The Irate Gamer Timeline Part 1: Pre-YouTube to 2007

 Pre-YouTube:

Born and raised in the Sandusky, Ohio area, Christopher Bores attended Ashland University gunning for a degree in Creative Writing. Hoping to release his fantasy novel, The Dark Chapters. Chris would drop out before finishing his degree, pursuing a career in video production.

He produced multiple episodes of Haunted Investigators, his take on a Ghost Hunters style series. He partnered with his friend Alan Cicco and his then-girlfriend Jennifer Schippel. The series aired on Sandusky public access TV.

2006:
Chris would join the up & coming video sharing site, YouTube, under the account “y2b2006” in January. Y2B being the name of his production company.
He would use the channel to promote Haunted Investigators DVDs with self-made commercials, along with showcasing some of his other original content. Including a Mythbusters parody that was less a parody and more a low budget knock-off, and his original time travel film Back to the Past.

Over in New Jersey, fresh-out-of-film-school James Rolfe, on the advice of his college friend Mike Matei, created the YouTube account “JamesNintendoNerd” in April. The sole purpose was to showcase a trilogy of satirical video game reviews about NES games he disliked as a kid. While putting all his other content on “Cinemassacre”. These NES videos ended up being popular, and once again on Mike’s advice, James would turn it into a regular series known as “The Angry Nintendo Nerd”, later renamed “The Angry Video Game Nerd”.

Rolfe’s series would inspire a multitude of gaming enthusiasts into doing their own “rage-induced retro reviews”. Including Marcus “Armake21” Sparacio and UrinatingTree, among many others.

2007:
When Y2B2006 wasn’t blowing up like Chris wanted, he searched out what was popular. Finding the “angry game reviewing” scene, Chris decided to do something similar. Buying up various game lots on eBay, he opened the “Irategamer” channel in April, with his first video on Back to the Future coming a few days later.

Highlights included the only theater in 2007 to show Back to the Future, the line “Now it’s time to pop in this video game and play the game”, some other oddly familiar lines, comparing the number of enemies you need to kill in the soda shop to levels in Mario, weapons in Zelda, and bosses in Mega Man, and an ending where the Irate Gamer goes back in time and murders the CEO of LJN. With jelly blood.

Over the next few months, he would release multiple Irate Gamer videos.

Where’s Waldo, looking at games on NES and SNES. He referred to Super Mario World and Donkey Kong Country as “NES games”. It was also the first video with game “destruction”, putting the games into a paper shredder.

Goonies II. Most of the video was spent wondering about the title and comparing it to Donkey Kong and its sequels Jr. and 3. It was oddly familiar. This video revealed his obsession with game endings, and how he gets upset when he doesn’t get a satisfactory one.

Mission Impossible. Chris would claim this was the video where he came into his own. However, it set the tone that many of his videos would complain more about difficulty rather than poor design choices. The video is infamous for his utterance of the phrase “what a shitload of fuck”.

A video about The Sopranos series finale where he talks about TV finales in general. Deleted, and got an entry on the Lost Media Wiki (it has been found).

Ghosts n’ Goblins. Chris struggled with the NES version so much, that he silently switched to the Arcade version and activated invincibility. The only acknowledgement was in the description where he claims to have done it because he needed to show off the ending.
This episode began his trend of recurring side characters with Satan (Chris in a devil mask putting on a deep voice) and Cousin Joey (Chris pitching up his voice, wearing a baseball cap, and making himself look smaller).

Jaws, a video remembered for how Chris suddenly stops talking about Jaws to talk about another NES game, then goes back to Jaws like nothing happened. As well as an out-of-nowhere ending where he shoots the Duck Hunt dog.

Hotel Gaming, a short video where Chris decides to look at games offered at the hotel he’s staying in. But he learns they cost money and ends the video.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. In the original description, Chris stated that doing the “shoulder angel & devil” gag was one of the hardest things he’s ever done, claiming he “literally put his blood, sweat, and tears into it”.

On August 7th, the Irate Gamer would post the video that would get him noticed by the gaming community. Super Mario Bros. 2. It acted like the fact it wasn’t originally a Mario game was a big secret and he was exposing this “scandal” to the world (even using “scandal” in the title). Not helped by him claiming Mario 2 was a bad game (it has “ass” written all over it) or showing some real questionable English ([Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels] is the perfect predecessor to the first Mario game). The episode introduced another recurring character, the Evil Gamer. It’s Irate Gamer, but evil.
It was also the first video with his theme song. It wasn’t something he created or paid someone to create, but a royalty-free track taken from Digital Juice’s now defunct StackTraxx program.

Shortly after the Mario 2 video went up, YouTube found it and featured it on the front page. For those unaware, YouTube used to feature videos they deemed acceptable on the front page to boost their views and drive subscribers to them. It’s been speculated by creators from the time that YouTube wanted a “less sweary AVGN”, and while IG did drop f-bombs, he wasn’t as vulgar (Though he still made a lot of toilet jokes).
Chris’ views began to skyrocket.

The next IG episode would go up only 10 days later, talking about MUSCLE (or Kinnikuman). It gave us the now immortal line “What the fuck is a muscle?” As well as claiming the game did not have “special moves” (it did). He also talked about Ring King even though that’s a boxing game. I imagine it was for the suggestive looking sprites.
It would introduce another recurring character, Tony, a Maplestory sprite designed to resemble the Irate Gamer. He ends most of his sentences with “Bang-a-lang”. No, I don’t know what it means, and it’s never explained why he says it.

