Extended Play and the GameCube

[Nester the Lark]

I don't think I've bothered to watch X-Play--or anything else on G4--for over a year. But here's an interesting blast from the past, courtesy of YouTube: It's an episode of TechTV's Extended Play from November 16, 2001, entirely devoted to the US launch of the GameCube. It provides an interesting perspective on both the show and the system.

With Extended Play, you'll notice that Adam Sessler is very subdued, and not the whinny, self-despising character he is on X-Play. He's accompanied by previous co-host Kate Botello, who was also one of the original Screen Savers. The entire show is very straight forward and more journalistic compared to X-Play, and the humor (or what little there is of it) is tame, unforced, and a lot less painful.

As for the GameCube, it's interesting to go back and see such an optimistic view of it. They reviewed four launch titles, all of which received good ratings. Most notable, perhaps, are two games they briefly mention as future releases. One is Kirby Tilt N Tumble 2, showing the GC-to-GBA link abilities. The other is Kameo: Elements of Power. Boy, was that an entire generation early, or what?

[Spud]

Beautiful. While I used to like X-Play (Pre-G4) I'd much rather have an actual review where their's a lot of praise for for good stuff instead of X-Play's scorn for almost anything.

coreywoods said:

I don't think I've bothered to watch X-Play--or anything else on G4--for over a year.

G4-Tech TV is Video Gaming's MTV

wanderingshadow said:

There used to be a way to stick it to the man; it was called rock and roll. But, oh no! The Man ruined that with a little thing called MTV! So don't bother creating anything cool or pure or awesome, because The Man's just going to call you a fat, washed-up loser and crush your soul. So do yourself a favor and just give up.

Video Games were once the best of the best, the true of the true. And now we're starting to make a comeback. Nintendo and (dare I say) Sega are two of the only big companies keeping these things together. All companies like Sony Or Microsoft care about is making a buck in this industry. But even Nintendo plays it's tricks. Miamoto san's Photo channel show at the Game Developer's Conference showed People on several Nintendo consoles zoned out and drained of energy, but watching this video I think before the first break you get a good ¹/₁₀ second of some very happy people playing Gamecube.

GameCube was indeed an excellent console with an excellent run. I give it a 5/5

[mrmolecule]

That's a lot of hair on Adam. You know, it's really pathetic of the downfall of G4 and TechTV. Extended Play was on TechTV, and TechTV had lots of good shows, (shame I never had TechTV), and G4 was about videogames. Unfortunately, some shows were somewhat weak and didn't last. However, due to a merger, G4 and TechTV combined, putting all the best shows together, to be about tech, computers, and video games. This was called G4techtv. Neat, huh?

However, due to bad choices and cancellations, the old TechTV shows were heavily changed and ended up with a bunch of TechTV personalities quit or being fired.

Soon afterward, G4techtv changed formats and changed to a SpikeTV-clone where they showed male-oriented programming (The Man Show and Cops, anyone?), dropped the TechTV name, and whittled down the once-vibrant video game focus to only two shows...Cheat! and The Screen Savers. Now, G4 is only good for Star Trek...X-Play is hard to watch...but that Totally Outrageous Behavior is kinda funny. I watched it and wrote a few on Wikipedia...

Boxer punches referee...twice
Balloons fly into high-voltage power lines
Judge gets skewered by javelin
Pop singer gets zapped by microphone, and has a bookcase fall on him
Man runs into concrete silo with tractor...and it falls on top of him
Car flies off ramp...and doesn't exactly make a safe landing

And the story of Kameo's development is also sad. When the game had changed significantly and put up for the 360, it was probably more like "Kameo: Elements of Nintendo".