Mike Matei is best known for the work he does with video editing and game reviews. He leveraged Youtube as a platform to perfect his craft. Mike has received negative reviews for some actions and comments he has made in the past. However, in recent years, his career has maintained an upward trajectory. To learn more about Mike Matei’s origins and his work, keep reading.
Mike Matei Biography
New Jersey is the birthplace of Mike Matei and he was born on October 5, 1980. Matei is no ordinary celebrity and although he is famous, there is still a lot of information about his life that has not been made public. Some of this information includes the identity of his parents and other immediate family members.
It is known, however, that he has a sister with whom he spent time playing video games while playing on the Atari 2600 console that belonged to him.
The high school he attended is one of the things about his life that is known, but he went to the University of Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was at university that he met the man who changed his life, James Rolfe.
Career
Mike Matei’s career as we know it today began in the early 2000s. When Matei met James Rolfe, they noticed they liked the same things – like the Transformers franchise, Classic Gaming, and certain aspects of the old cinema. This shared love for games and filming was the foundation of their friendship.
By the time Matei met Rolfe, the latter had already started making videos and films. In 2004 he started Bad NES Games, a review of poorly designed NES games. His first video was a five-minute review of the game, Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest. The twist in the video was the persona he took on, that character became the Angry Nerd. When Rolfe started making these videos, they were meant to be personal, and he put them as Quicktime files on a website, Cinemassacre. When Mike Matei joined in the production of these videos, he recorded them and helped edit them.
The biggest turning point in this hobby-turned-career for both of them was Mike Matei’s discovery of YouTube. Matei discovered that they could post the videos they made on this streaming site and urged Rolfe to do so, which Rolfe agreed to. Their channel was originally called JamesNinetendoNerd before it changed to Cinemassacre, which continues to this day.
The channel was created on April 6, 2006, and their first video was uploaded two days after. As soon as they were uploaded to YouTube, their viewership skyrocketed and very quickly viewers and fans were sending in suggestions of games to watch. This YouTube channel is one of the premier channels on YouTube and in over a decade it has garnered 1 billion views and over 3 million subscribers.
Cinemassacre is now a major production studio that has branched out from YouTube. In 2014, a film based on the Angry Nerd character was released to mixed reviews that can be placed on the extremes of the good-to-bad spectrum, with some critics hating him completely and others dissenting from him.
Other Facts About Mike Matei
1. Matei appeared as different characters on the channel and most of these characters were from video games.
2. Although Mike Matei had a prominent role in James Rolfe’s YouTube channel, he created his own channel on June 12, 2013.
3. In 2017, Matei got into a feud on Reddit, where he was accused of creating a burner account to defend himself from attacks, which only helped to fan the flames.
4. Many of his fans have shown interest in knowing the level of wealth he has gained through his online activities. However, nothing has been authenticated in this regard.