Retro Game Reviews

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Video Game Reviewers

The Angry Nintendo Nerd (now called the Angry VideoGame Nerd) catapulted the online reviewing of classic/retro games into the spotlight. His reviews are very funny but it comes at a cost of him concentrating on the worst games.

Other people have taken a more balanced approach when reviewing games, looking at their gameplay, graphics and sounds and helping expose old gems people may have missed. Here we will take a look at a few of them as they cover the videogames that shaped the world and the ones which didn't.

Classic Games Revisited

Dommie hosts his own site and also posts video reviews on youtube. He has over 130 videos to look at, ranging from video game reviews to console hardware reviews.

Dommie is obviously a games lover, his reviews mostly use real games running on real systems and he has an amazing amount of knowledge about games on all kinds of systems. In my opinion having a wide experience with games is important for any review because you have to know how the game fits into the gaming timeline. There is no point in reviewing Galaga if you don't know about Space Invaders for instance.

I find Dommie's voice to be clear and easy to listen to, and the production values of the videos are generally good. He describes the gameplay mechanisms quite well whilst also comparing it to other games in the era/genre. The only area I would think there could be an improvement is in the more technical aspects of his reviews. In his Mario Kart review there was no mention of the fact it has a special DSP-1 chip, which doesn't really impact on the game review but I thought it was something interesting to be mentioned. Of course since I am a programmer these kind of things interest me more than most. :)

Webpage
Youtube Channel

Bartender Productions

The Bartender (as he is known) is an aspiring actor slash game collector that posts reviews about various games on youtube. Unlike most other reviewers he doesn't use any real game footage and instead simply talks about the game and anything he feels is relevant to it.

Because of the relatively low production values his videos may not be as popular as some others but it also has its own charm when combined with his interesting personality. His actor aspirations also mean he has pretty good facial and voice range which provides some good variety and humour.

If you're after a laugh and like hearing very personal opinions about games then check his videos out.

Youtube Channel

Kid Thunder

Kid Thunder is a video game reviewer, musician, and online ranter among other things. His 8bit music remixes sound quite good and his videos have quite high production values. He is obviously a very creative person.

He almost sounds too cool to be playing video games, he reminds me of a DJ from a radio station. I'm not sure what approach he is going for with his reviews exactly, but they have high visual production values and are generally funny. The way he pauses and stutters sometimes I find quite hilarious. Though it's hard to tell if he is just doing that for effect or not, but with his confident voice it just makes me laugh. If it isn't an act then he should just keep going with what he is doing because it makes his reviews quite unique and raw.

Like the others mentioned here he has a fairly good understanding of video games in general which makes his reviews better than most.

Youtube Channel

The Angry VideoGame / Nintendo Nerd

Well I saved this for last because everyone should already know about him. While there is some contention about his "act" and "who came first" in regards to others who were similar, there is no doubting he made it popular.

His videos have the highest production quality of all mentioned here, mostly because he has a background in film and also gets paid to do them now which seems like a fairly good job to me! He mostly seems to concentrate on very poor games so that his reviews can be funny, so if you are after coverage of all games you won't find it here. What you will find is definitely a few hours worth of laughs.

I highly recommend to check out a few of his videos and even take a look at his main site and see what he is doing in other areas outside of video games. He certainly appears to have a bright future.

Webpage
Youtube Channel

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