I have a confession to make here. As most people who know me well know, I am an absolute game show junkie. Have been for just about my whole life; my mom, to this day, swears my first words were “Come on down!” For me, my childhood TV memories contain equal parts Bill Cullen and Mr. Rogers. The Tic Tac Dough bonus-round “dragon” used to scare me to death growing up. Where most kids of my generation probably remember Mr. Hooper’s death on Sesame Street as their introduction to the phenomenon on a personal level, for me it was when Allen Ludden passed away during the run of his final show, Password Plus. And I’m sure I can name pretty much every Pricing Game ever played on The Price is Right, including ones that many on the show’s staff today probably don’t know existed!

You might even say it’s my true area of pop-culture expertise. Of course, I’m also a born-and-bred gamer, growing up during the Golden Age and being old enough for my first video game to have been a Pong clone (specifically, a Radio Shack “TV Scoreboard” that I sort of wish I still had). So, imagine the thrill of nine-year-old me to learn that there was a show out there that combined my top two areas of interest in a single half-hour!

Starcade (Game show, 1982-84): Well, actually, as game shows go it was only pretty basic – but I’m going to assume few people reading this really want me to go full-scale fanboy on this subject here at WotG. (If, for whatever reason, you do want to see what happens when I do that, I recommend checking out the Game Show Network message boards over at gsn.com/buzz. I post there somewhat regularly, and even do a daily Price is Right recap. </cheap_plug>)

Starcade was formatted as a high-score contest between two players (usually kids and teens, but some adults did play as well) in a variety of games. In each round, a toss-up arcade trivia question was asked, and whoever buzzed in with the correct answer earned the right to choose which of five different arcade cabinets available on stage would be played in that round. He (or, rarely, she) was then given a certain amount of time (between 40-60 seconds depending on the era) to play that game (with the clock starting when control is given to the player) and amass as high a score as possible. (A Game Over at any point ended the session right then and there, of course.) After this, the other player was given the same amount of time on the same game to try and beat that score.

A total of three rounds were played in this manner, with the players’ scores accumulating. After the second round of play, the overall leader got to play a bonus “Name the Game” round, where s/he tried to identify up to four arcade games based solely on their graphics. A bonus prize was given if you could name three of the four, and a better one for all four.

Whoever had the most overall points at the end of the third and final round won the game, a bonus prize (usually a contemporary home computer like the TI-99/4a) and the chance to win the ultimate prize for any serious Golden Age gamer – their very own arcade machine! (Sometimes, some other prizes were awarded as well, including trips, jukeboxen, and home robots, but arcade machines were the most common and, thus, the best remembered prize.) To do this, the day’s winner picked one of the remaining two games on that day’s show to play for 30 seconds. Prior to the show, twenty other players had been given the same 30 seconds to play each of the games; their scores on each were averaged and revealed to the player, who had to match or beat that average score to win. Simple, straightforward, and effective… but not especially memorable.

No, the reason Starcade shines so brightly in the memory of the Golden Age was the mix of games featured on the show. You got to see a wide variety of cabinets at various points – everything from the classic (BurgerTime, Pole Position II, Track & Field, Dragon’s Lair) to the cult favorite (Major Havoc, Jungle Hunt, Elevator Action, M.A.C.H. 3, Crazy Climber) to the downright obscure (Eyes, Juno First, Mazer Blazer, Munch Mobile). Not only this, but Starcade was also sometimes used by manufacturers to debut new games before they hit your local 7-Elevens and pizza joints, either on the stage or as part of a regular “Starcade Hotline” feature which looked at up-and-coming releases and/or unusual applications of video game technology. It was almost an infomercial for your local arcade!

Starcade began life in 1982 on TBS (then SuperStation WTBS, which was still ostensibly an Atlanta-based indy broadcasting nationally via cable and satellite), then entered broadcast syndication a year later. While on TBS, the host was Mark Richards; by the time it entered the syndie market it had been taken over by veteran emcee Geoff Edwards (Treasure Hunt, Play the Percentages, The New Chain Reaction, and our Californian friends might remember him hosting the infamous Big Spin lottery show). A fun story to tell is that Geoff actually became a big fan of video games while doing Starcade!

