Page 6 - Old School Gamer Magazine Issue #38 FREE Edition

THE PAST
In the early 1980s and later in the decade I can remember watching STARCADE! on SuperStation
WTBS more than a couple of times. STARCADE! was all about video games, knowing trivia about them, and being good at playing them. I found it to be a cool game show that I could relate to and have fun watching because it was about something I enjoyed. Since then, it has run in syndication in other places, including the geeky network G4 in the early 2000s (G4 was owned by Comcast and later became a part of NBC.).
On most game shows, the content and the host make the difference. STARCADE! had different hosts, including the legendary Alex Trebek for one of its pilots (he
ALEX TREBEK
STARCADE! TV FOR GAMERS
By Ryan Burger
been in business in San Francisco for about four years producing corporate training and marketing videos, broadcast commercials, and writing scripts for some broadcast TV shows. Many of the videos the JM Production company (Mavis and her husband, James) produced were computer-related, explaining what they did and how. One of the commercials we produced featured the Atari 2600.
About that time, we took a few weeks off and went to a beach in the Caribbean. It was there that it all came together - our proximity to the people who were driving the gaming revolution, the success of Nolan Bushnell’s Atari, and the overall frenzy developing over computers in the home and video games. It was there... on a beach in the Caribbean... between Pina
MARK RICHARDS
Colas... that STARCADE! was born.” They got back from the vacation
and started working on this new show concept. Mavis further told us about how the arcade and video game manufacturers for the game were on from Day 1 and how they worked directly with them. “We
told them when we were going
to be in production, (and) the manufacturers would deliver games to Studio 2 practically every day. We NEVER had to make a follow-up call.”
They had the host and the games; now it’s time to make it fun. “We set a pretty awesome task for ourselves ... 'create an interesting show in which the viewers could vicariously participate with a subject that was virtually impossible to tape.' The first STARCADE! Pilot was taped over the Labor Day weekend in
1981 in San Francisco, and it wasn't easy.” They taped it at the local
TV station KRON in San Francisco and had to deal with the massive studio to set up all the games, the contestants, and more.
GEOFF EDWARDS
Mavis told us more: “We had to devise a way to shoot the game screen without interfering with the player and without getting the game scan lines, capture the score when the time limit ran out (keeping in mind that the game would probably be adding to the score), and deal with the
would later join Jeopardy, but STARCADE! had him first). He was followed by Mark Richards (1982– 1983) and Geoff Edwards (1983– 1984). The contestants were young and often were family teams.
Mavis Arthur-Caruso told us, “In 1980, JM Production Company had
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