PixlBit

They were kicking at a boxing game... BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

At one point, I thought Roger Ebert was trying to surf. Maybe the Ninja Turtles got to him.

News of Ebert's death shocked me. He was a great movie critic. Pretty funny video too.

My thoughts exactly.

That fighting video was hysterical! I've never seen that one before. Ebert was very opinionated,and most of the time right on the money. But his bias toward games I never understood. The art aspect has been there for decades in certain games. But now? With all the realistic stuff and motion capture of real actors? Becomes more like film all the time. So if fims can be art,why not games? That girl in The Wizard,Jenny Lewis,is she that singer? I wonder...the one from Rilo Kiley and solo stuff,too. Could be,will have to look it up.

Yup. Wikipedia says same person, Rilo Kiley and Wizard actress.

That was hilarious, especially the first round. Maybe watching The Wizard is what ruined his attitude toward games. I haven't seen that movie since I was a kid, thought is alright back then, probably would hate it now.

I vaguely remember the ending from childhood, I've had the "it's so bad" scene pounded into my brain by the internet as an adult.

Well for some reason I liked the Garbage Pale Kids movie when I was a kid. I found it years later at Blockbuster, and man it is REALLY bad. I must have been very ealisy amused or something back then.

Yeah, I've only seen the Nostalgia Critic review, but it looks... unpleasant.

I think Ebert wrote one too many articles about the subject but I think that all he was doing was stating a preference about video games, not passing judgement on people who do. Its still a young entertainment medium so it won't reach everyone, especially a man who wrote extensively about film, books, art and music (through reviews or blog posts). Since he died, people are being a little kind about the fact that he never took an different side on the "games as art" debate. But during the period where the backlash was at its height (and Ebert was defending himself quite well), I never saw the big deal.

I think the big deal was a man who was such an advocate of the youngest medium until video games came along, refused to see the parallels between movies and video games. I felt he absolutely refused to look at the youth of the medium and take that into account when stating his preference.

Movies were silent for the first 30-40 years of their existence and it wasn't until the late 1920's that talkies were the norm when it came to the medium. That's 30-40 years of a brand new medium. And depending on how you base it, video games as a medium are only 30-50 years old.

Perhaps video games haven't had a paradigm shift, and maybe they never will, but to completely disregard a new medium so early on in its life seems so short-sighted to me.

As the almighty Beebs would say if he were here, "never say never."

Oh, you don't like Bieber?

Try telling him no, mawfucka, he gangsta!

Jokes and the process involved in finding that picture making me feel like a subhuman aside, I agree.

I loved Ebert's take on almost anything else, especially this time he was apparently with Sid Vicious in a cab, and discovered Vicious had to shave his underwear off cause it hadn't been cleaned in so long; but I did have this feeling of "just lay off it old man," when it came to his take on videogames. And saying that, I'd even have to agree that I can't say I've played a game and seen it as art, but that really has no effect on whether other people can see it that way, or if the medium can evolve to bring more experiences generally agreed upon as being artful.

I never hated him for it, I just thought, "this is kind of a waste of everyone's time, and I hope you go back to doing what you love soon." I think at one point, he made some sort of half-hearted apology about the whole thing. Oh well, his writing was good, even if I didn't necessarily think all of his arguments were.

I can't say I'm all that passionate about games as art, since I don't know I've ever had a transcendent experience playing one exactly, except to say every definition we have for art is as best "arguably" subjective, so the shitstorm on both sides was unwarranted.

If you had a spiritual awakening playing Okami or Shadow of the Colossus, it's no less valid than any similar feelings I had watching Garden State at fourteen, or Cinderella Man at sixteen. Behind all the back-and-forths involving the biggest and most intellectual sounding words, as well as the most vile and uneducated slurs; this is where I think Ebert's criticisms of the medium can start seeming more valid than they really are, and the internet didn't help gamers look too intelligent during that time, I admit; is an argument that at its core, is really just kind of silly, and became irrelevant the minute Jackson Pollock started "painting" by throwing shit at a canvas.

That being said, I loved Ebert as a film critic; even when I disagreed, I thought his writing had a great dry wit to it, and I could always see where he was coming from at least, even if I enjoyed the hell out of Hit Girl, and don't care one bit about his moral crusade against Kick-Ass, which is still my favorite movie from 2010.

But this video wasn't a hit piece, I voiced my respect for the man in the blog I wrote before this; this was just something I found amusing, and seemed to fit as a tribute to the duo as far as this being a gaming website. I admit, I'm laughing at them in the second video, but not in a cruel way; just in the same way I'd laugh if a wise old movie loving grandpa of any stripe flailed about trying to play Sega. I'm laughing with them in the first video, and I genuinely found them both charming and funny.