oh internet

The angriest gamer you've ever heard.

Summary

James Rolfe, more well-known as The Angry Video Game Nerd, is a super-popular game reviewer whose exaggerated facial expressions and overuse of cuss words brought him to fame. He was once "The Angry Nintendo Nerd" but had to change it due to trademark issues. The AVGN essentially started the now popular "angry reviewing" video style where one rants angrily about a specific topic, which has now lead to sites like the Escapist and That Guy With The Glasses and dozens of imitators on video sharing sites such as YouTube.

Since 2006, James has been uploading his videos to YouTube, or more recently, trailers of his videos that linked to GameTrailers.

Characters, personas, and other people

• The Angry Video Game Nerd: The most famous of James' personas, the AVGN is a persona of a pocket protector-wearing nerd who drinks Rolling Rock beer and swears a lot. Many of the videos he stars in include jokes referring to pooping, or characters in costumes played by Mike Matei, his assistant. When Matei is onscreen, he is seen as Bugs Bunny, Jason from Friday the 13th, Freddy Krueger, the Joker from Batman, and other famous characters corresponding to the game he is currently playing. Sometimes, animated characters are used instead, such as the Shit Pickle, a pickle with crap on it that says "shit" and "pickle." The Nerdy Turd was used for the Magnavox Odyssey console review. One of the most popular animated characters James used was "Super Mecha Death Christ 2000 B.C Version 4.0 Beta" which is a cyborg-tank-Jesus that fights the devil in a possessed Super Mario Bros. 3 cartridge.

• Board James: This is more of James Rolfe on his own, where he reviews board games. An example is Crossfire, a Milton Bradley board game. In these videos, he doesn't swear as much.

• You Know What's Bullshit: In this series, James Rolfe plays "the Bullshit Man" and rants about little things that annoy him, like inkjet printers or movies with penguins in them. Originally the Bullshit Man was just a voiceover, but eventually he was revealed as a living pile of cow dung played by Rolfe in a lumpy mask.

• Monster Madness: Starting in 2007, every October counting down to Halloween, James Rolfe makes a short video every day (or every other day in 2012) in which he talks about a horror/monster movie he likes. In 2007 the theme was "the history of horror", 2008 was all the Godzilla movies, 2009 was a grab-bag of horror movies, 2010 was "camp cult", 2011 was "sequel-a-thon", and the theme of 2012 is '80s horror.

Others

• Kyle Justin: The music guy who composed the theme song, and it can be listened to here. The lyrics are NSFW. He is a guest star in the Battletoads review, which can be viewed here. The plot has the Nerd yelling at Kyle Justin to go back behind the couch and be the guitar guy, until the Nerd felt bad and let Kyle play two-player with him.

• Mike Matei: Dubbed as "Motherfucker Mike", Mike Matei helps out with the videos and occasionally appears in-costume for a video's plot, such as when the Nerd was chased by Jason of Friday the 13th fame. He always plays Board James's opponent in every board game he plays, and always cheats.

Drama with the Irate Gamer

The Irate Gamer is a guy who was inspired by The Angry Video Game Nerd, but soon started to mimic near-exact bits and pieces from the Nerd's videos. Nowadays, James Rolfe doesn't pay attention to the Irate Gamer.

Origins

The Angry Video Game Nerd persona began in 2004 as The Angry Nintendo Nerd, but changed the name to prevent copyright issues. Since then, other "characters" have been made since.

Rise to fame

He's done reviews even as a child, but it didn't take off until he reviewed Castlevania II: Simon's Quest in 2004. It was titled "Bad NES Games." In 2006, he joined YouTube, and his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles review video became so popular, that MTV took note of it. In 2008, Opie and Anthony also mentioned him. By then, he had accumulated a league of fans.

Current status

His mega-popular videos still get tons upon tons of views.

Recently he began a new series where he sits down with friends and discusses shit no one care about. So far the show, OverAnalyzers, is pretty bland. Although Rolfe is joined by four others, the only one who provides any meaningful contribution is Mike Matei; the others are hardly worth naming.

Rolfe put AVGN on Hiatus as he filmed the AVGN Movie in Los Angeles for a period of 6-8 months. As a result, Mike Matei started a weekly series to fill the void called "Motherfucking Monday", where he reviews obscure movies and TV shows. The series is now back on track as James also works on Post Production of the movie.

Famous Quote

Facts

• James Rolfe was born on July 10, 1980.

• Live's like a Windrammer as he Fucks

Images

Well, gross.	Ho ho ho!	One of the reasons why he's so popular.	And again.
A visit from a friend.	The Battletoads dance.	The Nerd fights Bugs Bunny.	James with his Wife
Staring.	Mad at games.	The Angry Video Game nerd.	James rants on a fan.
Rage!	A shirt he sells.	I came.

Videos

Related Pages

Angry Joe

Chadwardenn

Doug Walker

Irate Gamer

Linkara

ScrewAttack

That Guy With The Glasses

The Spoony Experiment

External Links

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This article is part of a series on people.
You can find additional people here.
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.

This article is part of a series on video games.
You can find additional games here.
Explore our other categories for information on different subjects!