In the hopes of expanding the gamer lifestyle, for years in my childhood I had hoped for some sort of television channel dedicated to gaming. While the Super Mario Brothers Super Show was freakin’ awesome, it dealt more with ‘don’t get into an angry plumber’s white van!’ issues than video games. I do kind of wonder if Mama Luigi would ever let Yoshi eat that weird cereal that was spawned during the initial Nintendo boom. My mom never did.

Gaming TV has existed in some form or another since around the early 90’s.

I remember coming home from school and plunking down at the living room table, ready to ignore my homework to watch Nick Arcade. I had dreams of going on the show and dominating that she-witch Skorsha in the final round. At that age I, hilariously, thought that the mystical video game realm the contestants entered was real, rather than a green screen room in which they fumbled around blindly, hoping to swing their arms in the right direction.

The various incarnations of Carmen Sandiego also stick out in my mind. That was another game-based show that I dreamt of dominating. (Though I watched a couple of the old episodes and I could have never beaten the final challenge. My geography skills are zero.) At such an impressionable age, it didn’t occur to me that it’s virtually impossible to steal the entire great wall of China. So I would sit there and wring my hands in anticipation of the capture of the crooks, often watching with friends after school. We would always yell, “WRONG, STUPID!” during the round where the players needed to find the loot, warrant, and crook in the correct order.

The fact remains though that these are kids’ television shows. As I grew older and the shows didn’t age with me and were eventually canceled, I found myself pining for an actual adult network or gaming show that would feed my insatiable hunger for video game knowledge. MTV has dabbled into it lately with occasional specials on mega-mainstream games like Halo. (Are you surprised?) But seriously, I’ve heard enough about the TOTALLY RAD specs of the 360 and how SUPER AWESOME it’s going to be to bludgeon your frat brothers in the face with a skull. Anything that’s on a corporate network like MTV is going to be biased anyway. Not only are you going to get terrible sponsor ads all up in your face (Gamer fuel tastes AWFUL. It tastes like smarties, red bull, and cow manure got together and had an orgy that produced a horrible teeth rotting mountain dew love child.) but you’re never going to get both sides of the game. Yeah okay, the graphics are awesome and seizure inducing, but are you going to want to play it for more than three days?

Obviously most networks only play game related stuff nowadays because they’re trying to cash in on the way gaming has become mainstream in the last couple of years. Suddenly the stereotype of angry DnD gamers clutching a player’s manual and frothing over the next version of Metroid is long gone. It’s hip to be a gamer now, and anything that is hip can turn a profit.

A few years ago I saw a bastion of hope. One of my friends approached me with the query, “So have you heard of G4?” Why no, no I had not. And I watched TV a lot back in the day. So I decided to give the network a try.

Before I start actually critiquing G4, I’d just like to say that originally I saw so much potential for the channel. However, me complaining that G4 doesn’t play gaming shows anymore is like everyone out there who complains that MTV no longer actually plays music. At first I could understand G4’s slight shift away from gaming television based on the fact that angry nerds, despite being vocal, actually make up a minority of viewing demographics compared to the general populace. I figured that the changes (again, I stress, at the time) would help to make the network more money and keep it on the air, and were thus an unfortunate necessity.

Plus, people complained constantly about G4’s lack of new material and the fact that they replayed the same shows over and over. Sometimes showing the same episodes twice in a single day. I admit, sometimes I would flip the channel when the second run of Attack of the Show! came on because I was tired of the old material. Regular networks have a plethora of old and new shows that they can play without worrying about complaints of too many reruns. G4 was fledgling and only had a few hit shows they could play on, thus the repeats. Sadly it was a vicious cycle and the complaining likely had a hand in the older shows being scrapped and the newer shows being purchased by the network to play in between the gaming shows. Unfortunately, it has become less of ‘playing between the gaming shows’ and more of ‘the gaming shows play between our crappy regular shows’.

That being said, I’ll continue.

Originally I really liked the network. I loved Arena because it was so funny to watch how worked up the teams would get over games like Call of Duty. I also liked Pulse a lot because having a thumb on the video game industry itself is a nice boon when you try to act like a smartass on the internet. And oh my God, Cinematech, I could watch that all day. They actually played the original Zinwrath on Cinematech, and that was how I discovered Myndflame and got sucked into quoting Illegal Danish for the rest of my World of Warcraft days.

Cheat…eh. I mean, I love the concept of the show. Who doesn’t like to cheat at video games? (After beating them without the cheats, of course) But for some reason the hostess annoyed the ever loving crap out of me. Could she make it any more obvious she was reading off a teleprompter? Because I don’t think that would be possible. I struggled to sit through the 900th Ratchet and Clank cheat code, but by Gods, hire someone who gives a poopoo about the material they’re talking about.

Cinematech, my baby. My love. We could have had something. We could have been happy forever. What happened to you? Was it drugs? Was it an angry producer? Was it just the lone sex deprived nerd who chooses your material? They stuck you in their late night block and I tried to watch you baby, I really did. But when I flipped to the channel to bask in your cut-scene glory and was greeted with 3D Tentacle High school Rape Machine, I decided it just wasn’t working out.

Attack of the Show! (Oh boy, exclamation marks mean it’s exciting!) is one of the few game related (though that’s debatable) shows left of the husk of a network that was once G4. It’s gone through set after set, co-host after co-host, and general show idea after general show idea. I have to be honest here and say I don’t really watch it now. I get enough iphone advertising on regular networks. The comic book segments as well as the news portions were the only real parts of the show that held my interest.