MUSCLE would also end up getting featured on the front page, and more viewers piled in. However, not all of them were positive. People were quick to point out how he’s far too similar to the Angry Video Game Nerd. From the mannerisms to the game destruction, to even outright using lines he said.

Outside of the unoriginality, people noticed that Chris didn’t seem to know anything about video games. Often complaining about aspects that were commonplace in games from the NES and SNES era, making extremely obvious mistakes, or nonsensical comparisons. Though these were all overshadowed by the “plagiarism” accusations. Chris would ignore all these problems, never addressing them, sometimes blocking people that bring them up.

Rather, he would put up a (now deleted) “Thank you” video where he would tell all his new viewers and subscribers how grateful he is. It gave us the notorious quote, “I’ve been playing these games for 20 years; I know all the ins & outs of these games.” A line that would haunt him forever.

Behind the scenes though, Chris was feeling the heat of the accusations. Rather than address them publicly, he chose to send a private e-mail to James Rolfe. Praising him and noting how he was a big influence, while also apologizing for “supposedly” using some of his lines, and he won’t do it again. That… did not last.

On September 10th, the Irate Gamer would upload an episode on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It would cover five games. The first Arcade game, the first NES game, the NES port of the Arcade game (where he showed a lack of understanding on console limitations) and very brief looks at The Manhattan Project and Turtles in Time (incorrectly referring to it as a Super Nintendo exclusive).
The episode attracted a firestorm of controversy as people noticed his review of the first NES title was very similar to the AVGN’s notable video. Right down to using the same spotlight effect when pointing out an impossible to reach pizza.

Annoyed by this, James forwarded the letter to Mike, who chose to post it on the ScrewAttack forum for all to see. The internet increased their mockery of him after that, with more people taking notice. Chris was silently very upset about this, and for the longest time refused to acknowledge the AVGN.

It was also this point where videos critical of the Irate Gamer began to pop up. Most were about the lack of originality, but some did point out the incorrect information (including BigAl2k6 calling out his MUSCLE review). Remember this for 2008.

He also put out a censored version of the TMNT video because “parents asked him”. That has since been deleted.

Chris pressed on, releasing an episode on Yo! Noid. Despite the Mario 2 video, he didn’t make this a “scandal expose” even though Yo! Noid is a reskin of Kamen no Ninja Hanamaru.
It ended with him promoting the Irate Gamer t-shirt.

According to the internet archive, he uploaded a Haunted Investigators episode around this time. He has deleted it, only to upload it later.

For Halloween he talked about Zombies Ate My Neighbors, another beloved title. People started to notice that Chris may not understand the idea of “angry reviews.” They’re normally reserved for bad games, or games with glaring issues. Irate Gamer covering whatever game he wanted completely missed the point. It makes people think Chris has terrible taste if he claims Zombies Ate My Neighbors is bad.
The episode also introduced fan-favorite Ronnie the Skeleton (Chris in a skull mask and robe sporting a Woody Allen-esque accent).

Shortly after Halloween, Chris surprised everyone when he announced the first Irate Gamer DVD. Containing everything from Back to the Future to Yo! Noid; labeled as “Season 1.” The announcement video is gone though.
While fans were excited, critics pointed out how quickly this came out. Not even a year into his YouTube show and he’s already trying to push DVDs. With a few believing he released it to “compete” with the AVGN Season 1 DVD coming out around the same time.

People that got their hands on the DVD noted the slipshod quality of the package. The disc was a burned DVD-R, the cover art was cheap paper, and some copies didn’t work. The blurb on the back compares his show to Family Guy and Penn & Teller’s Bullshit, while erroneously stating that the latter was on HBO instead of Showtime. On top of that, it contained copyrighted material that could have gotten him in legal trouble. But he managed to evade it.

Following ZAMN, Chris chose to expand out a little and talk about something near & dear to him. Breakfast cereal.
Titled “The Breakfast Rant”, the video had Chris complaining about Lucky Charms having different marshmallows from when he was a kid. Ending with the over-dramatic “Face it, breakfast is ruined!” The video was heavily mocked and even turned into a meme for a brief period.

Despite all the controversies, Chris would end up in a partnership with small gaming site GottGame to produce Irate Gamer Neo. A “spin-off” where IG looks over modern games. The first episode covering The Simpsons Game from 2007. It was notably shorter than his retro reviews and was clearly done in a hurry as he admits to only reaching Level 3 (out of 16). This would be a trend.
He did promise to review the three Simpsons NES titles, but he never did.
I should note that the first couple years of Neo videos premiered on GottGame first before hitting YouTube. As their website was poorly put together and hard to use, I went by the YouTube uploads until the end of 2009.

Afterwards, he would put out a video about Tetris. A baffling choice as Tetris is beloved and wasn’t worth an “angry review”. It mostly felt like Chris’ excuse to compare puzzle game addiction to drug addiction. This became clear when he talked about Dr. Mario, a game fundamentally different from Tetris.

Chris ended 2007 with the second (and last) Breakfast Rant, talking about Cinnamon Toast Crunch having only one baker mascot instead of three. This one didn’t catch on as much as the Lucky Charms video. Oddly enough, this has been removed.

Next time: 2008-2009