From my favorite movies..

Don't listen to the negative reviews

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

They basically discredited themselves 1:20 into the TRAILER. Who do they want to watch this thing? I assume they want newbies to watch this thing. They could have made it at least a little bit interesting by discussing some history regarding some of the hard-to-find titles. And above all they should NOT have ever interviewed Billy Mitchell (King of Kong) and Todd Rogers (Dragster fiasco) --- what were they thinking??? Anyone who knows anything about video game world records knows that Billy Mitchell is a prolific cheater. And why in God's name is Todd Rogers in the last 15 seconds of the trailer talking about all the video game world records he cheated to obtain?? This is shameful. The makers of this documentary are clearly out of touch with anything NES past their own love of playing video games and collecting titles. The only people that will be interested in this documentary are video game newbies that haven't been watching YouTube for the past 10 years. Everything and anything you would want to watch and learn about in this documentary is available on YouTube without the pretentiousness and without having to stomach listening to the makers suck up to famous video game world record CHEATERS in the hopes of giving their documentary some form of legitimacy. They actually did more harm than good for themselves with this one.Seriously... Todd Rogers? This is ridiculous.

Nintendo Quest (2015) *** (out of 4) This documentary is a thirty day challenge where a man tries to collect all 678 official Nintendo releases.That's pretty much all their is to this film. If you're looking for a hard-hitting documentary then you certainly won't find it here. I'd argue that there are some questionable filmmaking moments as well but I honestly didn't judge this thing too hard. I think the film was mildly entertaining just because it can strike up memories that you had in regards to these games and especially if you're old enough to where you could have collected them as a kid.I had a good time with the journey of the main character as he traveled around trying to locate copies of each game. What I enjoyed most was just watching them travel around and in my own mind I was amazed at how many of these games I remembered. I had honestly forgotten about most of them but then there they were on the screen.This was originally a Kickstarter project I believe and some are really crushing the film. I'm really not sure why. For what the movie was I thought it was entertaining.

At the start of the film you meet Jay and his best friend. Jay has loved Nintendo since a child and wants to travel across North America in hopes to collect all Nintendo cartridges produced for the system. The film has Jay's best friend as a narrator, explaining the quest and a little history of Nintendo and games (best part of film). The rest of the film follows jay slumping about retail stores, collectors and rummage sales trying to find and complete the collection. At no point in the movie does Jay seem happy about this quest or that he is enjoying himself. He picks up game after game with a little number tally of the games acumulated in the corner of the screen. He does not give any feedback what games are his favourite, why he has this passion or show any emotion when he does get a rare or good game. Half way threw the film the subject switches to Jay's fathers passing. He tells the audience how he is happy he is dead, and how he was a tyrant. The only explanation given for his father being such a awful individual was that he did not like Video games? It was really hard not to turn the film off after this point!After researching this film I found out it was a Kickstarter project which was donated around $40,000. Essentially people donated this money so a little spoiled brat could have a complete Nintendo collection and received a subpar movie with no passion or substance

Nintendo quest is not an all encompassing documentary about Nintendo, the NES, or gaming in general. The description is misleading. There have been many gaming docs, but none specifically about the history of the company Nintendo, so needless to say I was really excited.Even after I realized that it was rather about a guy building an NES collection from scratch with a few fun facts thrown in here and there, I still kept on watching it, because I do have some old games and still buy them often at flea markets and such, so it was still right up my alley.This movie is based on an interesting idea that somehow along the way became devoid of fun. So much that in the end I kinda felt sorry for the guy.I have tremendous respect for his dedication and drive to succeed, however collecting should be fun, and as it is mentioned in the movie, collecting takes a long time if you're doing it right and don't have access to tens of thousands of dollars. You WILL get it done, it'll just take a few years.The ridiculous project of building a complete NES collection from scratch in 30 days without using the internet is the driving force of Nintendo Quest. That's 678 games in total.What started out as a dare ended up being a 90 minutes romp across north America, hunting down NES games, following a taciturn collector blowing money in retail stores and on games sold by a few private collectors. It's more or less an hour and a half episode of game chasers with more pressure, less smiles, and more actual drama.While video games revolve around having a good time, I felt strangely sad watching Jay progressively sink into the depths of everything I hate about video game collecting as a cultural phenomenon : Display queens, overblown prices, and the underlying obsession about the rarity and value of extremely bad games.The most disturbing thing about Nintendo Quest is that Jay doesn't seem to be particularly enjoying himself throughout his seemingly excruciating adventure. He stumbles from store to store trying to deal with the pressure of failure and trying to work a way around the cost of absolute stinkers like Stadium events and others.It's not all bad, as the high point of the movie for me was still how Jay repeatedly says that the games he get should have a story attached to them, which is my opinion as well, it's just that those stories shouldn't come from a place of extreme pressure.There are quite a few superb private collections displayed throughout the quest. Another high point for the movie.If I was looking to start collecting retro games after all the hype, Nintendo Quest would've been sure to sober me up real fast about the real essence of the chase : Fun.Still, R.I.P. Spencer, and Jay man, I hope this ridiculous ordeal didn't completely burn you out on gaming, because it sure looked like you had enough of it at the end and was ready to snap.Wish you well.