The Big Picture: Power Drain

MovieBob

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Dec 31, 2008
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Power Drain

MovieBob takes an in-depth look into the early days of co-opting videogame culture.

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ZZoMBiE13

Ate My Neighbors
Oct 10, 2007
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Well OK. So that was a thing that happened. Can't say I recall if I ever saw that one or not.

Wonder what that kind of show would look like today if someone like EA or Activision tried to do it?
 

Marter

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Oct 27, 2009
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That second season reminded me a lot of Video & Arcade Top 10, which I think might have only been shown in Canada. I remember loving that show when I was younger.

Now I miss it again.

Good to know there were other, similar shows happening elsewhere, even as bad as this one looked.
 

Casual Shinji

Should've gone before we left.
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Jul 18, 2009
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Oh God, I fucking remember this show. Not too much, but I distinctly remember a cartoon about a monster truck, a tomato, and a basketball player fighting crime.

And Captain N was awesome, I don't care what anyone says.
 

WanderingFool

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Apr 9, 2009
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Wait... what were we talking about again? Something about bad videogame cartoons or something, I guess I forgot...
 

MB202

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Captain N was still kind of crappy, though... The Super Mario Bros. Super Show was... unique, I'll say that much, I actually kind of like the super nuts Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, I don't think I need to say anything about the SatAM Sonic since everything good about it has already been said, and Mega Man? Well... I didn't like how ultra buff the characters looked, but otherwise, yeah, it was alright.

Power Team/Power Hour... Wait, where did Bob get that footage? From what I heard, that sort of stuff is impossible to find, even hear on the Internet! WHERE?! Because I must see this show for myself!
 

Jman1236

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You left out one thing Mr. Big always had special NES cartages that could send anything into the game world and always threaten to send the heroes back to the game world leaving no one to stop him in pretty much every episode.
 

Soviet Heavy

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Marter said:
That second season reminded me a lot of Video & Arcade Top 10, which I think might have only been shown in Canada. I remember loving that show when I was younger.

Now I miss it again.

Good to know there were other, similar shows happening elsewhere, even as bad as this one looked.
That show was pretty much a platform to showcase N64 games right? I remember the episode where they had to play Pokemon Snap.
 

Storm Dragon

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Nov 29, 2011
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Gotta say, I feel like a dodged a bullet by being born in '92. I wasn't around at all for the '80s, and for most of the eight years of the '90s that I lived through, I was too young for the majority of that crap to be targeted at me.
 

brazuca

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Jun 11, 2008
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Hey Bob why don't you talk about the adaptations that worked fine like Pokémon and... uh... Pokémon?! Video games are hard to translate to other media.
 

Antonio Torrente

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It's one of those times that I am glad to be an innocent 2-6 year old during the 90's.
Because boy that was painful.
 

Marter

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Soviet Heavy said:
That show was pretty much a platform to showcase N64 games right? I remember the episode where they had to play Pokemon Snap.
Well, it ran until 2006, so presumably other consoles got involved, too. I think I remember that they did have all three of the PS2, Xbox and GameCube, and they played games on all of them. There likely was some bias that I'm neglecting to remember (especially because I had an N64 so I would always be happy if it was on that and not the PS1).
 

Falseprophet

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I loved NARC. And I remember NARC cabinets sticking around for quite a while. But in the 1980s, entertainment properties aimed at kids could stretch the usual (already flexible) violence and death limitations if they were part of the "War on Drugs" messaging, which NARC most definitely was.

Marter said:
That second season reminded me a lot of Video & Arcade Top 10, which I think might have only been shown in Canada. I remember loving that show when I was younger.
I loved that show! But I don't remember Lexa Doig being on it!
 

AlexanderPeregrine

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Nov 19, 2009
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I was 7-9 years old when that show aired and I still remember it. Even back then, I realized Tyrone was stupidly out of place. The only fragments of the cartoon I recall are that it had one of those "we want to go home" episodes these kinds of shows always had (even as a kid, I found the "we hate being unique and special" schtick insufferable) and a short segment that took place in one of Kwirk's puzzles. I also remember really liking the idea to the game show (if just because I was a kid that liked video games a lot and it showed other kids getting a lot of them). I also remember somebody at one of my summer camps watching an episode of that show on a Game Gear with the television attachment (insert totally radical joke here).

Another amusing memory: even at that young age, I realized Acclaim games were generally shit.
 

NinjaDeathSlap

Leaf on the wind
Feb 20, 2011
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Too. Much. NINETIES!

Sometimes I really thank God that I had CBBC when I was a kid. We had Get You Own Back, and Get You Own Back was the shit!