Which is a shame as, in concept, the show is clever and a good nostalgia trip.
posted by slimepuppy at 2:32 AM on July 9, 2007

I've been watching some of his videos before, and I really can't stand the guy.

I've seen a few of them in the past as well. I could swear I was sent by a MeFi post last time around as well. May not have been a FPP though.

Don't people buy Nintendo consoles solely for the Mario/Zelda action?
posted by PeterMcDermott at 2:50 AM on July 9, 2007

This reminds me of a lesson I learned back in the glory days of Acrophobia. They separated the game into two gameplay areas, one that was clean language PG-13 and the other was an adult area where anything goes. As you'd guess, every player in the adult areas would play like...

CFMG

1) CAN'T FUCK MOTHER'S GRANDMA
2) CUNT FARTING MAKES GRAVY

Funny, for about 2 seconds, and then you'd run screaming back to the clean rooms. Anyway, this only reminds me why I should appreciate X-Play's reviews more.
posted by Stan Chin at 2:57 AM on July 9, 2007

Anybody who thinks TMNT III is the worst movie of all time clearly hasn't seen The Chronicles of Riddick.
posted by kisch mokusch at 3:04 AM on July 9, 2007 [1 favorite]

Remember the old 8-bit Nintendo glory days just last week, when you'd save your allowances paychecks to buy an overpriced cartridge DVD for $49.99 only to discover that it was a piece of crap?

The more things change, the more they stay the same. At least online game reviews have prevented me from buying a few turkeys.
posted by Faint of Butt at 3:11 AM on July 9, 2007 [1 favorite]

"Ninja Turtles? How trite! I would prefer to see Barton Fink..." then i would be very impressed.

Yeah, I saw Barton Fink at the local cinema that year, but I'm older than you are.

I never did 'get' how talking turtles who could do martial arts would make for a good movie, game, or even comic book.

To me, it was, is, and always will be a stupid idea/bad concept, full stop. Anything that appeals to kids should appeal to adults (to some degree) as well. Examples: LOTR, Potter, Star Wars...
posted by chuckdarwin at 3:43 AM on July 9, 2007

I actually laughed at this a couple of times, although maybe it's nostalgia. That poor geezer really seems to care. Naw, it's quite sweet. Thanks!
posted by howfar at 3:53 AM on July 9, 2007

You know, the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is actually pretty fun. It's nothing like the other two films, which is largely the result of it having been based on the old "parody of Frank Miller's Daredevil" comics and not on the later, happier versions of the property. (A fact which did not make a lot of parents happy.) And if you're a fan of the Old World of Darkness, why, it's a movie about a battle between a Ratkin and his were-turtle allies and a Setite cult.

Twenty years ago, video game players were in a state of severe information asymmetry. The manufacturers and publishers knew whether their games were shit or not, but they sure as fuck weren't going to tell us, and the magazines were only moderately trustworthy at best. I remember when house organ Nintendo Power actually instituted a column with honest, unbiased game reviews. The thing was yanked after the first issue. Nowadays, you can Google any game and find out how much it sucks. Back then? It was a pure crapshoot, plain and simple.
posted by Pope Guilty at 4:10 AM on July 9, 2007

From what I can tell, part of his problem is that he's not playing the games very well. Yes, we all get mad when we fall in the water and die.

Wasn't there something similar to this in Projects? A cursory search is not coming up with anything, but I remember it being pretty funny.
posted by churl at 4:12 AM on July 9, 2007

i meant that you were in 5th or 6th grade when the first TMNT movie came out. If you were a boy, you liked it. The end. If there were any kids that age who honestly turned up their noses and declared, "Ninja Turtles? How trite! I would prefer to see Barton Fink..." then i would be very impressed.

According to IMDB, TMNT came out in 1990. I would have been 16 or 17, so I guess that's a few years older than you are talking about. I know I saw it but I don't remember being blown away, nor do I remember a single thing about it. I think that would make my reaction: Meh.
posted by DU at 4:20 AM on July 9, 2007

Oh, fuck. I was 22 in 1990. No wonder I though it was a hot, steaming mug of ostrich shit.
posted by chuckdarwin at 4:22 AM on July 9, 2007

I remember when we could get our curse-laden old-skool Nintendo rants in text, and didn't have to load up no fancy-pants newfangled "video" technology to get our fix.
posted by Eideteker at 4:54 AM on July 9, 2007

