61 Frames Per Second : television

WTFriday: Won't You Be My Gamer?

Derrick Sanskrit — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 21:00:00 GMT

I watched a lot of children's television when I was younger (this morning counts as younger, right?). Sesame Street was essential, Lamb Chop was interesting, David the Gnome was enaging, even Barney was fun in an ironic manner years ahead of becoming a jaded teenager, but Mister Roger's Neighborhood never quite felt right to me. Fred Rogers himself was like a warm grandfather figure who never had anything better to do than play make believe and aks whoever he came across pedantic questions about their immediate surroundings and actions. Even as a child I found this unsettling.

Had I seen this clip as a child, though, I would have at least had an exact moment to pinpoint "that's what creeped me out about him." Fred Rogers visits the arcade in the back of a restaurant of some sort and proceeds to ask a young boy about Donkey Kong. The whole thing sounds like an exchange with the elderly pedophile on Family Guy:

See that? The way he hunches over the boy, getting close enough to breathe on him? The way he asks the kid the object of the game in a soft tone and proceeds to ask what other games the kid plays (hopscotch?)? The way he oh-so-naturally puts his arm around the kid as they step aside? The way he asks "is that fun for you to play something like that?" This is a portrait of exactly who your teachers and parents told you not to talk to if you didn't want to be abducted and raped. How fitting that they're talking about Donkey Kong, a game with an implied degree of abduction with intent to deflower.

Also, it's kinda creepy when that other guy is like "I'm here to collect the money" right in front of them, and then he pops the board open to show them the switches. And the kid says "Down is not really used in this game"! Has he never made it past the first level?

Gah, watching this clip just feels so wrong. I want to be very, very far away from all of these people.

Previously on WTFriday:
Don't S*** Your Pants Teaches Valuable Life Lessons
Gamestop's Guide to Women
A Sad Dog's Rush Cosplay

"Reality" Competition To Find "Ultimate Gamer" Looks "Awesome"

Derrick Sanskrit — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 20:00:00 GMT

World Cyber Games has announced their new "Reality Competition Series" (these things don't count as game shows anymore, do they?) titled, imaginatively, WCG Ultimate Gamer to air on Sci-Fi this March in eight one-hour installments. Sci-Fi recently had a similar competition program in Cha$e, which designed itself to be a "real-life video game" (like childhood favorites manhunt or tag, only with iPhones and sidequests), but Ultimate Gamer looks to more closely follow previous Sci-Fi reality competition Who Wants To Be A Superhero?

Much like Superhero tested the costume characters' application of heroism and courage in real world scenarios, Ultimate Gamer will test participants proficiency at popular games as well as real-life simulations of those games. Play Rock Band 2, then play a real electric guitar. Halo 3, then real paintball. Project Gotham Racing 4, then real street-ready cars. Check out this trailer:

This has the potential to be fantastic entertainment. It could also suck. A lot. We all know that most people who rule at Guitar Hero and Rock Band couldn't play a real instrument to save their lives, so the potential of applying that level of embarassment to other games intrigues me, especially the Project Gotham Racing one. Other activities shown in the trailer include Virtua Fighter 5 and some sort of karate kid target challenge, Dance Dance Revolution, and something involving dunking a tricked-out slam dunk over a swimming pool (I'm going to guess NBA Street?). With eight episodes, that's only six games/challenges revealed, all of which are big studio sequels to established franchises. There's room for at least two more unrevealed games, and since it's always fun to speculate, let's do some of that:

Gears of War 2 - Destroy as many watermelon as you can in 45 seconds equipped only with a chainsaw and steel-toed boots!
Metal Gear Solid 4 - Sneak past security cameras, steal as many adult magazines as you can without being spotted.
Mega Man 9 - Punch yourself as hard as you possibly can, repeatedly.
Tomb Raider Underworld - Run an obstacle course whilst decrying Roman mythology (I'm just going with general Tomb Raider, I have no idea what Underworld is about)
God of War 3 - Tear down statues whilst decrying Greek mythology
Resident Evil 5 - Shoot africans. (What, too soon?)

The possibilities are endless! Will it be good? Absolutely no idea. We'll find out in March, I suppose.

