Games Master & Bad Influence! appreciation

[egparadigm]

Bits, there was Emily Bouff, another Emily which I can't remember the surname of and some other American chick who I wouldn't **** with a stolen dick. Someone called Alex, I think

Aleks Krotoski, still writes for the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/alekskrotoski

She sybsequently did a show with Iain Lee, called Thumb Bandits.

And who can forget the terrible Gamezville?

[prinnysquad]

My memories of Bad Influence consist of Nam Rood (doorman, pathetic...) giving out cheats and tips while trying to be noisy and wacky and bringing down the whole tone of the show (picture it, haters...) like some kind of low brow Adrian Edmondson, and the same advert playing in the middle of every show, for a phone line called 'Dial-A-Tip' It had an annoying everything. A monotone woman telling you to ring some number for cheats and tips, spoken over the sound of a telephone ringing, and some tacky background featuring something Space Invaders-esque.

How much of that is accurate is another matter, warped as my mind is by the horror of the experience.

Yet I watched it every week. Hmm. I quite liked it really.

They don't do normal presenters on kids tv anymore, just illiterate, brash, loudmouth cockends. God bless Crane and Berlin!

[teddymeow]

I've got the last ever episode of Gamesmaster on DVD (free with the magazine waaaay back). It still brings a tear to the eye watching Dom say farewell to his viewers.

That show was amazing! Who can forget when he ended up marrying Whigfield?

EDIT: Just watched the Bits clip. Max Payne for Dreamcast? Eh?!

[EvilTheBadger]

Aleks Krotoski, still writes for the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/alekskrotoski

She sybsequently did a show with Iain Lee, called Thumb Bandits.

Iain Lee! RAAAAAGE!

I think it was on Thumb Bandits where he slated Max Payne just after it was released. I couldn't be wasting my time with a gaming show that didn't like Max Payne.

[prinnysquad]

Iain Lee does a canny little column in Retro Gamer. Bet he still hates Max Payne though.

[donpepperoni]

I loved them both as a kid. Haven't seen either in over 10yrs so I couldn't say what I'd think of them now I guess.

Dominic Diamond made GamesMaster though, the series with Dexter Fletcher was complete ****e. The challenges were a bit hit and miss for me, I'd have prefered some more news/reviews and stuff instead but at the time this was the only program on TV with anything remotely to do with video games.

As for Bad Influence, the news bits were good and they did show you actual footage of games - which was a pretty rare thing back then - but the reviews were terrible and done by a bunch of tools who didn't seem to know the first thing about games. Then they also had that American kid doing news reports from the US of A and I found him really annoying as well. Nam Rood I could live with.

DId anyone else watch that Cybernet as well on ITV? Used to be on at like 3am in the morning or something stupid. It had a really annyoing voice over guy/girl but again it was at least a TV program about gaming so I felt compelled to watch it lol.

[Oldgamingfart]

As for Bad Influence, the news bits were good and they did show you actual footage of games - which was a pretty rare thing back then - but the reviews were terrible and done by a bunch of tools who didn't seem to know the first thing about games.

I agree, the reviews were terrible. The show also came across a little patronizing to older viewers (by older, I mean anyone over the age of 13 at the time). I think if they had got actual Magazine people to do the reviews (a la Gamesmaster), they'd of been a lot more credible.

Indeed the shows were the only way to see the latest games footage. I probably forgive them for everything else just to see Mario 64 in action for the first time (at the Shoshinkai Show in Japan). See it here and here.

[importaku]

LOL all of them were **** however when thats all you had for your gaming tv fix you made do with what there was. The rose tinted glasses are a powerful tool, viewed again in the harsh reality of 2009 & they look even worse

It's amazing after all these years they still can't get the formula right, the only show i find watchable is games center cx & thats a different kind of show really.

[Oldgamingfart]

^Yeah it's a shame there's nothing on terrestrial TV either nowadays, they just don't even bother to make any effort whatsoever

[Tetsuo]

Bits, there was Emily Bouff, another Emily which I can't remember the surname of and some other American chick who I wouldn't **** with a stolen dick. Someone called Alex, I think

Steady on! Alex was the only one who knew anything about games, she was the sexiest out of the 3, I thought.

