Brake For Frogger!

*The first part of this article was uploaded onto Brake For Frogger’s old Live Journal a couple of months ago, it contained a link to the entire first episode of Games Master. If you want to catch up then please find the entry at this link.*

As the 90′s rumbled on and Sega and Nintendo were still locking horns, videogames were still considered a kid’s thing. Any reference to them was usually to be found on the post school slot alongside Knightmare and Bucky O’Hare. It was around this time that ITV decided they wanted in on the deal and created possibly the worst entry on the list in Bad Influence, a monumental focus group led pile of great offense. The fact I was aware of this being terrible at my young age only made it even worse.

Presented by children’s TV veteran Andy Crane and spiky haired elf Violet Berlin, Bad Influence is almost certainly a product of its time as you can probably tell by this clip of Violet wandering around a European Trade Show.

Obviously, by the fact that a prototype is featured behind a perspex case, this was well before the original Playstation hit our shores. The 16bit era was firmly in place and videogames had yet to leave the playground and enter the nightclub. The main crime Bad Influence commited (apart from that awful title) is that it went in the opposite direction to Gamesmaster. Whereas Dominik Diamond would show a sense of humour which had a rougher edge to it, thus appealling to an older audience, Bad Influence was designed for the kids only. They’d have them hanging around the studio playing various consoles only to have Crane shove a microphone in their face. The combination of shy teenager having a national spotlight forced on them whilst attempting to hide behind an Atari Lynx did not make for great televisual viewing. The fact that their review system was scored out of ten with marks up to five from one group of boys and another of girls was another strange quirk of the show.

Also, judging by this clip, Bad Influence had no reservations about featuring videogame related products of dubious legality.

Gamesmaster had Patrick Moore giving out the advice, Bad Influence had some idiot created in a test tube with the label ‘Every Bad Games Stereotype Going’ written on it. Prepare you verbal barbs to be flung in the direction of one Nam Rood.

Yes, he always had a strange thing about sticking bits of cardboard to his forehead.

Bad Influence died out after about 4 years. Violet Berlin stayed presenting videogame shows but judging by her own site appears to have branched out into more corporate based work. Andy Crane meanwhile is presenting radio and TV in the Manchester area over here in the UK.

Games World meanwhile was Sky One’s effort at a nightly videogame show. With two and a half hours of airtime a week to get through Gamesworld set about creating a theme for each night. The main focus was always on The Eliminator tournaments held on Monday and Wednesday in which a group of gamers were whittled down to one champion before meeting each other on Friday’s show. Looking back, it’s really hard to believe just how rubbish some of the ability on show was.

Not exactly Diago is it?

Yes, Dave Perry seems to be wearing a leather waistcoat, in later series they seemed to pay him enough to get a jumper or something. The winners of each week would play against each other on Friday’s show in some kind of strange and rubbish coin collection game. Whoever won that would then take on The Videators, a collective of gamers with gimmicks the WWE would deem too far fetched. Gladiators was popular at the time over on ITV so imagine that group putting down the weights and picking up joypads instead.For whatever reason if was deemed acceptable for a man to don a gimp mask and play small children at Street Fighter 2 whilst being broadcast to the nation.

And people say us Brits are reserved.

Gamesworld made a good effort of it but that’s mainly due to the amount of time they had to play with each week. It was still presented tongue in cheek like Gamesmaster (being as they were made my the same company, Hewland International) but in retrospect it has a definate air of the ridiculous about it which went unchecked by my teenage self. My teenage self also really appreciated Jet from Gladiators giving out the cheats.