Cygnus Destroyer/The LJN Defender

Some may refer to him as an “idiot who doesn’t know what good games are”, but most people know him as Cygnus Destroyer, The LJN Defender, or just simply Matt. Like many children of the ‘80s, Matt’s video game journey was shaped most significantly by the NES, which remains his favorite console to this day.  Gaming remained Matt’s favorite pastime throughout the 16 and 32 bit eras of gaming, until his interest started to wane at the onset of the sixth generation. It was during this time that his passion shifted to music, and it would remain this way for the next few years.

Fast forward to 2007, when he discovered the Angry Video Game Nerd on YouTube, and little did he know that things were going to change forever.  The first episode that he saw was the original Bible Games video, which made him remember that odd baby blue cart that his cousins owned when they were kids. Watching that AVGN episode brought back so many fond memories of gaming past, and it rekindled a desire to be connected again with the games of his youth.

Fast forward again to 2012, and Matt had most of the consoles from his youth again and more games than he’d ever owned as a kid. In spite of this, something was still missing in his life. In October of that year, after years of watching Pat the NES Punk, Happy Video Game Nerd, ScrewAttack, and of course AVGN, among others, he decided to try making his own retro gaming YouTube videos.

Starting out with a review of his favorite NES game, Bucky O’Hare, Matt covered a wide range of games for various consoles in his original series, Cygnus Destroyer’s Retro Reviews. He slowly but surely gained an audience, reaching around 250 subs at the time of his one year anniversary.  Shortly before that, he came up with the idea to do a series based solely on the notorious publishing company, LJN.

Even though he was a huge Nerd fan, Matt never considered the infamous rainbow to be shitty. He owned Wolverine when he was a kid, and rented Terminator 2, WWF Royal Rumble, etc. and he always enjoyed them. Matt figured that it was time that somebody should stick up for these “bad” games. As a result, the pilot episode of The LJN Defender on Back To The Future was released in December 2013, and the rest is history. With the creation of Innocent Until Proven Guilty in July, Matt now produces three shows on his channel, and he’s never had more fun or felt better about himself than he has since starting his channel. It was the best decision he ever made in his life, and he plans on making videos for years to come.

Favorite systems: NES, Genesis, Super Nintendo, Master System, Sega CD, Game Boy, etc.

Favorite games: Bucky O’Hare (NES), Streets of Rage 2 (Genesis), Captain America & The Avengers (Arcade), The Secret of Monkey Island (PC), Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse (Super Nintendo)…way too many to list here, so I’ll stop nowJ