These are outtakes from the AVGN Episode (#104) Nintendo World Championships. (See the episode here) Also, to give you more insight on the making of the episode, here is how it all happened:
Pat the NES Punk does his own series of game reviews. I met him at the ScrewAttack Gaming Convention briefly and later Comic Con. I became aware that he is a hardcore collector of NES stuff and even has a legit Nintendo World Championships cartridge. (The grey version) During my stay at Comic Con, he wanted me to film a short cameo for his Nintendo World Championships video (Yes, he did his own video about it first.)
Pat’s “NWC” video showed him as a collector who stumbles upon an NWC grey cart, and then ends up losing it to an unknown person. At the end, I show up, in my cameo, holding the game. It’s not clear whether or not it is really “James” or the AVGN. At the time, it was just a cameo, and I never expected it would go further, or that I would ever bother to make my own NWC video. It was never on the Nerd’s agenda.
Pat made a second video, since he came for a visit, and we filmed ourselves playing NES games. I was not in character and there was no script. At the end, Pat finds the grey cart in my collection and runs out the door with it. Again, I had no plans of following up on it.
Things changed when Pat got his hands on an NWC gold cartridge (I’m sure he paid an insane price). He asked me if I’d be interested in shooting another video and immediately the creative ideas started flourishing. My AVGN plans were to make regular basic episodes that each only take 15-20 hours to make. (Well this one ended up being 70 hours) I knew it would slow down production on the AVGN Movie, but hey, it’s a very rare opportunity to make a video with TWO of the most rare games of all time!
Pat and I bounced ideas back and forth. One of his original ideas was to take it in a supernatural direction where the two games unleash a magical power when combined. One of mine was to make it a spoof of The Maltese Falcon, with gangsters approaching the Nerd, willing to kill for the game. Eventually we decided a more down to earth approach about two gamers trying to con each other. It’s a tale of greed.
My decision was to ignore the previous videos I filmed with Pat. They don’t fit into the storyline. I wanted to start fresh. I can’t speak for Pat, but he has some ideas addressing this, which you may see in his upcoming videos. I wrote the script and spoke with Pat regularly during the writing process. Pat knew his own character, as did I, so he would handle most of his character’s lines of dialogue. The incident that gets the plot moving is when the Nerd buys a box of games from an Ebay auction. I’ve gotten a lot of questions if this really happened. But no, this was fiction, just to get the plot moving. The fact is, Pat owns both NWC games. I was just inventing my own story to be able to use the games.
Since the Nerd is known to smash games, I thought it would be hilarious for the Nerd to smash these super rare expensive games and shock the audience. Of course, we made fake games to use as stunt props, using a Top gun and Legend of Zelda cartridge.
The outtakes show a little glimpse of what it was like making the video. Enjoy.
