G4 reunion! (Hosted by Ron Funches)

Man I used to love G4 back in the day, got me through college lol. I'd probably still watch X-Play and AOTS today tbh

Also, Xavier Woods is gonna be a new host for G4. I had heard about this a while back but completely forgot, this brought back some huge memories. I think if they had stuck to the gaming and just tried new shit instead of just replaying cops, G4 could have survived.

Yeah, xplay was great back in the day. Hopefully it'll hit some nostalgic nerves !

Seeing Chris Hardwick featured and their moment to acknowledge that women still have it really rough when I distinctly remember some very sexualized moments on G4 seems disconnected.

I hope the new G4 has learned those lessons and makes a strong effort to be a modern version of what used to be, but I'm not holding my breath.

Also, though this is a nitpick and not an actual issue, them saying G4 was the first to broadcast from E3 in 2012 sure is weird if you ignore Gamespot streaming the show for years.

@finaldasa: Pfft! That's just the Internet. It's a fad. Who is going to remember a "Gamespot" in 10 years.

Deep, deep cable TV. Now that's where the future lies! Especially in video game coverage!

The Internet. I bet you used to drink Zima and thought James Cameron's Avatar was the best movie you ever saw!

G4 was the first to broadcast on tv right? I think USA or whatever did it a year later when Geoff Keighley was doing his thing on tv. And I'm remembering it being like 2007 or 08. And yes there was a time when video on the internet was not a huge thing lol.

@finaldasa: Agreed on the Chris Hardwick thing, but frankly I'd be surprised if these people didn't acknowledge that G4 was full of sexist garbage back in the day. To varying degrees, some of the former G4 personalities have been quite vocal regarding issues of social justice in more recent years.

I have a lot of nostalgia for G4 for various reasons. Acknowledging that it was problematic (and I was, too) and hoping (and expecting) a new G4 to do better is not a contradiction.

@bladeofcreation: I hope they do bring that modern sense but there are the hosts and then there are the producers and executives and what they want/expect.

Frankly, it's just not a lot of good signs indicating the people backing this understand those old problems the way a lot of the G4 personalities have.

I do hope it's successful and a more modern version of what once was.

Yeah. Didn't watch since I was a bit too old to care about g4 and they have some... choices in terms of who they are spotlighting (Sessler also has some baggage). But sounds like it was a good stream all around and Xavier gave a good ass monologue that makes me hopeful for what the reboot becomes.

Sessler? What??

Also, sad stuff on here always turns into a bummer. Probably why I stopped posting as much tbh. Maybe it's just the 2020 wave of negativity or something. Hardwick was on there for 5 sec's and isn't coming back. I barely remembered he was on the thing tbh. And I have heard nothing bad about sessler, ever. Besides the one time he was sleep deprived before he ended up quitting the industry.

G4 could have survived

Maybe for a little while longer? But I think the rise of Youtube and Twitch streaming would have just completely killed G4.

Anyway, I watched some G4 here and there when we had cable. I wasn't the biggest fan, but hey, it was cool to see video games on TV. Years later, when Adam Sessler was doing stuff on Rev3, I watched quite a bit of his stuff and I enjoyed what he was doing there, but I feel like that got shutdown before it ever really got started. And holy shit, that was 2013 ish, that was seven fucking years ago. If you had asked me before I looked it up, I would have told you no earlier than 2015.

i mean yeah, but even if they could have made it to 2016, they could have been picked up by a streaming network like netflix/hulu or something else if they kept trying to innovate. I think tech tv is still around in canada right?

What is it talking about with "the original cast of G4"? Most, if not all of those people joined after the merger with TechTV. Where's Laura Foy and Tina Wood? Where's Dave Meinstein! I was going to add Lee Reherman, but it turns out he passed away four years ago.

I'd hate to think that many people just dont remember it, but Victor Lucas hosting Judgement Day and Electric Playground (and still is doing Electric Playground on youtube) with Tommy Tallarico was also someone who was just as great as all the other hosts. I hope he got contacted to have some involvement in the overall reboot.

@perpetual_christopher: I went to see Video Games Live when they came to town purely due to Electric Playground. Blew my mind when I saw it’s still going on YouTube.

I remember watching X-Play back in High School and even back then Adam Sessler was kind of a goof but it was the only gaming based TV show I knew.

EDIT: After having watched some of the show it's funny how they play up the awkward, somewhat cringy humor of the past, while simultaneously also being somewhat awkward and cringy now. I like Ron but the direction they chose for this is kind of a weird vibe oscillating between sincere reminiscing and bad sketch comedy.

As a fan of Tech TV, the station that was wrecked to make G4, I always hated it. It was a juvenile channel for the era when gamers were treated like perverts and children.

I always hated how Sessler was a great host of Extended Play and they paired him with Morgan Webb just to make jokes about how hot she was supposed to be and how untouchable she was supposed to be. I liked her a lot on Tech Tv as a regular person. They had no reason to suddenly treat her like a blow up doll.

Channel was garbage.

I loved X-Play all the way back when it was Extended Play on Tech TV

Don't forget Kevin Rose counting his billions lol. TechTV was pretty different honestly, I thought screen savers was cool but honestly wasn't a very entertaining show. I enjoyed the fun that G4 brought to the table, and TechTV still lived on in canada I believe. Also TechTV fans seemed kinda snooty tbh, I didn't know about TechTV until right after they switched. I only caught the last season of Screen Savers.

