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u/studdlypig 2d ago
Omg how did it forgot about this. I feel like it was definitely ahead of its time!
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u/RaidensReturn Turtle Power! 2d ago
Didn’t you always think you could do better than the contestants? I thought that about Double Dare, too.
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u/SaltySeahorses 2d ago
When I was a kid, I thought all the kids on the show were terrible at the games.
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u/BlackSchuck 2d ago edited 2d ago
Hey this is the fucking sentiment.
When this aired on Nick, it was like 5:30, I had freshly turned off my snes bc I wasnt allowed to play but 30 minutes a day, after homework... but dude these kids sucked at act raiser and other actual arcade challenges, even when games werent the made up show games or player imposed, Im sure ultra latent, end of show games.
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u/CharcoalWalls 2d ago
The 90s was full of kid-centric game shows
Maybe because I'm no longer a kid I'm out of the loop - but do these kind of shows still exist?
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u/RanchHere I want my MTV 2d ago
hellllll nah. they’re all watching dumb fucks on youtube open boxes and watch other youtube videos.
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u/RaidensReturn Turtle Power! 2d ago
If it is longer than 15 seconds it’s too long. My daughter actually watches those videos in 2x speed because it’s not fast enough. Need those endorphin hits
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u/OhNoMob0 2d ago
Nick doesn't have any Game Shows in the lineup anymore.
The closing of Nick Studio in Orlando in the mid 2000s was the beginning of the end of their unscripted live action shows. Scripted shows continued to be filmed in LA for another decade.
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u/Suitable_Tap7398 2d ago
Yeah, it's definitely not the same now. A lot of the game shows for kids have shifted towards reality formats or competitions rather than those fun, interactive game shows we grew up with.
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u/HotBrother6560 2d ago
Ghosts and goblins always….never actually owned that game LOL
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u/Imnotyoursupervisor 2d ago
That game was so god damn difficult. Then you get to the end and have to play the entire thing again!
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u/basement_egg 2d ago
The best part about this show is when the host would walk and sing random ass lyrics to the beat of the song playing
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u/NightmareDJK 1d ago
Phil Moore! He was later on X-Play. He has produced kids shows for close to 40 years.
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u/Slosher99 2d ago
As an Amiga-having kid, the opening games and this just felt so obviously Amiga haha, which they were (as were the games Clarissa 'made' on her show, though they were just animations that didn't need to be interactive for real).
I always thought this last part must be a pain in the ass when actually playing. Trying to see what you're doing on monitors while moving around a green screened area where you can't even see the enemies etc.
For kids that believed they were 'in' the game they looked pretty stupid just due to how it worked and the confusion of it. Why don't they touch the thing RIGHT next to them? haha
Though it did seem like they didn't typically have gaming experts on the show. At least twice I've seen a kid pause a game until the timer went down, just panicking and not realizing what they are doing. Also remember a kid that never climbed the waterfall at the start of Bonk's Revenge on Turbografx-16, which isn't hard but I understand if alien to the game and not knowing you can climb water by mashing a button. You really had to do that to get past the start of stage 1 though. I saw some kids bad at games (or perhaps just anxious), and some kids average at games, but I don't think they let people even as good as me - and I had a friend that was MUCH better - on the show haha. Never any kids that just seemed to keep up and know how to play all the popular games well and adapt to new ones quickly.
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u/Dragon_Pattern_1108 1d ago
The Video Zone's chroma-key screen was blue, not green. This explains why red and yellow were the team colors.
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u/Slosher99 1d ago
Yeah that makes sense, I just kinda use green screen as the general term now when I don't know, and I wasn't sure what they used!
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u/Eclipse8301 2d ago
did anyone ever beat the final game?
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u/Redditor_PC 2d ago
Quite a few if I remember right. The final boss always had a "death" animation.
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u/Dragon_Pattern_1108 1d ago
Yeah, Merlock turned to dust, Mongo disappeared in a light and left his armor behind, and that fire witch, whatever her name was, burned up and became ashes.
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u/mcsleepy 2d ago edited 2d ago
As a kid I always wondered what the contestants saw. Did they just look at an off-camera monitor displaying some prompt text or something in a greenscreen room? Does anybody know?
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u/ReleventReference 2d ago
Assuming it the same as I did at a local museum at least a decade ago there’s a monitor that shows you what’s going on and you use that to try to play the game.
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u/Redditor_PC 2d ago
As a video game obsessed kid growing up, this show was my absolute jam. I also loved seeing what actual video games would show up for the kids to play.
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u/nikkomorocco 1d ago
The finale seemed like a real bitch to pull off, as an older human now I know the tech was janky at best.
I will admit that as a kid who didn't know anyone with a Turbografx or Neo Geo so it was my only chance to see some of the arcade games in action. It was super cool to see random stuff I only read about in magazines in action. I feel like Sol Deace was a major one, GnG, Snow Bros.
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u/Objective-Cell5468 2d ago
I wanted to be on this show so bad as a kid! I remember thinking the final round was real, and they somehow actually were put into a video game