Oh man, his rant on Top Gun has sure brought back a lot of memories. I'm glad I'm not the only one who could never land or ever refuel my jet in midair.
posted by King Bee at 6:24 AM on July 9, 2007

I myself thought TMNT III, where they get transported back to feudal-era Japan, was loads of fun. Also, I can never watch Shogun again without seeing ghostly guys in turtle suits running around in the background of every scene. Which is a major improvement.
posted by jfuller at 7:13 AM on July 9, 2007

He's kind of annoying but it was worth it for the memories. Back to the Future is such a shitty game. If you touched anything you died and it was impossible to use the skateboard. Fuck I hated that game.
posted by afu at 7:41 AM on July 9, 2007 [1 favorite]

Spy vs. Spy. Worst. Game. Ever.
posted by infinitewindow at 7:52 AM on July 9, 2007

Dude was kind of annoying. If he weren't so over-the-top he'd be amusing, since he actually makes some valid points. I especially enjoyed the Castlevania II review.
posted by Afroblanco at 8:09 AM on July 9, 2007

He's so right about the Back to the Future game. I don't think I've ever felt more ripped off than when I bought that crap and tried to play it. I don't remember Back to the Future parts II & III being much better, either.
posted by cmonkey at 8:12 AM on July 9, 2007

Anybody who thinks TMNT III is the worst movie of all time clearly hasn't seen The Chronicles of Riddick.

One of the rare titles where the game was much better received than the movie.
posted by YoBananaBoy at 8:13 AM on July 9, 2007

Pope Guilty
And if you're a fan of the Old World of Darkness, why, it's a movie about a battle between a Ratkin and his were-turtle allies and a Setite cult.
You, sir, are a genius. Hats off to you for the morning laugh.

chuckdarwin,
I think you did just miss the window for enjoying it. I remember seeing it in elementary school and loving it. However, at age 23, I recently saw it again with some friends, and was very disappointed at how boring it was. Other things like Inspector Gadget from my childhood I still find entertaining, but that movie not so much. I guess it really was just a matter of being a boy at a certain age.
posted by Sangermaine at 8:14 AM on July 9, 2007

I'm totally pissed off about Simon's Quest now and I never even played it.
posted by iconomy at 8:20 AM on July 9, 2007

Worse was the Atari 2600 version of Pac Man. I got this for my birthday one year. I remember feeling sorta sorry for the programmers because it probably wasn't easy to recreate the game on such a system. The game sucked, but at least the party was great.
posted by krinklyfig at 8:26 AM on July 9, 2007

Heh, this was funnier than I thought, probably because that guy is a lot like me when he talks about the games. I'll have to come back to this, thanks.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 8:29 AM on July 9, 2007

Curse Maddox for making every inarticulate pasty-faced nerd think that stringing together cursing and scatological references constitutes 'funny'.

Still, he did sum up my utter stupified frustation when I first rented the original ghostbusters game quite nicely.
posted by Space Coyote at 8:58 AM on July 9, 2007

Simon's Quest was NOT a turd.

That is all.
posted by hypocritical ross at 9:28 AM on July 9, 2007 [1 favorite]

churl, I believe you're referring to "Let's Play Video Games for the First Time...and Fail." [Projects]
posted by solotoro at 9:34 AM on July 9, 2007

I remember the Power Glove. The TV commercials made it seem like what the Wii is today. I remember the commercial showing a guy throwing a huge uppercut on Mike Tyson's Punchout. It looked like the coolest thing ever.

When I finally got my parents to buy it for me it was so lame. You just twitched your thumb for A and your index finger for B.

Nintendo was so guilty of false marketing back then, especially to kids who were dumb enough to believe it. I remember believing graphics would look like they did on the box cover. Every time. God, I was dumb.

There were many good games for NES that you could get hours of play from. A few of my favorites:

1) Super Mario Bros
2) Metroid
3) Castlevania
4) RBI Baseball
5) RC Pro Am
6) Kung Fu (though it only takes a 4 year old about 20 minutes to beat)
7) Rush N Attack
8) Double Dragon
9) Mike Tyson's Punchout, of course. I loved that game. Never beat Tyson, but I still remember the code to get to him: 0073735963

I don't recall playing Back to the Future, but I do remember The Goonies being exceptionally retarded, even to 8 year old me.
posted by b_thinky at 9:48 AM on July 9, 2007

I went through the same thought processes as he did playing Ghostbusters originally. Though, I think that button pushing to climb stairs mechanic was because it was ported from the C64 version, which used the old 2600-type joystick. Nintendo did have a great deal of awful and/or impossible games.