Related Articles:
Horrors That Time Forgot: GamePro TV
Video Game TV: Can It Ever Be Good?
Aliens and Games and TV, Oh My: The Jace Hall Show
20/20 From 20 Years Ago Copes With Nintendo

Robot Chicken Torments the Excite Bike Guy

Nadia Oxford — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 22:03:00 GMT

I've always been of two minds about Robot Chicken. It's basically a lot of claymation jokes about our favourite childhood toys and mascots farting and pooping and I am so above that. (*frt*) But sometimes the show comes out with something that makes me laugh in spite of myself. It happened again today, in the middle of a library. :(

Robot Chicken: Excitebike follows the innocent little biker from Excite Bike on the NES. He's just tooling around, driving home from a long day at work to see the wife and kids--

Wait, does the Excite Bike dude have a name or a background? What do we know about his life? His motivation? His credit history? Even F-Zero's tight-muscled pilot, Captain Falcon, has gained a certain amount of infamy. We now know he loves to brawl, he writes slash fanfiction about himself and Samurai Goroh and he fathered an illegitimate son somehow.

And despite all that, I think I'd rather date the Excite Bike guy. A bit of mystery is sexy. Looks like he'll have to take care of his shattered legs, first.

Also, I'm a new admirer of the adjective "anus-shattering."

Related Links:

Seth McFarlane Animates Mario Short
Quickies: Homestar Ruiner
Will Games Ever Be Funny?

WTFriday: 20/20 from 20 Years Ago Copes With Nintendo

Bob Mackey — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Note to readers: WTFriday is a weekly feature where I find something stupid about video games and get you to laugh until it goes away. Please try to forget this is what I normally do every day of the week.

It's always fun to take a trip back in time and see the media's reaction to something new back when it wasn't as innocuous as it is today. Case in point: ABC news magazine 20/20's 1988 investigative piece, "Nuts for Nintendo," where a youngish John Stossel grows unreasonably cranky at the concept of a childlike sense of wonder.

Part 1

Part 2

But despite Stossel's inescapable Andy Rooneyish narration, he ends up at a generally positive conclusion; the segment starts off with a real "These fucking kids and their Nintendos" sentiment, but ends with a declaration of the console's harmlessness. And I can take consolation in the fact that Wendy Stapen's children either disowned their mother or grew up to become huge libertarian douchbags like John Stossel. Nice parenting, Wendy.

The only thing that bothers me about this report Stossel's lack of fact-checking: he mistakenly labels Sub-Con as The Mushroom Kingdom, and claims that Mario fights "ducks." Ducks. Crap like that would send me into conniption fits as a child. But I guess 20/20 wasn't worried about their 8-and-under demographic.

Related Links:

WTFriday: Birdo's Gender Confirmed?
WTFriday: FMV Hell
Video Game TV: Can It Ever Be Good?

Aliens and Games and TV, Oh My: The Jace Hall Show

John Constantine — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 22:00:00 GMT

Videogames, they’re played on televisions. Well, they’re played on computer monitors too, but those have all but turned into televisions in recent years, right? Right. Of course, 61 Frames Per Second has been pondering and expounding on the relative merits of televised programming based on and about videogames of late. As our very own Amber Ahlborn made the point the other day, videogame television aimed at avid players is typically schlock ridden garbage, marred by a need to come off as both cool enough for the cool kids and geekily informed enough to appeal to the really cool kids. Amber’s spot-on in saying that the best game television is on the internet. When it comes to quality, the comedic characters created by Yahtzee and the Angry Video Game Nerd are joined by the first truly successful preview/review show, The 1up Show. Ryan O’Donnell and Jane Pinckard found the winning formula of scripted dialogue, personality and informed journalism lacking in every other attempt at the form, and O’Donnell has kept it strong for three years running.

The golden rule of entertainment is that when you make something that works, someone is going to imitate you on the quick. Until today, I had all but forgotten about the recently launched The Jace Hall Show, relegating to the section of my brain labeled “Mildly Interesting Things N’Gai Croal Wrote About and Failed to Hold My Attention Oh Look Metroid Fan Fiction”. For anyone unfamiliar with the name, Jace Hall is the founder of Monolith Productions (creators of F.E.A.R. and Condemned: Criminal Origins) and has been a significant player in the games industry for over a decade. I watched my first full episode of the show today because Hall was visiting Gearbox for a look at both Borderlands and Aliens: Colonial Marines. The show’s slick production works well and its premise of sneaking quick looks of games still early in development – the pilot had a-sneeze-and-you’ll-miss-it look at Duke Nukem Forever – is a novel hook. But it’s hard not to notice its attempt to mimic The 1up Show’s casual tone and the similarity is a little off-putting. The coverage is there, but it still needs a personality of its own to thrive.

