Watching other people play videogames through online streaming is one of the biggest trends in recent years. It wasn't too surprising to me considering a lot of us probably did it when we were younger (I watched my dad and my older cousins play videogames a lot when I was younger). Some like to watch others play to know what the game is like before buying it themselves. Some enjoy watching others play Horror or difficult games to see their reactions. Some people don't want to play games and rather watch other people play. I generally like watching high level play in competitive or super challenging games. But I noticed that the majority of gameplay videos and streams consists of people playing the game normally while talking a lot, making bad jokes, forcefully yelling a lot with screaming and cursing, and worst of all: constantly asking for donation/subscriptions.
I rarely watch videos or streams of other people play games, but I recently started watching James Rolfe's Angry Video Game Nerd (AVGN) sketch again and found out that he's been making videos with his partner Mike Matei of them playing games (old and new). The AVGN was a character and thus James acted in a very specific way that set the theme to his games reviews that was both informative and entertaining. So it was really weird seeing him act normal with Mike Matei when playing videogames. What really sets apart their videos from a lot of others on the internet and Youtube is how insightful they are on the games that they play. They know a lot of history behind each game, cultural references made in the game, fundamentals to design and aesthetics, and they grew up experiencing a lot of the old games they talk about.
Metroid is definitely one of my favorite NES games of all time and so I was excited to see them play through it. What really stood out was watching James go up against Mother Brain and finishing the game. The emotion and reactions were so genuine and so relatable for someone who remembers all the challenges and grief this game gave. That sigh of relief and laugh he gave at the end had such a strong implication of satisfaction. I played the game a lot when I was younger, played it a bunch in high school, and played it again in College. I haven't played it since College and I kind of want to now after I watched James play it.
TL;DR - James beats Metroid and man did it make him work for it. It's one of my favorite games on the NES.
P.S. Kraid's Chamber Theme is the song that helped me understand how to play the left hand on a piano when I was learning how to play. I remember hearing the song when I was playing at 5-7 years old and was thinking "I want to be able to play this on an instrument".
[Updated]
So I ended up playing Metroid tonight and finished it. Made another small rant on FB which I'm pasting back on here:
Well, I said I wanted to play Metroid after watching the video of James and Mike play it yesterday, so I did. It feels a lot easier now than it did back when I was younger other than fighting Mother Brain. I ran out of missiles the first attempt. And then in my 2nd attempt, I remembered I used to skip fighting the Metroids to conserve ammo. Still, I got knocked down to 23 EN/hp before defeating her; it was a very close call.
I was surprised I got "No Armor Suit" Samus Ending considering how many times I had to farm for missiles in the beginning and health mid-game before getting the Screw Attack and Varia Suit. I've always found it weird that Samus is shown as a brunette at the end, green hair in-game, and eventually stayed as a blonde. I've always also found it weird on why people were so shocked that Samus was a female. To me (when I was 4-5 yo), Samus sounded like a feminine name and she looked like she was wearing high heels in-game. People had the same reaction with the protagonist of The Guardian Legend (also one of my favorite games on NES) where they thought it was a guy. It totally looked like a girl to me.
Anyways, playing through Metroid was nostalgic bliss.
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