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Horrors that Time Forgot: GamePro TV

Posted by Bob Mackey

On last week’s episode of GFW Radio, co-host Shawn Elliott spent a few minutes riffing on some old episodes of GamePro TV he’d just seen on YouTube. When I was a kid, this was a show I watched on purpose--and taped for later, obsessive re-viewings. Granted, it didn’t take me long to become spiteful and jaded, but in 1991, people on TV talking about video games was a big goddamned deal. For the love of all that’s holy, I even watched both versions of Video Power.

Looking back, GamePro TV wasn’t nearly as terrible as it could have been. Everything on the show looks like it was hit with a hose that sprayed both splatter paint and denim, but this was simply a fact of life for those of us living through the rough transition from the 80s to the 90s. And we certainly didn’t let the guitar riffs that accompanied all of our actions get us down. Life was all about hanging with your friends who were an odd mix of Wayne, Garth, and Cody from Step By Step, and kickin’ back with some Battletoads (crystal meth had not been not invented yet).

In order to document this unique period of American history, YouTube user SiliconeraNickFricke has uploaded some old VHS copies of GamePro TV that I’m pretty sure he stole from a cardboard box at my parents’ house. I’ve taken the liberty of arbitrarily choosing a random episode and annotating some key moments via the timestamps below:

00:21 - BrenNANN was the reason I watched GamePro TV in seclusion. Even the shame of being caught masturbating didn’t match that of someone walking in on me willfully staring at this goon.

01:55 - I think the main reason GamePro TV didn’t work is that the majority of each episode consisted of J.D. Roth awkwardly reading you passwords over footage of NES games.

05:00 - Life Before the Internet, Vol. 1: If you were ever stuck in a game, the only option was to send a VHS tape to GamePro TV and hope to god they took pity on you. Asking kids on the playground would only result in stories about mythical relatives who “worked at Nintendo.”

08:10 – Listen for the self-loathing in J.D. Roth’s voice as he tries to make the discovery of a sound test in a Game Boy game sound exciting.

08:55 – Roth explains GamePro’s ratings scale for the illiterate. Notice how there is no “1” in their scale of 1-5.

14:00 – Another 2.5 minutes of J.D. Roth reading letters and numbers. FEEL THE THUNDER

17:15 – Simpler Time Moment: BrenNANNNN brags about how the Genesis version of Madden sold over 250,000 copies. People are now murdered for such numbers.

20:50 – I ache for death.

P.S. Brennan looks like THIS now.

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Posted Aug 21 2008, 10:00 AM

Filed under: gamepro, bob mackey, television

Comments

Roto13 said:

Bucky O'Hare was so awesome. Apparently Bart Vs. the Space Mutants didn't get as much love from the rest of the world as it got from me. :P

Oh god, I'm sure that Star Trek kid with the mullet never managed to live that video down.

That was really hard to watch. I never saw that show when I was a kid. I did watch a show called Video and Arcade Top 10. That was actually kinda cool, because it was more of a gameshow, as in they'd have four kids playing the same game and whoever got the farthest would win a prize. When it was a game I had played before, I would always see the one kid getting completely lost, trying to walk through a wall or something. That was pretty sad. Oh, and the host's name was Nicholas Picholas (he swore that was his real name) and that's so much more hardcore than BreNANNNNNN!

August 21, 2008 11:32 AM

LBD "Nytetrayn" said:

I remember GamePro TV; that was where I first saw the ending to Mega Man 4 (that one took me more than one rental to beat). But Video Power/Power Team is where I'd be constantly watching.

I kind of wish they'd release this stuff on DVD. I'd buy it.

Roto: I remember that show, mainly for the Crash Man theme music they used as their own theme.

--LBD "Nytetrayn"

August 21, 2008 2:19 PM

Amber Ahlborn said:

I think I remember this...I'm not sure though as I may have blocked it from my memory. I know I watched some show that covered games on Nickelodeon, back when Nick was mostly watchable. Wow... In another 20 years when I look back on the stuff I watch now, will I feel just as embarrassed?

August 21, 2008 3:45 PM

About Bob Mackey

For a brief period of time I was Bull from TV's Night Court, but some of you may know me from the humor column I wrote for Youngstown State University's The Jambar, Kent State University's The Stater, and Youngstown's alternative newspaper, The Walruss. I'm perhaps most well-known for my bi-weekly pieces on Something Awful. I've also blogged for Valley24.com and have written articles for EGM, 1UP, GameSpite and Cracked. For all of my writing over the years, I have made a total of twenty American dollars. It's also said that I draw cartoons, which people have described with words such as "legible." I kidnapped the Lindbergh Baby and am looking to do so again in the future.

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