I had a VERY surreal feeling when watching the newest Angry Video Game Nerd episode last night...
Like, he reviewed several CRASH BANDICOOT games, including the original trilogy developed by Naughty Dog for the PlayStation... Games released from 1996 to 1998.
When James Rolfe (alongside Mike Matei) really launched what was admittedly just a joke he passed amongst friends into a full-on series, the "old" games he was looking at were from the '80s. Some were from around 1992-93 at the very latest. NES and SNES games, later Genesis and other consoles. Angry Nintendo Nerd to Angry Video Game Nerd...
He largely kept it contained to pre-PlayStation/pre-Nintendo 64/pre-Sega Saturn titles, for a while. One notable exception back then was his review of the PS1 INDEPENDENCE DAY game for the summer of 2007. In his CHRISTMAS CAROL-themed holiday two-parter from that same year, they had a section where an elderly, scruffy Nerd in the far future reviewed "old" games for the Wii, the newest Nintendo system at the time. When he covered the Virtual Boy and SUPERMAN 64 in 2008, it was a bit of a surprise back then.
By the mid-2010s, the show was featuring post-1995 games more often, as enough time had passed for games of that era to become "retro".
The original CRASH BANDICOOT is turning 30 this year... September 9th, to be exact. He acknowledges that, too, but it really hit me when watching the video: In 2006, the Fuckin' Nerd was losing his cool over games made in the '80s. A decade that seemed to be well in the rear view mirror in 2006... But now, 2006 is as far behind as the games he reviewed back in the day were. 1986 was 20 years ago in 2006, mid-2006 is 20 years ago from today.
Maybe those NES games seemed so much older because of where technology was in the mid-to-late '80s, compared to things of the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube era, soon to be the PS3/360/Wii era. But now it's like, CRASH BANDICOOT... Is or is near 30 years old, along with SUPER MARIO 64, TOMB RAIDER, RESIDENT EVIL... List goes on, too many to name.
I'm 33 years old going on 34 later this year. I started watching AVGN in the summer of 2007 when I was 15 years old... And that's just... Doing things to my brain.
I had a similar realization when it comes to my Disney VHS collection.
I started collecting '80s Disney VHS releases in 2005. I started off by getting Classics editions that I didn't have, including ones from the early 1990s. Back then, I was very much aware of the early '80s releases from the company's home video division with the white clamshell cases: Where the front cover's top half was a massive Walt Disney Home Video logo w/ an illustration of Sorcerer's Apprentice Mickey next to it, the bottom half was the title of the movie and a corresponding image. To me, in 2005, those were pretty vintage...
Not too long ago, I started adding some of the DVD releases of the early 2000s to my collection. I picked up a copy of the 60th Anniversary DVD of DUMBO, released in 2001, which I never had up until then. It's like, that DVD came out over 20 years ago... And when I started collecting, the early '80s VHS release of the movie was over 20 years old...
Back to AVGN, though... The new episode was a collaboration with Caddicarus, one of my favorite YouTubers.
Jim Caddick, like many a video game enthusiast doing long-form videos about the subject, got things started in the aftermath of AVGN's early rise to YouTube fame - in May 2012 to be exact. I got into his videos around mid-2016, when his stuff was really starting to get great. Where he was really finding his groove in a post-AVGN, post-Game Grumps world. So it was even MORE surreal watching Rolfe and Caddick together, at last... Rolfe helped start that whole shebang, and there he was with someone who joined that field quite a bit later. One of the OGs, with a legend in his own right.
Things really have come a long way.
(I am aware of other collabs, inside and outside of the AVGN series, such as some of Rolfe's videos featuring SomeCallMeJohnny of BrainScratchComms, a frequent Caddy collaborator.)
I'd love to see them do another collaboration, where Caddy is in it more and isn't just playing an Aku Aku-esque floating head, lol.