At a time when video game fandom was usually recognized in the mainstream by a lame Saturday-morning cartoon (anyone remember Saturday Supercade?) or a bizarre attempt to translate them to board-game format (that, IMO, totally missed the point; actually, that might make a good Retro-Active column itself one day), Starcade was one of the few examples of a TV producer that “got it.” No gimmicks, just straight-up video games. And it holds up surprisingly well to today’s eyes.

You can watch 15 episodes of Starcade online, for free, at www.starcade.tv (14 Edwards and one Richards). Included in the mix is a special all-Dragon’s Lair episode and a lot of forgotten arcade favorites from the Golden Age. Definitely worth checking out.

Hmm… This one was a bit short. To give you something a little more to chew on, I guess I can also talk about a second video-game game show put out by this same production company – called, appropriately enough, The Video Game. The difference between this and Starcade, however, is like night and day.

The Video Game (Game show, 1984-85): It may seem like a strange comparison, but The Video Game is really formatted much like The Price is Right; players are called out of the audience to play a qualifying game to win their way on stage for a chance at more prizes. In this case, two players face off in a specific video game challenge on a Commodore 64, in games such as Pitstop and Summer Games. (Epyx lives!) Whoever won that challenge came up on stage to play a bonus game for more prizes. Games included:

• Identifying a video game based only on its sound effects.
• Determining which of three games a previous audience had chosen as their favorite.
• Maneuvering through a 5×5 “maze” of floor lights, avoiding a “monster” (red square) and looking for “treasure” (green square).
• Identifying cabinet art of a game character, then naming the game that character was from.

After three such rounds were played, the stage contestants returned for the so-called “Rezz-Off”; after a mini-game to determine playing order, each player took turns “controlling” a female model through the 5×5 light matrix, hoping whatever square she stepped to didn’t light up in red. If it did, that player was “derezzed” (eliminated via a cheap video effect making it look like they were disappearing). This went on until only one player was left. He (or she, though as with Starcade girl gamers were rare) then went on to play essentially Starcade’s bonus round, with a game pre-selected by them before the show and the score to beat determined at random in the style of Press Your Luck (that is, stopping a randomly-flashing light on a board containing ten different score plateaus).

I don’t know if it shows, but I don’t think much of The Video Game. Oh, as a format it seems good enough, but production-wise, this thing is just a mess. Except for the use of C64s in the “Contestant’s Row” games (my love for Commodore computers is well-known and probably borders on the “scary”), there just isn’t much here to sink my gamer teeth into. Worse yet, unlike Starcade which tried to appeal to gamers of many ages, this one was securely and unashamedly a kids’ show, with cheesy lighting effects, a mugging host that even in 1984 I wanted to deck, and an announcer that just won’t SHUT UP and stop taunting both players and host. The “derezzing” thing is just inexcusably cheesy, and probably had the potential to give the kiddies (of those who hadn’t yet figured out what “TV magic” is) some bad dreams about being on the show. When you add to that some decidedly low-budget production values, it’s definitely a major drop-off in quality from the polished and professional Starcade.

The aforementioned www.starcade.tv website also includes one episode of The Video Game, so you can see this hokum for yourself. It’s actually entertaining in its own way for what it is, despite the fact it sounds like I’m crapping all over it. As a bonus, it even includes some vintage ’80s TV commercials, including a good one with Alan Alda hawking (so to speak) Atari home computers. (Note that the episode on the site is split into four parts, and doesn’t automatically jump to the next part when one finishes.)

Both Starcade and The Video Game hearken back to an earlier, simpler time in the history of gaming, long before it became a bona fide “industry.” Back then, we played because it was new, it was unlike anything our parents had when they were kids, and for the sheer thrill of it all. Both shows (even for all the cheesiness of The Video Game) capture that zeitgeist almost perfectly.

If you liked that, try...

1. Year End Video Game Awards - The WOGgies!
2. Retro-Active: Top 10 Retro Puzzle Games NOT Called “Tetris”
3. Retro-Active: NES Tetris Revisited
4. Too Old To Game? Find Out With 11 Easy Questions
5. Retro-Active: The History of Ultima, Part VIII - Balance Game

1 Comment »

1. 
   Shelby T Mitchell
   March 4, 2008 at 12:18 am

   Loved the show “Starcade” as a kid living in Fla at the time. Glad to see that it is on an official website. Plus, I kind of thought Geoff Edwards was not just cool but kind of cute as well!

   [Reply]

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