Exposing my socks to the world

And I’ve still got it.

Okay, I bet a lot of you are wondering what I was on when I wrote that above lyrics. Suffice it to say, I didn’t write it. It’s the lyrics to one of my favorite shows of the 90’s, ‘Video Power’. Not the crappy half cartoon monstrosity that was the first season, I’m talking about the pseudo game show that the second season became.

There are writeups all over the net about it (like here), so I won’t go into all the details. Go ahead and click on that link to read all about the show. I’ll wait on you.

Ok. Video Power was a pretty decent show. It featured really crappy tips for some of the older games out there, granted, but it was the first show that I can remember that actually talked up Nintendo games on TV.

The host was an absoulte spaz. “Johnny Arcade” would bounce all over the place generally making himself obnoxious and handing out the prizes/challenges/tips/questions/points on the show. He could get away with it because he had all the power (the Video Power!) to give the contestants a dream run through the maze at the end of the show and stick the games to their chest. Yes, I wanted his job. Heck, I still do!

Memorable Video Power Moment #328:Johhny Arcade farts on the air, and the footage was left in the copy that made it to air. This is the first time that I can recall that actual factual gas passery was aired on television, and the already overactive host got about fifteen times more excited. I swear I thought his head was going to explode.

I haven’t seen the show since it was cancelled in the early 90’s, and I’m really surprised that G4 hasn’t picked it up with the recent trend in retro gaming.

Certainly there would be a couple of live people in the studio bantering about the recent happenings in the game world. It would be a little bit of news, a little bit of opinion. A good mix.

Then of course there would have to be contests. Contests that the listeners wouldn’t be able to go to Google and look up the answers to. Something like ‘Name The Game Tune’ or ‘Trivial Game Trivia.’

Throw in other features like ‘Game of the Day,’ break it up with the occasional game audio track (there’s plenty of ‘real songs’ in games nowadays for that to not be an issue) and I think you could easily fill an hour or two.

Due to the overwhelming suckiness of my Internet Service Provider, access to this site has been sporadic at best for the last two weeks. Nobody is probably reading this message until the problems get resolved, but it makes me feel better.

So what is a superplay? A superplay is, according to one website, one or a combination of three things: doing a ‘speed run’ (finishing a game in the shortest amount of time possible), doing a ‘time attack’ (finishing a game as quickly as possible, and doing it as perfectly as possible), and aesthetic forms (doing amazing things within a game).

Watching some of these movies is simply amazing, especially the ones done without the help of an emulator.

Wait a minute. What do I mean, ‘without the help of an emulator’?

Most of the time attacks and aesthetic forms were created with the help of an emulator that allows games to be slowed down, and allow the game to be backed up a few seconds and tried again if a mistake is made. Oh, and that gets some people so mad. They go on about how it ‘doesn’t take any real skill to pull off a time attack when you can just go and redo all your mistakes’ or some such. Yeah, that’s true, but the end product is entertaining to watch, if nothing else. If that bothers you, then there are several more videos out there that aren’t made with the help of an emulator that are just as amazing (look for the Donkey Kong Country 101% in 50 minutes video for an example).

If you take the videos for what they are (entertainment) then you’ll get just that out of them. I like seeing some of the games that gave me so many frustrations in my formative gaming years get systematically picked apart, regardless of how it was done.