20 years of The Angry Video Game Nerd

On May 25th, 2004, a video started with a screen with an image: on top, was a "bacon strip" type logo that read: Konami, in the middle was a filmstrip with 2 more logos that read: Castlevania II Simon's Quest, and on the bottom was text that read: "PUSH START KEY" and bellow that was another line of text that read: "TM AND © 1988 KONAMI INDUSTRY CO. , LTD. LICENSED BY NINTENDO OF AMERICA INC.", And just as this image appears, an unseen male narrators voice is heard uttering the following words:

"This game sucks!"

What I just described was the beginning of the very first of The Angry Video Game Nerd, a series that began as an inside joke that soon turned into a internet icon, and influenced content creators along the way. So as someone who considered it a big influence and mentor to him to get into the retro gaming hobby and influenced his career in general.I think its time for me to do my share to share the story of how it all began.

The story begins with the man behind it, James D. Rolfe, and he came a long way from his early days to that faithful video. 

James D. Rolfe in 2013 

Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on July 10, 1980, He was raised in south New Jersey, and had an interest in storytelling from a young age. As a young child, he received A Fisher Price cassette recorder as a Christmas present, He used it to record his own stories, with sound effects and voices for all the different characters. 

A Fisher Price #826 Cassette recorder, Similar to the one Rolf had

In 1989, He was introduced to video cameras when he filmed himself playing a clumsy boxer who couldn't hit his own punching bag. Afterwards he made short films with his friends, but eventually they left as this fims got scripts that the couldent memorize. Rolfe also illustrated comic books, which he updated monthly. One such comic he created had a plot inspired by the video game The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, as well as painting and animation.

By 15 he had become a movie buff, especially for classic horror and slapstick comedy, which were a big influence on his work. He goes on to attend the University of the Arts in Philadelphia where he studied filmmaking. After graduating with a bachelor's degree in fine arts in 2004, He worked as a film editor for corporate safety and instructional videos.

In his spare time he would make short films for his Cinemassacre website. One day, after finishing one of his short films, he had the idea to do an angry review of the NES game Castlevania II Simon's Quest. The inspiration came from his time in college playing childhood games with friends. He thought it would be funny to brutally critique and complain about the game despite the fact he like the game. He called the video "Baad NES Games" and although he made it as a joke, he included the film on a VHS box set. 

After that he wanted to make another, and made a second episode reviewing Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde for the NES, this time he was fully revealed in a stereotypical nerd outfit and guzzling a Rollin Rock. He said he picked Rollin Rock. because it was the only beer in the fridge with the joke being that the game drove him to drink.

Both videos initially weren't a huge success at first only being available in a box set, but in 2006 the short were about to gain a wider audience. Rolfs college friend collaborator, Mike Matei, convinced him to post the videos on YouTube, and on April 8th, 2006, the episodes were uploaded to Youtube, with a new short featuring The Karate Kid for the NES appearing that same day. The name was also changed from "Bad NES Games", to "The Angry Nintendo Nerd".

These videos really changed the public eye on game reviews. At the time, the only people who did game reviews were magazines and and websites. Initially it was meant to be the final episode, but once Rolf realized how popular the series became, he continued to make more. By the time his review of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles became popular on YouTube, he was an internet icon. By the end of 2006 he was looking to diversify the games he reviewed and decided to change the name from The Angry Nintendo Nerd" to the The Angry Video Game Nerd".

By 2014, Cinemassacre already had 1.5 million subscribers and was inspiring many other content creators to follow in Rolf's footsteps, like JonTron and Scott Wozniak. Today, the channel has 3.82 million subscribers and new episodes continue to be made. Not bad for a series that was created for an inside joke! Thanks for reading! see you next time!

