In this part of my retrospective, I'm going to touch on my experience with the first annual (albeit short-lived) Blockbuster Video World Game Championships, awesome things going on overseas, and TV specials that had a personal impact on me.
Sometime in the beginning of the year, Blockbuster was big in the media business... big enough in fact to promote a sponsored competitive video game scene called the Blockbuster Video World Game Championships, which took place in specific Blockbuster stores containing a kiosk with a specific ruleset established. Mind you, this was the preliminary setup for local store scenes before the push to the finals in mid-August. The games featured at the time were Sonic 3, NBA Jam, and surprisingly, Virtua Racing, each over the course of several weeks. Unfortunately, I never made it very far, only making it as far as state finals before being bested in Virtua Racing in particular. At the time, it was an amazing looking game for a Genesis cartridge, and not even requiring the 32X (though to be fair, the cartridge itself had a large expansion chip inside, which made it incompatible with the later-released "Genesis 3").
Onward to things going on overseas... while we folks stateside got our theatrical fix with "The Lion King" and "Forrest Gump", Japan's made an even bigger splash with the fighting game genre - some would even argue this was the year it was at its peak - when two particular smash hits hit the big screen: Street Fighter II and Fatal Fury (called "Garou Densetsu" in Japan). As if that wasn't enough, even the renowned Mobile Suit Gundam series cashed in on the fighting game tournament vibe by breaking its own politically-driven themes with its next TV series. For better or for worse, Mobile Fighter G Gundam was their answer.
Meanwhile in Europe, a particular videogame-based game show was making tremendous waves and wasn't letting up, unlike a particular show in our shores called Video Power. This program was none other than Gamesmaster, whose host was a CGI-shopped projection of a grotesque head who made clever wisecracks every now and then. Although it originally aired in 1992, it really didn't see a compelling overhaul until the fall of 1993, when the show was restructured in format and debuted with a bang with the then-hottest game, Mortal Kombat. And what made this particular episode memorable? The fact the guest stars were in fact the actors who were digitized in the actual game, and playing Mortal Kombat (albeit staged). Backed by some compelling guest stars, intelligent reviews of the hottest games, and competition hosted by people who actually knew how to host, Gamesmaster showed no signs of stopping to entertain and educate European gamers and those outside of Europe lucky to get a recording or two...
Two particular series of TV specials caught my special attention this year as well, and were both made by the same production company, eventually expanded into a TV series (one vastly more successful than the other). The first of these I'd like to discuss is "Vanishing Son", which started off as made-for-TV movies. In an era were stars like Chuck Norris were living a renaissance in prime-time action shows, it was rare to see a show that starred an Asian male in a leading role, and Vanishing Son was groundbreaking in that right. Unfortunately, as compelling as the story was, the series failed to meet the expectations of viewer ratings compared to a particular, less realistic action-show...
This show would be called "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys". Adopted by fans as "Kevin Sorbo Hercules", this series also started off as a series of made-for-TV movies, namely "Hercules and the Amazon Women", "Hercules and the Lost Kingdom", "Hercules and the Circle of Fire", "Hercules in the Underworld", and "Hercules and the Maze of the Minotaur". The movies proved so successful in ratings that it would expand to a smash-hit TV series, and the timing couldn't be better, as this series aired a while after the final season of "Star Trek: The Next Generation". This particular incarnation of Hercules was more or less appealing in a 90s kind of way, with camp up the yin-yang.
Basically, Hercules had a family of his own and settled down with them after his many adventures from the TV movies, only to watch them burn to death by his baby mama Hera, whom by Roman mythology is the wife of Zeus, therefore the queen of the Roman gods. Cursing his baby mama, he swore vengeance and eventually walked back to the path of an adventurer with his longtime best friend, Iolaus, where he would butt heads with not only the Roman gods Hera, Zeus, and fan-favorite Ares, but bloodthirsty warlords as well... one of note, Xena, who would eventually prove popular and empowering enough to be in her standalone show, greatly exceeding even Hercules's own popularity and interest. My dad and I had very, very fond memories watching not only the movies, but nearly every episode of the TV series following. We watched them almost religiously while having either dinner or just snacking around.
I also have fond memories of what aired on the Spanish channel around this time as well. I probably didn't realize it right way, but I was actually watching Saint Seiya. By the time I was learning Spanish, I began to comprehend little by little what was going on in the particular sets of episodes I was watching early in the morning. It was near the end of the non-canon Asgard story arc, going into the Poseidon arc. Either way, it was a nice little timekiller, and sure beat watching Barney & Friends. Speaking of Barney, does anybody remember the awesomeness that was the Mac computer sensation Barney Carnage? Dude, that game was the shit. Graphics may have not been the best in the world (you could only expect so much from Mac PCs at the time), but the very concept of clicking and killing Barneys running across the screen was a breath of fresh air from the typical, nonsensical whitewash the TV show offered, albeit educational in all fairness. But seriously, I'm baffled that Barney even caught on as long as it did on PBS, as I was more into Square One TV and Lamb Chop's Play Along (R.I.P. Shari Lewis, bless her soul).
In my third and final chapter of my retrospective, I'll discuss how this year still remains relevant to me in these current times, and what has stood the test of time.
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