Bad video game television shows.

Have you duders watched any of this free show for playstation plus subscribers called powers? One thing that pops into my mind watching is the tester. Another show from the playstation nation I find beyond fascinating. I feel like jeff watching storage wars like I know it is a terrible show but I tune in every week. Does anyone know any other completely terrible video game related T.V shows?

Captain N.

Never actually seen that. I also don't know of any video game television shows airing anywhere at the moment.

Gamezville was a special kind of bad.

I thought the Halo Nightfall thing was pretty damn bad. Glad they stopped their TV crossover plans before they pumped more trash out.

I usually tend to avoid that stuff like the plague, but since I'm a big Halo fan, I wanted to give it a try. It has all the hallmarks of bad TV: Little to no plot stretched over too many episodes. Characters that you already know inside out from the moment they first show up on screen (due to them being comically huge stereotypes) and little to no action whatsoever. If I want to see bored people talk to each other, I go sit in on a city council meeting or whatever.

The Tester was amazing.

In Finland we have a game review show called Tilt. It's been on various networks for the past... fifteen? or so years. The thing is a real journalistic travesty. I remember vividly when Half-Life 2 came out and their video review on the show ended with "All and all, there is no doubt that Half-Life 2 is easily the best game ever made." They also went through a real fucking rough patch at some point when their narrator dropped out and the results... man... You can probably hear how awful this is even without understanding the words:

Also, in the 90s, we had this awesome live show called Game Over in which a big rubber puppet called Vito would interview current bands and people could call in to play Sega Saturn -games with their phone's keypad. All the gameplay segment basically turned to "No no press 4" "I'm pressing 4!" "Ah ah press more 4" because the whole process was busted up the wazoo. Here's a clip of a show where the guests were a Finnish boy-band and Ludvig Borga of the WWF post-wrestling when he became a psychotic racist boxer. Anyhow, starting from this moment you can see someone try play Panzer Dragoon over the phone with the video delay of a live broadcast.

Oh man, speaking of Captain N. Around that same time period, there was a game show on early morning TV called... Video Power? It had players playing short snippets of games, trivia, and the grand prize winner got to run through a maze filled with mostly LJN games that you had to velcro onto your vest, and if it fell off, you didn't get to keep it.

I vaguely remember it eventually getting spun into a different kind of show which had a cartoon segment. I want to say it had Big Foot the truck, Solid Snake, Fabio, a sportsball guy, and a tomato?

Earthworm Jim was probably super good?

How about the Super Mario Bros Super Show?

I couldn't even finish a single episode of Video Game High School; it's probably the worst video content I've ever been exposed to in my entire life.

Captain N.

@allprox: I remember that show (Gamez Guru and all)!

I wonder if there are any full episodes online - I'd love to give them a watch.

RIP X-Play

Also there was a show like X-Play called GameSauce. It was bad. Now TV in England had a bunch of dumb shows.

@allprox:

this was so bad it was almost bloody watchable. all hail the games guru lol.

It did give us the Guru and some legitimate beef from Dominik Diamond and Gamesmaster in general.

Response from video game TV presenters / producers

During an interview with GamesMaster Magazine about his new game show When Games Attack, Dominik Diamond declared that "Gamezville is the equivalent to eating your own shit, the producers must have thought 'Oh because we have black people in it must be street.'"

Johnny Ffinch, producer of GamesMaster, was also asked about his opinion on Gamezville during an interview, and expressed: "I have more respect for suicide bombers than I do for the people who are involved with Gamezville... it's all fucking 'Yo mate...' I mean these guys can't even speak fucking English!"^[4]

Still one of my favourite wikipedia entries just for those quotes.

I could see myself watching this hard as a 9 year old

How about at first 'glanze' at a new arcade game or a review of the latest mobile title:

One show on UK Bravo channel was Mercenaries, were it was a video game game show. Two teams of gamers would go against each other in three games and the earn real cash in each round. There was also a captains challenge such as on this super realistic (for 2001) flight sim land an F14 tomcat onto this aircraft carrier and earn £300.

They played Counter strike and Operation Flashpoint, yet the players didnt know what games they would play and so they might end up playing a game no one has ever touched or one everyone loves.

It was pretty bad....

For years on Uk ITV Cybernet was my only video game magazine show that would tell me stuff about games....