[Tetsuo]

DId anyone else watch that Cybernet as well on ITV? Used to be on at like 3am in the morning or something stupid. It had a really annyoing voice over guy/girl but again it was at least a TV program about gaming so I felt compelled to watch it lol.

Yes! Considering it consisted of nothing but gaming footage, it was good value for money, and didn't irritate like those other British shows that insisted on adding 'zaniness' and comedy. Although the games Cybernet covered were pretty hit and miss, it was probably the best gaming TV show (that no-one has watched) there's ever been, IMO.

[Phar]

Steady on! Alex was the only one who knew anything about games, she was the sexiest out of the 3, I thought.

Well I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but yeah she did seem to know what she was talking about unlike the other 2 and that blond from the first series who reminded me of a pornstar.

Out off all the shows I probably liked Bad Influence the most except for the reviews, liked the fact that they'd show things like Hori sticks and the time they had a feature on the Scorpion 16 Megadrive clone, would have loved to own one of those, no other show covered things like that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg-E2jXVx5k

@ Oldgamingfart, is http://www.bad-influence.co.uk/ your site, just spent a couple of hours on there watching a few of the shows, a fantastic site

[Skull Commander]

I really enjoyed Gamesmaster in my youth (except the Fletcher era). Dominic's saucy comments were always a source of amusement, as was his "Big Purple Column" in the Gamesmaster magazine.

Bad Influence always seemed a bit kiddy, but I watched it anyway. As mentioned it was "our" passtime on TV! Good idea about the cheats at the end of the show that you could record onto VHS, and if you had frame by frame advance you could check them out!

Moving forward I was never a huge fan of Bits, but I thought Thumb Bandits was a lot better. Iain Lee knows his stuff, as does Alex. If I recall correctly it didn't last for long.

The last games programme I enjoyed was When Games Attack with Dominic Diamond. It always seemed to get a lot of hate, but ito me it felt like it was made with a lot of love, and it was amusing.

[HC_O]

Dominic's saucy comments were always a source of amusement, as was his "Big Purple Column" in the Gamesmaster magazine.

I didn't know the Magazine was still going and just read..

GamesMaster is the biggest selling multi-format video games magazine in the United Kingdom,

I kept issue 1, not sure where it is though...

so if its the best selling Mag why is the show not still running??
bring it back!

[C']

I loved GamesMaster and Bad Influence in the day. Thursday evenings after getting in from school and getting not one but two actually decent gaming shows as a kid was awesome. I used to even record the entire series and watch back any features over and over again. They were both products of their era but Bad Influence has definitely dated more than GamesMaster.

GamesMaster definitely improved a great deal from series 4 onwards (I presume as a result of Domink Diamond’s increased input, who I actually liked as a presenter). Yes the humour was childish and puerile but it really did make for fun TV for a teenager (the commentary during Zoe Ball’s Manx TT Superbike challenge still makes me chuckle when I think back on it) but they also did have some good games footage as well (probably more often than we give them credit for). They always had the latest arcade games available for challenges and some of the players they got on were genuinely skilled (Martin Mathers, who later went on to become Editor of GamesTM was brilliant at Virtua Cop 1 and 2 although I seem to remember he failed the VC2 challenge).

The GamesMaster feature on the PlayStation port of Ridge Racer was the first time I saw the game running (and this was when the game had been out for like a week in Japan) and was genuinely staggering. Similarly, in a later series when they had a feature dedicated to Namco’s big 3 PlayStation releases of 2007 (Soul Edge, Rage Racer, Time Crisis) GamesMaster was again the first time I’d seen these games in action and (the Time Crisis footage especially) felt like it was months ahead of the print media.

They also had a fantastic feature on the reveal of the N64 in Japan and although Bad Influence had shown some footage earlier in the day, the GamesMaster footage was more comprehensive and exciting.

I remember the Friday mornings in school me and my mates would get so little work done as we’d spend so much time just discussing what had been shown on last night’s GamesMaster.“Did you see Nina’s triple arm break move in the Tekken 2 challenge!?” and “yeah I can totally do Akira’s Stun Palm of Doom like that dude did last night” (I couldn’t).

Good times!