I can’t really criticize too much since, like I said, I barely watch, but I feel I must get something off my chest. The female co-host Olivia Munn annoys the ever loving crap out of me. She gets under my skin more than Kristin Holt (The hostess of cheat that I discussed above.) I get that the adage “if it has boobs and can giggle, it will be popular no matter what” is mostly true, but damn. The few times I’ve watched the show it seems like Kevin Pereira openly mocks her and her lack of knowledge about anything electronics related to her face on the air and yet she still sits there and acts like she’s not the perfect candidate for Sesame Street’s ‘one of these things is not like the other’. I was shocked they bothered taking her to E3. What a waste of a ticket. There were a couple times during the live shows that Morgan Webb actually looked disgusted. “Oh teehee, look, in Rock Band you can like, sing!” Why, in God’s name, did they hire her? Women like Morgan Webb are prime examples that you CAN find attractive female gamers who know what the Hell they’re talking about. The only thing I can think of is that she slept with a producer somewhere, which would go perfectly with her sex talk segment on Attack of the Show! (Remember back in the day when Attack of the Show! was about, like, electronics related stuff?) But in the end, it doesn’t really matter. Olivia Munn can publicly embarrass herself by deep throating a hotdog on live TV, and Kristin Holt can um, do whatever she does, but guys are still going to buy it because OMGSHESAWOMANWITHBEWBS. Talent and aptitude mean nothing when people can be blinded by the fact that someone attractive is fumbling over a teleprompter for a show that is semi-relevant to their interests. Thankfully most of the guys I know are immune to their charms and find it just as agitating that they’re even on the network.

A lot of people criticize X-Play all the time. Bad jokes, bad writing, biased reviews, whatever the complaint, I’ve heard it. Well, you know what, as a gamer I am here to say that I like X-Play. I like it a lot. Of all the people left on G4, Adam Sessler and Morgan Webb seem like the only two that have any passion for what they do. Though I say passion despite the fact that most times when they host, their voices will not deviate from a monotone pitch. But everyone knows most gamers are smarmy bastards (me included) so it suits the purpose of the show perfectly.

Bare bones, X-Play discusses the facts. They’re going to review your game, and most times only give it a 3 out of 5, but at least they discuss most aspects of the game they’re reviewing. They may give a game a 1 out of 5, but through their show I might decide that hey, that looks like the game for me. Plus, come on, they did a musical episode. I like that they don’t take themselves too seriously. Adam Sessler often gets a chuckle out of me, and I respect Morgan for being a woman in the business she’s in and excelling based on her own knowledge and fondness of the gaming industry, and actually handling her career in a positive way. (Instead of starring in campy horror movies *cough*OliviaMunn*cough*) In all likelihood if Morgan Webb and I ever met, we’d probably either be best friends, or we’d strike up a hatred and rivalry so strong it would shake Hell’s very foundations.

Granted, none of this really matters because G4 rarely lives up to its name nowadays. The owners decided they would evolve what was already a fun to watch network into, basically, Spike TV Jr. And they’re not even doing that transition well, as easy as it should be. At any given time I can play a game of Russian roulette by flipping to G4. I might get lucky with that empty chamber and X-Play might be on. Or the far more likely circumstance is that cops, cheaters, or ninja warrior is on and I’d get a bullet in my brain and die. Hey, G4, there’s a reason you were able to buy the rights to the show cheaters so cheap. It’s because nobody wants to watch that God awful crime against humanity. I don’t really understand how they thought they could get more viewers with such horrible drivel. Before they likely had a faithful viewerbase, but now? Who wants to watch mini-Spike TV when the actual Spike TV network is there and has semi-interesting programs?

What was once a shining beacon of gaming entertainment has turned into a pile of feces so deep that attempting to wade through the regular programming results in bubonic plague-like symptoms in the viewers. How long before X-Play goes off the air too? I’m guessing not very. G4 is a waste of time now, and I do wish they would change the network’s name. G4 represents the generations of video games. The network it lends its name to, not so much. The ideal situation is that X-Play would find a well-deserved home on a better programming block on a newer network. I’m sure people would disagree with me, but I think it could fit in somewhat on Adult Swim. I would take video games over that second half an hour of Family Guy any day. If that happened I’d have no reason to wonder if anything decent was on G4 and could discard the channel number from my memory.

So, after all that long-winded ranting, I’d like to bring up the fact that if you want really good gaming television, your best best is to not even look on the TV. The internet is full of amateurs, it’s true, but every now and then I stumble on gaming related stuff that is really amazing, and I’m not talking about Penny-Arcade’s podcasts.

Mega64 cracks me up. Visit their site, Mega64.com to see their awesome skits and you will know what I’m talking about. You can also order a collection on DVD if you feel so inclined. My favorite skit to date has to be the tetris block. The inner-nerd recesses of my mind, normally blocked by my desire to be viewed as relatively normal by society, are able to come to the forefront while I watch their clips. I can laugh long and hard and yell, “OH MY GOD THAT’S MIYAMOTO!!!” without fear.

Hilariously, Mega64 did commercials and skits for Spike TV’s video game awards. So what does that leave Spike TV Jr…er…G4 with? Well, at least they have Star Trek. Oh wait…so does Spike TV. Yeah. I got nothing.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 7th, 2008 at 1:24 pm and is filed under Gamer Culture, Rants, Editorial. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.