Also Mortal Kombat Conquest was pretty bad.... more so this fight was like 20 episodes of everyone going "so...Scorpion is in this....but were?.......also Sub Zero....is that Sub Zero...or is he Scorpion....OK NOW SCORPION?....wait no....this time...no.....no.? awwww...." then you got this .....which was like the last episode and never again.

Then you have Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm.

Also weird and crappy things like this happened.

@afabs515: Yeah, many cartoon shows based on video games around that time were pretty awful, including Mario. Though believe or not, former wrestler Rowdy Roddy Piper was on that show in the live action portions. So maybe because of that, Piper is officially a Mario character? I want to believe that. Skip to :55 to see Piper.

@freezyfrog: Yo man, this magic dust is 8 G's!

Man if this thread has taught me anything its that I have a soft spot for video game TV shows and video game review shows on TV.

But on the plus side, VideoGaiden. The less acceptable face of Consolevania.

@vierastalo: Oh boy, oh boy. Thanks for all the memories. Subido (early 2000's) on the other hand was pretty good and forward looking. The presenters just sat on a couch playing games and commenting on them along the way. There was even a live (SMS) chat. Sounds familiar, eh?

@akyho: Is MK: Conquest worth watching? It always looked godawful, but if it's the good kind of bad, I feel like I should finally watch it. I mean, I own MK: Annihilation on DVD, so that should give an idea of the level of shit I'm willing to watch. But if it's just dull, I'll skip it.

Having re-watched some of Ryan's TANG videos I have the sudden urge to cultivate and gather video games in television and movies. I shall report back later with my progress although it may take some time...

The Street Fighter cartoon was pretty miserable. At least we got Tiny Dee Jay out of it.

There was also a Darkstalkers one that I wanna say only lasted maybe two or three episodes? Capcom maybe wasn't making the smartest decisions over in the US.

X-Play was pretty terrible.

"We give it a three.....out of five. And the graphics....ARE AMAZING." Catchphrases my friends and I attributed to the show.

Of course, I adore the Sess these days. TV is tv, man. It's a different beast.

For the longest time I thought that maybe I'd just come up with that Darkstalkers cartoon in a dream, since I only managed to catch it on TV one time at like 4:00 AM. But it definitely existed. Apparently there were 13 episodes.

On a side note, the 13th and final episode is titled "Everyone's a Critic", which I'd like to imagine is some sort of commentary about the show's quality and reception (but probably isn't).

*edit: One last note, here's Demitri and Morrigan looking like total dorks on the VHS box.

According to all the 50+ y.o. parents I know, Big Bang Theory is a video game show. So that.

I loved the first season of the WCG Ultimate gamer. I'm not sure why.

There were a ton of cartoons.

Pole Position

Earthworm Jim

Viewtiful Joe

Viva Pinata

On the live action front, we had the Starcade, a game show from the early 80's.

And the short lived You Don't Know Jack game show for the 00's starring Paul "Pee-wee Herman" Rubens.

Well, there's probably plenty of anime based on video games.

No one's mentioned Starcade. Edit: Nevermind, @penguindust did.

How about Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? Although maybe not considered "bad" except for this song.

Most of the shows that came out of G4-techTV were pretty bad, the sole exception being x-play.

For pretty much the entire 90s there was a show on YTV out of Toronto called Video & Arcade Top 10. I really wanted to go on it, but alas it never happened. There are a bunch of episodes on youtube, here's one with Star Fox 64 and Shadows of the Empire.

I don't think America has produced a single good video game cartoon. However the worst video game anime adaptation I've seen was Power Stone. You'd think such a cool and crazy series of games would be natural fit for an anime format but it just comes across as a total abortion of a production. From the shit art style, the shit story, and the shit use of the video game property, it's not something I would ever recommend anyone watch even as a curiosity. Just go back and play the games, they're awesome.

Every cartoon based on a Capcom property or Sonic the Hedgehog.

Hey, Earthworm Jim was actually pretty good!

I watched some of this in the early-mid nineties. To my utmost surprise it apparently continued to run until 2006. Hundreds upon hundreds of episodes! I guess someone liked it.

@sinusoidal: That show is an assault on the senses. Everybody talks like the last five seconds of a used car commercial trying to fit the fine details in that they legally have to ("For well qualified buyers, tax and title extra, see store for details").