I am Derek Alexander and I am lophatjello Productions. I was born, raised, and still live in Anchorage, Alaska. After graduating from high school in 2002, I attended the University of Alaska Anchorage where I received Bachelor’s degrees in Psychology and Japanese. When I’ve had my fill of this whole internet thing, I plan to return for my Masters.

Many of you know me as a gamer, but I’d rather classify myself as a musician, or music lover. I played piano and violin in elementary school, and starting teaching myself the guitar in high school mainly through learning video game songs by ear. In college, I hosted my own college radio show, “Arbitration of Exchange”, from 2003 to 2008 on KRUA 88.1fm The Edge. In 2005, I was voted the Most Energetic DJ by my peers. In 2006, a friend and I won a Goldie award for radio excellence for an interview we did with local band, The Riot (RIP). My time at KRUA was all volunteer. I didn’t receive college credit or money. However, I was allowed full access to their production studio and music library. I essentially worked for free music. Many of the skills I learned at KRUA I still use today with the Happy Video Game Nerd.

For a short while, I was making a name for myself in the local scene in Anchorage playing weekly open mic’s. However, I wasn’t much for preforming live, so I started recording music instead. After recording 20 or 30 lyric-less song, I began collaborating with fellow musician and friend, Calvin Hansen. Shortly after that, in May 2007, we formed the electronic group Starship Amazing. Together, we have independently produced 3 full lengths albums and 2 eps. All original music heard in episodes of the Happy Video Game Nerd is produced by Calvin and myself. This includes all HVGN theme songs, the DuckTales and Rescue Rangers remixes, and all music in the “D” video.

Sometime in late 2006, I became a fan of the Angry Video Game Nerd as well as the general community of retro gamers on the internet. By early 2007, it had occurred to me that the AVGN had spawned countless imitators yet all of them were basically taking the “Angry” aspect of James Rolfe’s character and putting their own spin on. I realized that no one had yet taken that idea and simply done the opposite. This was essentially the birth of the Happy Video Game Nerd. It was a concept that pretty much developed itself, and I was dumbfounded that no one was doing it! But I didn’t know a thing about film making, so I dismissed the idea as something I could never do.

However, through the months of the spring and summer of 2007, ideas for the HVGN kept coming to me. But I couldn’t have been the only one with the idea on their mind, so every time another idea came to me I’d check around to see if anyone else had done it yet. And when I saw that still one else had, I started to think that maybe I should do it, even if I didn’t know the first thing about how to make a video.

In August of 2007, I found myself at the end of the Summer. The Fall semester was coming in two weeks. I had only two homework-free weekends before college started again. And it would be my second to last semester before graduating. I was taking nothing but high priority, upper-division classes. I knew that if I didn’t finally do this “Happy Video Game Nerd” thing now, I’d never have time to after class started. Furthermore, if I had sat on this idea any longer, someone else was bound to beat me to it. On the weekend of the 17th, I captured the game play footage of the overlooked NES game MetalStorm, and shot the few live action scenes that would make up the first episode of the Happy Video Game Nerd. Since this was my first time shooting anything other than Christmas videos or my friends and I doing stupid crap, it took all Friday, Saturday, and most of Sunday night. I started editing it all together Sunday night. Again, because I didn’t have any experience, I didn’t get very far.

On August 20th, the following Monday, I went to GameTrailers.com, where the newest episodes of the AVGN are hosted, to find they had just announced the start of a new contest that morning. It was called “Out Nerd the Nerd”, and it was a contest to see who could make the best video in a style similar to the AVGN’s. I couldn’t believe my luck! And I don’t expect many of you to believe it either. Not 12 hours after I had finished shooting my parody of the AVGN, a contest was announced to see who could do just that. I went home and reviewed my footage and realized that two key scenes needed to be redone. The following weekend I reshot those scenes, edited the first episode of the Happy Video Game Nerd and uploaded it to youtube and GameTrailers on August 29th.

The response wasn’t enormous, but what response there was was surprisingly positive. Right from the start, I was receiving requests for games to review along with praise. I wasted no time starting work on another episode. The second episode of the HVGN, this time spotlighting the overlooked Sun Soft classic Journey to Silius, was finished on September 10th. Both videos were submitted to the “Out Nerd the Nerd” video contest. Journey to Silius, the second video I ever made, won first prize. Reflecting on winning the contest and the events leading up to that, I simply describe it as the most fun I ever had completely losing my mind. When I received the email stating I had won the contest, I actually jumped up out of my chair and back away from the monitor, as if it was attacking me. It wasn’t so much that I had just been awarded a Nintendo Wii and a ton of games, it was the first time I had found success in a creative endeavor.

That’s how this whole thing started. It’s really been a fucking crazy ride. And it hasn’t really slowed down at all either. I have a bad habit of constantly saying how overwhelming this has all been, so I’ll say it indirectly.

Thanks again,
-da