*edit* Holy shit I forgot about Lee Reherman with Kevin and Arena. First attempt to bring ESports mainstream. Damn, didn't know he passed away. RIP

Man I loved Judgement day, (well until they reviewed one of Tommy's games and gave it an 8 when it was barely playable) but still dug the show a lot. Thing is that show never ended, didn't air in the states anymore it was on the TechTv(i think) network in canada and still was on air last I checked a few years ago. Judgement day has a different name that escapes me right now.

Hey, how about we don't be huge creeps

@oursin_360: I don’t know about tech tv fans being snooty, but I think we were all righteously angry. Tech tv was an entire channel. I used to watch it almost constantly. The way mtv was about music, tech tv was about technology, and it was the only place to get that. G4 bought tech tv and even made the staff move to the new location right before it fired everyone who wasn’t “hot”. Then they gave all the women Fox News-like makeovers and made them “eye candy”. It was gross. The screensavers became tech tv and suddenly Olivia muni is licking controllers or whatever.

It went from being a show for everyone about smart things to being a channel for the dumbest people they could find.

Well, since I am a fan of G4, you literally just called me "the dumbest people they could find". That's not a bit "snooty"?

g4 wasn't perfect, but it was fun and mostly entertaining. Things evolved over time just like everything else. 95% of it was a fun network about games and the rest was evolving with the times like everything else in gaming culture did.

@fluidk: In all fairness that has always been Olivia Munn and she is the exact same to this day.

Everyone likes different stuff, but... yeah. For me, personally, I much preferred watching Chris Pirillo or Leo Laporte talk old people through right-click menus. I know that probably reads like sarcasm, but it really isn't.

@oursin_360: I’m honestly not trying to be insulting but I really do stand by that comment. I would imagine that you probably didn’t like ALL of G4’s content. If you are a reasonable person, you probably liked some of it and felt at least some of it was try-hard.

But for someone who saw g4 and thought, “there are some good things on this station”, they have a different perspective than tech tv fans who pretty much liked everything all day. It literally fe;t the same as mtv playing music all day to suddenly mtv playing jersey shore all day.

And then I reme,bet having a conversation with my new girlfriend saying that I used to watch tech tv all the time on television and then going, “oh yeah, I know guys who watch that channel. It’s basically softcore porn or whatever.” And then having to convince her that it wasn’t always that way...

Is this the same network that played an epic video where a hot chick was licking a PSP? And then she did it again with the PS Vita? I miss the good old days!

@fluidk: I used to like almost everything at one point, but in the end G4 to me was only AOTS and XPlay. But all the game stuff I liked before it got cancelled. At one point it was just cheaters, cops and American Ninja Warrior(this show was good and why it's still around). They had that one late show with Geoff Keighley and Tina Wood and Laura Foy I really liked before it got cancelled, that was actually my favorite show and the review show with Tommy Talerico, Cinematech, a bunch of good shows tbh.

If there was some sorta weird raunchy stuff that aired I didn't watch it or consider it part of the network just like cheaters and cops tbh. Unless it's just the Olivia Munn stuff, but that was just seemed to be her personality and humor and none of it really bothered me much. I thought she was a good host.

Anyway, when G4 was just game network I enjoyed it a lot. I dug all the goofy shit tbh, I liked light hearted entertainment that never took itself too seriously.

The "hot chick' was Jessica Chobot and she did that shit way before joining G4 and the G4 stuff was just a riff on it. You could blame Kotaku for publishing that tbh.

I feel like I'm in the same boat as a lot of people here where I remember TechTV fondly. When I was in college, my roommate would have TechTV on all the time as just background noise that'd we'd listen to and occasionally actually watch. Eventually I just got so use to it that even when he wasn't around I'd leave it on.

It's odd to me seeing people talk about people who were on TechTV and G4, the personalities that made it. Maybe it's just because I started watching it early, but I always felt like Leo Laporte was the face of the network. Him and Patrick Norton are just who I think of. As someone mentioned, man what a weird thing listening to a TV show where people would call to be walked through tech problems on live TV. Also this was one of the few places that aired anime back in the day. They had some good shows too.

It's a nice nostalgia thing to see someone trying to bring this network back but I have no idea what its actually gonna be. If its just another video game website I can't imagine it doing that well and if its on proper TV (or a streaming service) then my question becomes how do they fill 24 hours of content.

They could lean into E-sports I guess but most E-sports are ether big enough they would probably hold out for ESPN/TBS or something rather then get locked in on this smaller network or not conducive to ad breaks. Not to mention a bunch of them start at stupid o'clock in the morning.

Disgusting.

@madpierrot: I got on board right when they switched so it was G4 TechTV at the time, I don't' even remember the ones you mentioned. I didn't have access to alot of networks back then, only got Cartoon Network like right before I ended highschool for example. I got access to the network in my sophomore year of college, I just remember always hearing TechTv fans talking shit about the people who liked G4 and it always felt bitter and condescending.

Well it was pretty personality driven just like Giantbomb (Jeff guess hosted a few times back in the day actually). They used to have a good podcast back around before those were a real big thing too, around the time when the Hotspot was out I think. I am really not sure what they are trying to do at the moment, but I know they are doing charity streams right now with a lot of (I guess) popular streamers. (I think Abby is doing one soon actually). Not sure if it's coming to TV or what, but if they actually make quality content they already have a name to get the thing going.