The Nerd quotes from The Angry Video Game Nerd

The Nerd

Beetlejuice. You know, great classic Tim Burton movie from the 80's starring Michael Keaton? At the time, it was probably one of the darkest and quirkiest comedies to get mainstream attention. It was a big deal; it had a cartoon show, and of course a video game, on the good old NES. With a movie that employs such a wide scope of imagination where anything can happen, that gives a lot of possibilities for a game. So I bet this could be great. Unless... [he reveals on the box that it was published by LJN, the company notorious for publishing horrible movie-based games on NES.] OHHHH, COME ON! WHY, WHY, WHY?! WHY?! NO-NO-NO-- [screams angrily] Of course! It was made by LJN. Made by LJN. You know, that's something everyone's always trying to correct me about. LJN was not a game developer, they were a publisher that contracted other companies to develop the games. I know that, but that doesn't change the fact, that every time this logo appears on a game it's guaranteed to be ass! If LJN published it, they still made it. It's an LJN game. So technically, this one was developed by Rare. Meaning it's a Rare fucking day when LJN makes a game that's not a 12-foot tall mound of dog shit! Rare was the same company that made Donkey Kong Country, and Killer Instinct! So, maybe we can have high hopes that this'll be okay... but on the other hand, Rare also developed other LJN "classics" such as Roger Rabbit, Nightmare on Elm Street, and made Battletoads, which is one of the worst two-player games of all time. So, how does Beetlejuice hold up? Let's turn on the juice, and see what shakes loose.

The Nerd

You know, what I'd rather do is trap a bunch of beetles in a jar, smush 'em with a lemon squeezer, and drain their juice into a shot glass. And no, I didn't say anything about drinking it.

The Nerd

I think the game has more to do with the star than the movie; I mean the star in the sky, the real Betelgeuse. It's a red super-giant that's going to explode one day. Does that not accurately describe the feeling you get from playing this piece of shit? This particular star is always pulsating; it's so inconsistent that it's sometimes called the ninth brightest star in the sky, but usually the tenth. These fluctuations in inconsistencies are exactly what they were going for with the unpredictable nature of this game. When you're flying all over the place like a spring-loaded turd in a pinball machine, that's just like the star itself, how it's been speculated to have changed course at one time or another, possibly because a nearby stellar explosion, or in this case, a fuckin' bug. I mean, here we have a game where what exists outside the edge in the screen could take effect or not; the absence of visibility will result in death, whereas the existence of something harmful but not visible will still be in effect! Is it any coincidence that a game with no definable boundaries would have such a distinct relation to a star with optical emissions that vary, making it hard to define the photosphere? Or what about how the star is surrounded by a circumstellar envelope made up of matter that's been ejected from the star, kinda like a mass of bees coming out of a beehive, and making an outer field around the hive? Betelgeuse is part of the constellation of Orion. That's what the ancient Greeks viewed it as but of course today we all know that's actually a skeleton shooting a fireball. Why would Betelgeuse be on the shoulder? Well, quite simply, anyone who's played this game as a kid has a chip on their shoulder whenever you bring up the name! And at last the game was released in May. That's the same month when Betelgeuse can be seen over the western horizon after sunset for only a brief period of time. Likewise, it was Western US gamers who played this right after sunset when their homework was done, and it was only for a brief period before they threw it to the ground, beneath the horizon. So yes, I'm convinced the game was based on the star, and not the movie... or you could just say they fucked it up, and took too much liberty with the source material. We'll call this "Freeform Fuckery".

The Nerd

And at last, let's talk about the music. Don't expect to hear the familiar dark, mischievous Danny Elfman theme, no. In the tradition of all LJN games, they give ya somethin' original. [a snippet of the music plays] What kind of horseshit is this? This doesn't set the tone at all! It would be fine for other games. This is something you should hear if you're jumping around blowing bubbles in magic fairy-tale land, not a dark Tim Burton nightmare world. It would be like listening to... I don't know, the soundtrack to Mary Poppins while watching Requiem for a Dream? For this kind of inappropriate game soundtrack, we'll call it... "Bad Music". In conclusion, I could say the game is ass. It's a steaming pile of goat shit, horrible abomination of mankind, but the perfect way to sum it up... is it's an LJN game. It doesn't matter who actually developed it, they were hired by LJN. The welcome letter probably said something like this. "Welcome to our team of Laughing Joking Numbnuts. Here at LJN, we strive in creating the world's leading shitfests and providing to our customers the greatest raping of all their favorite films. We value your addition in helping us continue to grow the black plague of today's generation of gaming. Enclosed, you will find our handbook of policies and procedures in developing games with "Bouncing Bullshit", "Perpendicular Dick Ploys", "Bitch Barriers", "Inanimate Anal Assassinations", "Fruitless Farts", "Diarrhetic Diversions", "Freeform Fuckery", "Pinpoint Piss Taking", "Rat Trap Crap Shoots" and "Bad Music". We are proud to have you on board." Well, fuck this game, watch it go! [places the cartridge on the floor and smashes it to pieces with his foot] Hyah! Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice! It's showtime! I've seen The Exorcist 167 times, it keeps getting funnier every fucking time! Happy Halloween, motherfucker!

