James Rolfe
James D. Rolfe is an American YouTuber, filmmaker, and actor. He is best known for creating and starring in the comedic retrogaming web series Angry Video Game Nerd. His spin-off projects include reviews of retro films, television series, and board games. He is considered a pioneer of online gaming content and is noted for his widespread influence on YouTube content after the series premiered on the site in 2006.
Rolfe began creating homemade video productions in the late 1980s and had filmed more than 270 video projects by 2004. Among these were the first Angry Video Game Nerd episodes, which were released on his Cinemassacre website in 2004. Two years later, he gained mainstream attention when the series went viral after being published to YouTube. Following its success, Rolfe released a feature-length film based on the series in 2014, which received mixed reviews. In 2022, Rolfe published his autobiography, A Movie Making Nerd. In 2025, Rolfe published a horror fiction book titled Gnome Cave.
Early life
Rolfe was born on July 10, 1980, at Jeanes Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was raised in southern New Jersey and graduated in 1999 from Edgewood Regional High School. He is of Italian ancestry. His parents bought him an audio recorder as a Christmas present in the early to mid-1980s. Later, he received a camera and took photographs of himself and his friends play-fighting. He was inspired by The Legend of Zelda and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to create adventure stories. 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.Rolfe began filming shorts in 1989 and continued the hobby into the mid-1990s. He used Mario Paint for a few of his early films. His early work did not have scripts or rehearsals. However, once he began writing scripts, his friends gradually lost interest due to the pressure of remembering their lines, which left many of Rolfe's films unfinished. He then experimented with action figures and puppets. The plot of The Giant Movie Director involved toys coming to life. Rolfe attended a special education school for seven and a half years during his childhood. Reflecting on his past, he said, "In school, I had a rough time communicating. I went to special ed for seven-and-a-half years. I liked it, I had a good time. But socializing in general... I was a little awkward. Art always made me feel comfortable."
Rolfe attended the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where he studied filmmaking. While in college, he met several friends who would later become collaborators on future projects, including Mike Matei, Kyle Justin, and Brendan "Bootsy" Castner. He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2004. After graduating, he worked as a film editor for corporate safety and instructional videos but quit in 2007 following the success of his Angry Video Game Nerd web series.
Rolfe also operated an annual "haunted house" Halloween attraction out of his parents' garage, utilizing a collection of props and antiques that he reused multiple times in his other films.
Career
Early films
In May 1996, Rolfe filmed A Night of Total Terror in his backyard, a horror film he has called "the turning point of life". In the late 1990s, Rolfe created several films, including the B-horror movie The Head Incident, which he completed in 1999 but did not release until its tenth anniversary in 2009. He also made Cinemaphobia in 2001, which follows an actor who suffers from an overload of work and begins hallucinating cameras following him. Two versions of the film were made: a ten-minute version and an extended fifteen-minute version. Rolfe has stated a preference for the shorter version. That same year, he created Kung Fu Werewolf from Outer Space, a largely silent film except for narration. He also made an hour-long comedy film titled Stoney, a spoof of the 1976 film Rocky. His eighth film of 2001 was It Came from the Toilet!.In 2003, Rolfe created another film, Curse of the Cat Lover's Grave, which was split into three parts to represent three different horror genres. He also made a pilot for a planned web series titled Jersey Odysseys: Legend of the Blue Hole, based on urban legends from the state of New Jersey. The pilot centers on the legend of the Jersey Devil.
''Angry Video Game Nerd''
Rolfe's career did not gain significant momentum until May 2004, when he filmed a five-minute short review of the Nintendo Entertainment System game Castlevania II: Simon's Quest under the title "Bad NES Games". His character was originally named "The Angry Nintendo Nerd" but was later changed to "The Angry Video Game Nerd" to avoid trademark issues and because he expanded his reviews to include games on other consoles. Rolfe conceived the character while studying at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, where he attended from 1999 to 2004. Rolfe then produced another video, a review of the 1988 game Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which was initially intended to be the last of the series due to his intense dislike for the game. The video introduced the running joke of The Nerd drinking alcohol in response to a particularly bad game; Rolfe initially used Rolling Rock beer for the gag, as it was the only beer available in his refrigerator at the time, but later performed the joke with Yuengling beer, hard liquor, or even non-alcoholic hot sauce. Although Rolfe originally intended to keep his videos private, his friend and collaborator Mike Matei persuaded him to post them to a YouTube channel called "JamesNintendoNerd" on April 6, 2006. Matei created and managed the channel for Rolfe.On September 12, 2006, Rolfe's character gained mainstream attention when his review of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles became popular on YouTube. His videos were also posted on GameTrailers and ScrewAttack, amassing 30 million monthly views. As of September 2019, he has over three million subscribers. At the end of 2007, Rolfe paused production of the series and canceled an appearance at MAGFest after experiencing a strain in his voice. On March 17, 2010, he announced that he was suffering from burnout due to the demands of consistently writing, directing, and starring in the videos, and that the show would enter a brief hiatus. It was scheduled to return in May 2010; however, an episode was released on April 30. Episodes are now released on either the first or second Wednesday of each month, instead of two episodes per month due to Rolfe's other projects. Episodes were at one point posted on YouTube over a year after their original release on GameTrailers. Rolfe was previously affiliated with ScrewAttack but left the company in 2013. In 2014, Rolfe partnered with Screenwave Media to assist with editing and writing the series, enabling him to better balance his YouTube projects and prioritize family time.