A look at Aldus PageMaker for Windows 1.0: The 1987 PC Desk Top Publishing software experience

Well it's blogging time again, and today I'm going to do something different because you know what? sometimes you just have to go back to the 1980s with your software experiences, at least I do. Now for the software were talking about today, I want to first take a look first not at its story, but rather the operating system it ran on, Microsoft Windows 1.0 (Or as I affectionately nickname it, Windows 85). 

The Boot Screen of Windows 1.0 (1985)

Originally released to the public on November 20, 1985, It was the first fully graphical operating system from Microsoft and the first release of Windows. It took inspiration from Visi On from VisiCorp (The makers of VisiCalc), Which Bill Gates saw an early demo of at COMDEX in 1982. 

Visi On (1983)

While it received positive responses to Microsoft's early presentations and support from a number of hardware and software makers, When it was actually available to the public, Its response was mostly negative due to it not fulfilling expectations, its compatibility with very little software, and its performance issues.

But despite its lukewarm reception, there were a few programs developed specifically for it. The program were talking about today was one of those applications that program was Aldus PageMaker. 

Aldus PageMaker (1987)

Originally released on the Macintosh in 1985, It was not only the first widely-used Desktop Publishing Program, but it also was the program that actually saved the Mac as well.

The story of PageMaker begins in 1984 with the release of the Macintosh. While it was praised for its features, It wasn't as successful as Apple planned, because they marketed it as a business machine to compete against IBM. 

The Apple Macintosh (1984) 

By 1985, Apple was in rough waters. The Macintosh was selling poorly, none of their attempts to break the Mac into the business market had succeeded, most of the Mac's development team had left the company, and Steve Jobs was fired. But at the beginning of the year, Apple made one last attempt to break the Mac into the business market by introducing The Macintosh Office​. It was an office-wide computing environment consisting of Macintosh computers, a local area networking system called AppleTalk (with the consumer version called LocalTalk), a file server, and a networked laser printer called the LaserWriter. 

  

The Apple Macintosh Office setup (1985) 

However despite Apples best efforts, The Macintosh Office failed. Due to AppleTalk's slow speed, the file network suffering multiple delays, and the disastrous reception of its infamous "Lemmings" ad, very few people bought it. With the Mac failing to enter the business market time and time again, The Macintosh line seemed doomed as a business computer, but unbeknownst to Apple, all hope was not lost. While the LaserWriter was in development, Apple approached John Warnock, the cofounder and head of Adobe Systems, to use their PostScript page description language to use in the LaserWriter. Around the same time, Paul Brainerd, a former newspaper editor, learned of Apple's laser printer efforts and saw the potential for a new program using the Mac's GUI to produce PostScript output for the new printer. 

  

Left: John Warnock in 1982 Right: Paul Brainerd in 1986​

After arranging funding through a venture capital firm, Brainerd formed Aldus Corporation in February 1984 and released the first Desktop Publishing Program, PageMaker, for the Macintosh in July, 1985. 

 

Aldus PageMaker (1985)

The ability to create WYSIWYG page layouts on screen and then print pages containing text and graphical elements at crisp 300 dpi resolution was a breakthrough for both the typesetting industry and the personal computer industry at the time. Soon afterward businesses started purchasing Macs not for business applications like Word Processing and Spreadsheets, but rather for the creation of memos, letters, presentations and newsletters. The Macintosh had finally found its success and by 1990, Apple had sold 1 million units. 

 

The offices of Highlights Electronic Publishing Company in Oakland, California as seen on The Computer Chronicles (1986)​

With Its success on the Macintosh, Its no surprise Aldus was looking to develop versions of PageMaker for other computers, and of course that lead to them creating a version for the IBM PC and compatibles. The PC version was first demoed in PC World magazine in July 1986, and officially shipped out in early 1987. Interestingly Brainerd demonstrated an early version of PageMaker on The Computer Chronicles in October of 1986, Engineering Version 0.755. 

 

Aldus PageMaker Engineering Version 0.755 as seen on The Computer Chronicles (1986)​

Also he demonstrated the program on a Hewlett Packard Vectra, Which was an IBM AT compatible introduced a year prior, in 1985.

