[2] Starting out as an amateur filmmaker, Rolfe intended his earliest videos of the character to be a joke privately shown amongst friends and colleagues.

[2] From 2007 to 2011, the series entered a distribution deal with popular gaming websites ScrewAttack and GameTrailers, and briefly with streaming service Amazon Video in 2018.

Various media review/sketch comedy entertainers have since cited the show as inspiration for their own material, such as JonTron, Doug Walker, Egoraptor, Angry Joe, Scott Wozniak, and Joueur du Grenier, among others.

[4][5] The show revolves around the Nerd's commentary of shovelware and retro video games that he deems to be of particularly low quality, unfair difficulty, or poor design.

The reviews are often prefaced with a short lecture about the game's history or his own childhood experience, interspersed with sketches and profanity-ridden comedic rants, among various other scripted elements.

These guests often provide additional commentary on the games, mock the Nerd's anguish, and act as parodies of the characters from which they had been derived.

[3] In May 2004, he created his first on-camera game reviews, utilizing insult commentary with exaggerated bewilderment to two games—Castlevania II: Simon's Quest and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—which would later become the signature of the Nerd character.

When asked if the Nerd is going to make reviews in the current generation of video games, Rolfe replied that the "show is all about nostalgia," adding that he's "mostly a retro gamer.

Since then, he has self-released Nerd videos on his Cinemassacre website and YouTube account in a very sporadic manner in order to balance his personal life with the other projects he continuously works on.

In June 2019, the channel reached 3 million subscribers, to which Rolfe once again thanked everyone's support and for the fans still watching Nerd videos on the show's 13th anniversary (on YouTube).

[22] Rolfe's review of the Back to the Future game was reported in an MTV segment called "Viral Videos Infect the Mainstream".

The pair worked together to create a series of tongue-in-cheek video responses between the two characters, culminating with a fight between the Critic and Nerd in Clifton, New Jersey, a dare between the pair to review something in the other's line of work (Nerd reviews a bad movie, Critic reviews a bad game), and a final fight between the pair in the Nerd's basement on October 10, 2008, which featured parodies and clichés from popular films such as The Matrix Reloaded and Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith.

The film's plot focuses around the Nerd seeking to prove that over 1 million copies of the proclaimed "worst video game of all time", E.T.

In his quest to prove this to his fans, the Nerd finds himself being pursued by federal authorities who believe he is investigating Area 51 and the crash of an unidentified flying object.

[14] As part of its development, Rolfe asked for the show's fanbase to provide webcam footage of themselves fictionally reacting to the Nerd's webseries, to be used as an intro to the film.

Developed by FreakZone Games (creators of Manos: The Hands of Fate), it was released on September 20, 2013, on Microsoft Windows via Steam.

The Nerd uses a NES Zapper as his main weapon, and a character known as Naggi the Patronizing Firefly, a parody of Navi from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, guides him through the tutorial.

Throughout the game, he faces zombies, Mr. Hyde, Custer, The Giant Claw, Fred "Fucks" (Fred Fuchs), parodies of Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger (references to the A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th games respectively) named Bimmy and Jimmy (a reference to the infamous Double Dragon III misspelling of Billy Lee's name as "Bimmy"), and more.

[40] On July 17 of the same year, during ScrewAttack's annual SGC convention, FreakZone announced a sequel, Angry Video Game Nerd II: ASSimilation, originally due for release in Winter 2015,[41] but delayed to March 29, 2016.

[49] This earliest compilation of the show was created by Barclay due to demands from fans after he played the song on Video XYZ.

An album based from the movie was released in 2014 composed by Bear McCreary, who had previously worked with Rolfe on the webseries Christmas special.

The Angry Video Game Nerd show made James Rolfe one of the most popular Internet celebrities even before the advent of YouTube.

"[14] Fellow filmmaker and internet celebrity Doug Walker dubbed the Nerd the "Greatest Video Game Critic of All Time".

[7] Rolfe also commented during an interview with The Guardian of the show's impact in the current generation of the video game industry, saying that they "still relate to it and they like learning of the past".

The Nerd's success as an independent celebrity outside of the commercial mainstream of pop culture, popularized the notion of making lifelong careers online.

In a survey published by Mediscape, a number of people admitted to being inspired by the Nerd to create and submit their own content in various online spaces, including YouTube, DeviantArt, SourceForge, GameFAQs and ScrewAttack,[7] influencing the likes of those such as the Nostalgia Critic, Angry Joe and others.