You can catch the whole first season here on Crackle.com or on your Xbox 360 via Live Arcade.

Related links:

Video Game TV: Can It Ever Be Good?
Yahtzee Says, Support Your Local Independent Developer (He’s Right.)
Video Game Television the Canadian Way, Eh?
Horrors That Time Forgot: GamePro TV
Game Over, Man: Aliens – Colonial Marines Penned By Battlestar Galactica Writers

Video Game Television the Canadian Way, Eh?

Nadia Oxford — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 18:59:00 GMT

All this talk about Video Power and Gamepro TV has made my phantom leg-warmers itch. I watched both religiously. In fact, Gamepro TV deserves a hearty "thank you" for spoiling the twist near the end of Mega Man 4. Yeah, so maybe it doesn't take a genius to figure out that Dr Wily was manipulating Dr Cossack, but I was, like, ten at the time. That's serious shit when you're ten.

Unlike most of you, I had one more video game show in my Saturday roster: Canada's own Video & Arcade Top 10. It debuted in 1991 on YTV and, if I'm not reading my sources incorrectly, it still endures.

There's a definite charm to Canadian television that I would sorely miss if I were to follow up on my life's dream to live among penguins. Canadian television is terribly low-budget, but goddamn if it doesn't try hard. And, more often than not, it comes out smelling beautiful in its own funky way, like the smell of a dog you loved through childhood. If a Canadian show reaches cult status in America, it's a hit. Kids in the Hall got lucky, as did ReBoot--and both wholly deserve(d) the success they receive(d). In all, Canadian television reflects a relaxed culture that ~~smokes a lot of marijuana~~ isn't as uptight about censorship and sponsors. That's why Video & Arcade Top 10 is as cheesy as France, but doesn't try to be anything spectacular. Its theme song was ripped straight from Crash Man's stage in Mega Man 2.

Video & Arcade Top 10 is based around competition. A bunch of kids get called down from the audience to play whatever pity-game the producers manage to weasel out of whatever company and whoever meets the specified criteria (highest score, highest energy) wins. Prizes range from yesterday's hottest games to a pat on the back (preferred).

I don't know what the future holds for video game television, but I do know the cable package that brought me G4 expired a long time ago and I never bothered to renew it. Morgan Webb's voice drawls up and down so often, it makes me seasick. Favoured Video & Arcade host Nicholas Picalous never wore the hippest clothes and he had more pounds on him than what's normally allowed on American television, but I bet he'd be awesome to have a beer with.

"So this one time, this kid with stage fright threw up on my pants. They were ten bucks from Goodwill. I don't get to see that kind of money often."

Related Links:

Video Game TV: Can It Ever Be Good?
Horrors That Time Forgot: Gamepro TV

Video Game TV: Can It Ever Be Good?

Amber Ahlborn — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 14:00:00 GMT

In a recent post here at 61fps, fellow blogger Bob Mackey dredged up from the pit of nostalgia GamePro TV. I am pretty darn sure I watched this when I was younger. I think there was another show even earlier in my childhood that reviewed games on the Nickelodeon network that I would watch. Looking back I wonder at how awful those shows were. More recently there were things like G4 which showed numerous programs aimed at the gamer audience. I don't think even the ones that continue to survive are what I would call great. Why do Video Game TV shows suck, and can they possibly be done in a way that's appealing?

For a preview/review show, I think the movie model should be followed. It seems that previous video game shows that did try were dragged down by attempting to appeal to twitchy children with short attention spans. They really suffer from the camp cringe factor. A straight, serious approach with some industry news tossed in might work.

Reality shows (ugh) are numerous these days. They're mostly tripe and trash but they are popular. A reality gamer show might actually be interesting. Heck, how about a sitcom starring three roommates, each a hopeless fan of a different console?

So far, the best “TV” for gamers is right here on the Internet, with the likes of Yahtzee and The Angry Video Game Nerd our soap stars. So, if you were a screen writer and wanted to do a TV show for video gamers, what would you do? Surely our ideas could be no worse.

Related Links:

The Angrey Video Game Nerd Says a Bad Word: Deadly Towers

Yahtzee on E3: Are We Gaming in an Age of Uncreativity?

Play It Again, Sam

Horrors that Time Forgot: GamePro TV

Bob Mackey — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 14:00:00 GMT

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.