Rolfe's Nerd character gained further fame through a fictional feud with fellow YouTuber Doug Walker's Nostalgia Critic character. The feud began with the Critic launching a satirical attack in an early video, prompting a response from the Nerd. The conflict played out across several videos between 2008 and 2009, culminating in a crossover video titled "TGWTG Team Brawl," where the characters fight and ultimately reconcile. Out of character, Rolfe and Walker clarified that the feud was entirely fictional and that they were, in fact, good friends. Both have since collaborated on numerous videos and other projects.
''Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie''
For a period, Rolfe focused his efforts on producing Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie, which centers around the E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial video game for the Atari 2600. The film was a collaboration between Rolfe and Kevin Finn and was entirely funded through fan donations. The film’s release in 2014 coincided with the 31st anniversary of the 1983 video game crash. The final sequence of the movie, in which The Nerd reviews E.T., was later released as a standard AVGN episode.Other films
In 2007, Rolfe began filming The Deader, the Better, a classic-style B-movie horror film that pays homage to the 1968 horror classic Night of the Living Dead. The film was shown at the Atlanta Horror Fest in October 2007. On May 5, 2006, Rolfe released a music video that included stock footage from a trip he took to England and Scotland. The music used in the video was from the Black Sabbath single "Heaven and Hell." Rolfe also participated in the 48 Hour Film Project between 2004 and 2007. In the 2007 event, he won the Audience Award for his film Spaghetti Western. His other entries included a trilogy of films titled Death Suit, Death Seen, and Death Secret.Rolfe had a cameo in a Doritos and Pepsi commercial published online in November 2010. The ad was part of a voting contest, with the winning clip scheduled to air during Super Bowl XLV. However, the ad was eventually withdrawn due to public backlash, as it parodied the Catholic practice of Eucharist.
In 2010, it was announced that Rolfe was set to appear in a low-budget remake of Plan 9 from Outer Space titled Plan 9, which was released via Video on Demand on February 16, 2016, and later released on physical media on January 5, 2017. In early to mid-January 2013, Rolfe had a brief role as a news reporter in an independent short film about Sonic the Hedgehog. He was offered a role in V/H/S/2 by Adam Wingard, but had to decline due to his commitments on Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie. He was later offered a potential cameo in Godzilla vs. Kong by Wingard, but the demands of production, combined with the timing of the birth of Rolfe's second daughter, made the arrangement unfeasible. Rolfe also appeared in the crowdfunded 1980s horror documentary In Search of Darkness.
Commitment to YouTube videos has slowed Rolfe's progress in creating new features, but he produced a trilogy of new shorts following Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie, including Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: The Movie, based on the video game, Flying Fuckernauts vs. The Astro-Bastards, a tribute to B-movie sci-fi, and Mimal the Elf, a mockumentary. On May 25, 2017, in a general update video about the future of the YouTube channel, Rolfe announced he was in very early development on what he described as an "atmospheric horror movie... take place in one room... very minimal.". On December 29, Rolfe announced that 2018 would focus more on his own original projects and that he had begun writing the untitled horror film, which would be in the vein of past works such as Legend of the Blue Hole and Cinemaphobia. On August 8, 2018, Rolfe stated that he was 50–75% finished with the script, that it would contain some "nostalgia theming," but that it would likely undergo further rewrites and had no plans to film it in the near future. On June 19, 2019, Rolfe confirmed that the script was completed but that his commitment to video production would delay the project for the foreseeable future.
On October 18, 2020, Rolfe announced that the horror film had been postponed indefinitely due to time constraints. Instead, he directed a sequel to his 1999 horror short, The Head Incident, reuniting several members of the original cast and crew. On June 10, 2021, Rolfe released a video explaining the premise of the shelved "nostalgic" horror film: it would involve a man revisiting a childhood amusement park, only to become trapped there. Rolfe stated that the project could be revived in another medium and that he was working on another small-scale screenplay. In 2025, Rolfe adapted the screenplay into a novel, Gnome Cave.