Also, I curse a lot. (a lot), but this guy doesn't really seem to *feel* it when he screams fuck. I suggest he plays ghosts-n-goblins, a game that literally made my 10 year old self break down in tears of inadequacy.
posted by absalom at 9:54 AM on July 9, 2007

I saved up my $45 for Contra when it came out, and it was well worth the price.
posted by fraxil at 10:00 AM on July 9, 2007

Also: I could do without all the scenes that feature him but no actual video game screens. (ie: the rant scenes)
posted by absalom at 10:06 AM on July 9, 2007

I spent so much money at the bowling alley playing the Ninja Turtles arcade game and so when I heard that the Ninja Turtles game was on the NES, I begged and begged my parents for one until they relented.

Goddamn this is so OTM. My parents were not at all big on spending money on computer games, especially when "you haven't finished the one you've got". I only finally persuaded them to buy WEC Le Mans because the price would be less than the money I was funnelling into the full-on motorised Konami arcade version.

Hoo god it was shit. I've never been so disappointed in my puff, except that time my mum mistook my request for "boots with yellow laces round the edge" and went to great lengths only to turn up with fake Dr Martens that had yellow laces.
posted by bonaldi at 11:04 AM on July 9, 2007

b_thinky: RBI Baseball was OK, but the best baseball game for NES (and maybe any console ever) was Baseball Stars. It's the one that started the whole create your own team, play a full season, keep track of your players' stats thing. It was mind-blowing at the time.
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:02 PM on July 9, 2007 [1 favorite]

DU: Yep, 1990. As adults, it's sometimes hard to remember how much we changed as teenagers... two or three years' age difference can completely alter your perspective. When TMNT came out in 1990, i was a booger-picking, toy-playing, girls-are-gross, candy-wanting little kid. When TMNT III came out in 1993 or whenever, i was in high school, listening to Nirvana and trying to smoke cigarettes, and i would have rather publicly hung myself than be seen by my peers at a Turtles movie...
posted by ELF Radio at 12:43 PM on July 9, 2007

1. Yes, the ANN's shtick gets old fast, but the guys does know his stuff. I've seen him a couple of times come forward with some obscure piece of trivia that, lo, I know to be true (because darn it, I'm a nerd too).

2. The people commiserating over Top Gun really need to watch the Power Glove one.

3. The best Angry Nintendo Nerd, after he renamed himself the Angry Video Game Nerd to extend his range, is the one of the Atari 5200. You'll see why at the end.

4. On Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The key thing to remember is that, in its original incarnation as an underground comic book, the Turtles were a parody. Of COURSE they were a parody. They're ninja turtles for crying out loud! The name is calculated to sound stupid; that's why it's cool, duh. Raphel has a guest appearance in Flaming Carrot for crying out loud!

Then somewhere along the line, the idea came down to take the parody and make it a less parody Saturday morning show. Then even more of the parody got left out of the movies, and so on.
posted by JHarris at 12:44 PM on July 9, 2007

He swears like a nine-year-old with a tape recorder in his parents' furnished basement.
posted by quite unimportant at 1:29 PM on July 9, 2007

Back in the days I don't remember this Die Hard game (maybe it wasn't released in europe) looks like a nightmare.
posted by darkripper at 1:51 PM on July 9, 2007

> (Australia had no console magazine to call its own back then and EGM was a bloated, overpriced US piece of crap which was more advertisement than a review source).

It just wouldn't be MetaFilter if there wasn't a jab at something American in there.
posted by elmwood at 2:14 PM on July 9, 2007

The original TMNT comic ruled. Quit'cher hatin'.

Simon's Quest wasn't EVEN a turd, it sucked so hard.

Top Gun was pure sadism cloaked in videogame form.

Best NES game ever: Milon's Secret Castle.

/nerd oracle off
posted by Aquaman at 2:27 PM on July 9, 2007

"2. The people commiserating over Top Gun really need to watch the Power Glove one."

The look on his face when he managed to land safely was priceless.
posted by furiousxgeorge at 4:27 PM on July 9, 2007

It just wouldn't be MetaFilter if there wasn't a jab at something American in there.

What? It's true. EGM was shit.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:48 PM on July 9, 2007

Thank you so kindly, solotoro. I'll be watching those for the rest of the work day.
posted by churl at 5:42 PM on July 13, 2007