 

Left: Paul Brainerd demonstrating the early version of PageMaker on The Computer Chronicles (1986)​ Right: The Hewlett Packard Vectra 45945A (1985)

The Vectra was HP's first attempt at a fully IBM compatible computer, and while it still had compatibility issues, it still was far more PC compatible than its predecessor, The 1983 HP 150. That was HP's first MS DOS computer sold, and while its touchscreen monitor (The first of its kind) was certainly neat, Its high price, Not fully compatible BIOS, and reliance on the still new 3.5 inch floppy disk was somewhat of a hindrance.

 

The Hewlett Packard 150 touchscreen (1983)

Apparently Aldus, Microsoft and HP were in a partnership to provide PageMaker with a Vectra, Windows, and HP's then new LaserJet 500 laser printer (An enhanced version of the original LaserJet from 1984) introduced around the same time as a way to help the program get some recognition.

 

The Hewlett Packard LaserJet  (1984)

Now Let's have a look at some software. Booting up the online PCjs emulator we can have a look at Windows 1.0 itself, And here it is, This is Windows 1.0. Its quite basic when you compare it to windows today. There's no Task Bar, it only boots up into the MS DOS Executive program which shows what's on the disks in Drives A and B, as well as the Harddrive on the C drive. It does come with a few programs like a word processor, clock, a calendar, a calculator, and even a built in game, no its not Space Cadet pinball, Minesweeper, or even Solitaire, Its Reversi, which isn't very exciting if i'm honest. It also has the very first version of Microsoft Paint which is very basic as its in black and white. Fun Fact is that Paint originally began as a smaller bundled version of another paint program called PaintBrush from Zsoft Corporation which itself was a clone of Mouse Systems PCPaint, which itself was a clone of MacPaint.

 

Now Let's have a look at PageMaker. I already got it installed on another PCjs tab so we don't

have to go thought the process of installing from the disks and here it is the first thing you need to do is select what type of paper you want to work with so I'll select Letter, and as soon as I click OK, there's my page. Looking at PageMaker, It actually doesn't seem too dissimilar to modern Page Layout programs like Adobe InDesign, you have your page in the center and the toolbox window on the side. The first thing you want to do is set your font, I'll go for Helvetica (Ironic to find in Windows, but this predates Arial, so its less weird) and set it to a size 10. Next I'll set it to 2 page spread and set the column number to 2. Finally I'll add some text and graphics I'll use the place command and choose one of the sample documents from the Tutorial Disk called IconText. The program actually has the ability to take document file formats from many of the more popular word processors of the time like WordStar, MultiMate and Microsoft Word. Once you select your document, just click on ne of the columns and it will fill it up. You also place graphics in the same manner, I'll chose the doodle i made in Paint earlier and just place it in there. you also have the ability to link up columns so the text can flow throughout them much like in InDesign. Overall The program seems pretty simple and easy to use all things considering.

 

So what happened to everyone involved afterward? Aldus continued to make improved versions of PageMaker for the Mac, PC, and DEC VAXstation Workstations until 1994, When the company was purchased by Adobe for $446 million dollars and was folded as a company the same year. Adobe continued to support and make new versions of PageMaker though it was losing to QuarkXpress by the end of the 1990's and the last version of PageMaker, Version 7.0, was released in 2001. Paul Brainerd the software business in 1995 to work with conservation and philanthropy organizations, which he still does today. 

Microsoft of course continued to improve Windows, and the first massively successful version, Windows 3.0, launched in 1990. Apple continued to Improve the Mac and the MacOS operating system that drives it and both operating systems are of course still very popular. 

So in conclusion, I hope you enjoyed my look at Aldus PageMaker for Windows 1.0, A program that was not only one of the few of its kind on the OS, but was a conversion of a piece of software that both saved the Mac and started a Desktop Publishing Revolution.Thanks for reading! see you next time!