The Bad Old Days

I've been watching a lot of Chrontendo lately. The big problem I have with the retro-gaming thing is that so much of it is built on nostalgia. Everything was better back then because we were too young and stupid to know any better. Chrontendo (as well as the side series by the same guy, Chronsega and Chronturbo) is an almost academic look at every video game to ever come out on the NES (or Famicom). It's a shockingly good reminder of just how much soulcrushingly awful crap came out on that system. And it's also a reminder of why the Super Mario Bros. games are considered classics. It's probably gaming blasphemy to say that Super Mario Bros. didn't exactly age well, but when it first came out that game was a goddamn masterpiece in every conceivable way. And that's made all the clearer when you see everything that came before it. So Chrontendo is a great, non-nostalgic look at the old days of gaming, warts and all.

And MovieBob made made me think I should watch "In the Name of the King" again. Not because it's good, but because it was so appallingly bad it's hard to imagine that kind of awfulness happening accidentally. It's a hilarious movie, even more so when you realize it was trying to be serious. And to be fair, Uwe Boll can be an okay director when you puts his nose to the grindstone and puts some honest-to-God effort into his movies. The problem is that he's so convinced of his own genius that he thinks he doesn't need to put any effort into directing. He clearly thinks he shits gold, so if he shits out a movie it must be gold. But it's just shit. Unintentionally hilarious shit, but still...