The Nerd

And yes, he just turned into a cheeseburger.

The Nerd

It can't be! (Opens a present then reveals LJN Video Art) LJN made a video game console. It's already bad enough they already monopolized the genre of shitty disfunctional video games, but now, to make a whole fucking console. The biggest turd LJN ever shat. Let's take a look.

The Nerd

Ooh, no, oh, no, oh, NO! Oh, I hate these. These things come from Hell! These are the devil's pitchforks that you have to screw on the back of your TV!

The Nerd

Well, you have to admit, this sure has a killer soundtrack. Yeah, next time you're having a conversation about best video game soundtracks; Mega Man, Castlevania, no, tell them about LJN Video Art. I can see it right now like, "Uh, how does that one go? I don't remember that." "Oh, it goes like: [imitates static sounds]"

The Nerd

The game has no sound... This is a unique specimen, not because it doesn't have sound, but because it outputs white noise, so technically, it does have sound, but it's fucking static! This kind of shit is the reason the Mute button was invented. Yeah, so turn the sound off, put on some Witchfinder General, and while you're at it, put on a different fucking game!

The Nerd

And when you're pushing down the button and rocking the joystick around like this, it squeaks! [The joystick squeaks annoyingly as he rocks it] Oh! [groans angrily] That's awful! This is worse than the static, and this you can't turn down. So, guess you gotta get some really strong earmuffs. [he puts on earmuffs]

The Nerd

Does LJN Video Art have ANY good aspects? Well, I guess you can change the color of the pen. You can change the color of the background. You can erase... [begins to erase] one pixel at a time! This is the worst thing ever. Etch-a-Sketch is better than this, and that doesn't even need electricity or forks to screw in your TV. You can give it the benefit of it being 1987 and one of the first of its kind. Later, there were games like Art Alive! on the Sega Genesis which was pretty cool, and Wacky Worlds Creativity Studio, which came with a mouse. But the one I have the most fond memories of, is Mario Paint on Super NES. [the footage of Mario Paint on SNES is shown] You can draw either free style or with a coloring book, with plenty of different pens, brushes, colors and patterns to work with. But it wasn't just about what you can do, but more about the overall presentation of it. For example, they give you so many creative ways to erase the drawing. [The picture is erased in different ways, like a video tape being rewound] It's unnecessary, but it's cool. Even the Save feature, which takes an insane amount of time just to save one shitty drawing, is still cool, because you get that catchy beat to make the time fly by. [he bobs his head to the beat] The sound effects are so enjoyable. I mean, it's awesome just the way when you click on the different color sets, it goes higher in pitch. [The noise it makes when you click on the different color sets goes higher in pitch every time he clicks it] : You can do simple animation, make music... ["Mario Paint"-made music plays] ...even play a Fly Swatter game, and with the Super NES mouse, this was a fun experience. You can even mess around with the title screen. [The Nerd messes with the title screen, clicking on letters and even making it explode] Looking back, it's not a very useful program. You can't do a whole lot with it compared to computer programs today, but what made it great, was the presentation. It made doing the most simple tasks a lot of fun. LJN Video Art is not fun at all. It's a disaster. No human being should ever have the misfortune of playing this. And yes, the Styrofoam was more interesting. It doesn't even qualify as a video game console, but it... comes with cartridges, so I guess... technically, it is a video game console! Well then it's the worst video game console of all time! LJN has really outdone themselves this time! The only thing worse would be to play it on the Roll & Rocker! Yeah, imagine that!

