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 [his] 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!. The pilot centers on the legend of the
Jersey Devil. His character was originally named "The Angry Nintendo Nerd" but was later changed to "The Angry Video Game Nerd" (sometimes abbreviated as "The Nerd") to avoid
trademark issues and because he expanded his reviews to include games on other consoles (e.g.,
Sega Genesis,
Atari 2600). 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. 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. , 2008. 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." His other entries included a trilogy of films titled
Death Suit (2004),
Death Seen (2005), and
Death Secret (2006). 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 (2015), based on the video game,
Flying Fuckernauts vs. The Astro-Bastards (2016), a tribute to B-movie sci-fi, and
Mimal the Elf (2017), 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...[the film would] 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.
Other video series In May 2007, Rolfe launched a new web series called ''You Know What's Bullshit?
, in which he rants about everyday pet peeves such as pennies, shoelaces, pay toilets, and printers. Initially consisting of rants by Rolfe, he later decided to create a new character to host the series named "The Bullshit Man" (a masked version of Rolfe resembling cow dung). The Bullshit Man made several cameo appearances in AVGN
content, including select videos and the video game AVGN Adventures'' as a secret character. In 2020, the show's name was abbreviated to ''You Know What's BS?'' due to YouTube's advertising policies. Cinemassacre has published a number of other reviews featuring Rolfe and his associates as themselves. Topics covered include video games (under the
James & Mike Mondays series), video game peripherals such as the
VictorMaxx Stuntmaster headset, and films. One of Rolfe's other series is
Board James, in which he, Brendan "Bootsy" Castner, and Mike Matei review old board games in a humorous way, often with recurring characters. The show eventually evolved into a psychological horror series, while still featuring board game reviews in each episode. The show ran for three seasons and 27 episodes before concluding in 2015. Rolfe was involved in a fifteen-part series titled
OverAnalyzers, where he played the role of the manager of a fictional company that overanalyzed various pop culture references. The series was edited and produced by another website called Cinevore. He also worked as a film reviewer on Spike.com. Rolfe has hosted
Monster Madness, a series in which he reviews one horror movie for each day in October, since 2007. Each year, he has adopted a different theme for
Monster Madness. In 2007, the theme was the history of horror. In 2008, it was
Godzillathon, where he reviewed all of the Godzilla films chronologically. 2009's theme,
Monster Madness Three, dealt with a variety of popular and lesser-known horror films. 2010's theme,
Camp Cult, focused on both campy horror films and cult classics, such as
Troll 2. In 2011, the theme was
Sequel-A-Thon, which covered horror sequels. 2012's theme was ''80's-a-Thon
, which featured only movies from the 1980s. While the first five years of Monster Madness
involved one film review per day throughout October, the 80's-a-Thon
series in 2012 was reduced to every other day due to the production of The Angry Video Game Nerd Movie
. Despite the reduced number of reviews, the reviews in 80's-a-Thon'' were longer than those in previous years'
Monster Madness. In 2017,
Son of Monster Madness debuted, consisting of five new reviews, with the rest of October filled by reuploads of older reviews previously not available on YouTube.
Monster Madness, under the original branding despite not having videos posted every day, returned in October 2019, now featuring Rolfe with a guest talking about the films. Rolfe brought back
Monster Madness in its original 31-episode format in 2021 with the aid of Screenwave Media. However, Rolfe redacted and remade the first two published videos of the 2021 series after realizing that his writer had plagiarized content from the episodes' scripts. In 2012, Rolfe and Mike Matei created a
Let's Play series called
James and Mike Mondays, formerly called
James and Mike Plays, for Cinemassacre's YouTube channel. The series featured guests such as Kyle Justin, who composed the
Angry Video Game Nerd theme song, Brandon Castner, better known as Bad Luck Bootsy from
Board James,
JonTron and
Macaulay Culkin. Rolfe and Matei produced episodes for eight consecutive years until they announced the series would be on hiatus until February 2021. However, Matei left Cinemassacre in December 2020 to become a full-time streamer on
Twitch. Rolfe founded Rex Viper as a cover band of
video game music and movie soundtracks from the 1980s. The band was inspired by a character Rolfe created for a review of
Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing from his
Angry Video Game Nerd series. Rolfe plays rhythm guitar in Rex Viper. The band uploads music videos of their covers to YouTube and also performs live shows. ==Personal life==