The Nerd

So, this concludes this marathon of crap, 12 shitty relics from the ass of the past. Hope you enjoyed it. Enjoyed in a strange way, I guess. You know, why do we focus on the bad memories? Why are we sentimental over the crappy past? I don't know, but I do know that the things of yesterday that were worthless, you all found some way to give them worth. You've done this, I've done this, we've all found ways to just make the best of things I guess. Maybe you're having a good holiday season, or a bad one, or an indifferent one, whatever the case I just want to bring you some joy. I hope you got a laugh, or even just a chuckle, uh, because it's that time of year, where everybody... make happy. Be a comedian. With all sincerity, have a Merry Christmas, happy holidays in general, and I'll see ya in 2015. Get ready for those self-lacing shoes, hoverboards and flying cars!

The Nerd

I've been called upon to take care of business once again. Apparently, there was a game worse than Big Rigs. Worse than Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Worse than CrazyBus or Desert Bus! It was known as Hong Kong 97, and I've been getting requests for it up the ass. The requests are so far up the ass, it's time to shit 'em out! The game was made for the Super Famicom in Japan. But never saw its way to the rest of the world. This is one title that we definitely didn't get on the Super Nintendo. It was made by HappySoft. HappySoft was most famous for making... Hong Kong 97, their one and only "masterpiece." (scene switches to an animated scene of HappySoft, rising from a fiery pit, shitting out Hong Kong 97) On this one occasion, they rose from the depths of Hell, excreted this unholy turd onto the Earth, and then descended back to where they came. (scene cuts back to real life) Supposedly, the game was so horrible, it barely even came on the Super Famicom at all. Stores rejected it and its release status is a mystery. It's so rare that to this day, not a single cartridge or physical copy has shown up at all. I can't even find a picture of one. So the only way I can experience this game... is the same way as the rest of the Internet.

The Nerd

[upon seeing the word "fuckin'" in the game's intro story] This can't be real. No. No. Somebody's pulling my leg! "A herd of fucking ugly reds"? Was 'a herd of ugly reds' too weak? Did they really need the F word to FUCKIN' drive home the FUCKIN' point?

The Nerd

One hit, and the game's over. Why would I expect anything more? [Sees the game over screen, a picture of what appears to be a real corpse, accompanied by the text "Chin IS DEAD!!"] No... oh, please! I hope that's not a real dead body. No, there's no way they'd have such bad taste! That's gotta be an actor. Or... we're looking at some guy who died on that date and time in 1992.

The Nerd

The strange thing is that Deng Xiaoping actually died in 1997. The game...predicted the future. In fact, 1997 was the year the United Kingdom returned the rule of Hong Kong back to China. The movie, from '94, forecast this in the tagline: "99 years of British rule are about to come to an end. Hong Kong will never be the same." The movie stars Robert Patrick, the T-1000 from Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and Judgment Day takes place...in 1997. Part of Deng Xiaoping's ear is sort of cut off, like when Mike Tyson bit off a piece of Evander Holyfield's ear in 1997. The car, I'm willing to bet, is a Mercedes-Benz, in which Princess Diana died in '97. And what was the year Coca-Cola launched Surge? '97. And it's no coincidence all my surge protectors were made in China. Rebooting the entire game after you die? Just like Symphony of the Night. '97. Jackie Chan, uh, Rumble in the Bronx, uh, the Bronx, New York City, the Big Apple... [gasps] The year Steve Jobs returned to Apple in '97. The unstoppable, unrelenting song is called I love Beijing Tiananmen, also known as I love Peking Tiananmen. Peking Duck is a famous duck dish from Beijing. [gasps] And Scrooge McDuck had his 50th Anniversary in '97! The game was such a titanic failure. [gasps] Titanic, the movie from '97! Why was this game's sole purpose to direct us to the number 97? Huh. Like the NGC-97 galaxy in the constellation of Andromeda, the princess Andromeda who was chained naked to a rock to be sacrificed to a monster. Like Princess Leia and Jabba in Return of the Jedi. [gasps] The Special Edition of Star Wars in '97! Ah, fuck, we're back again. Man, I'm just trying to get a final answer here, but I went full circle. Like the song that keeps looping. A game that keeps repeating. Maybe it's all about a cycle. An endless cycle. Old, shitty games that become new again. The past becomes the future, birth and death, on and on, it's the cycle of life. The game is the meaning of life! And the thing that keeps life going; Reproduction...and food...which becomes shit. The game is fuckin' shit. There.