Gamesmaster [07/01/92]
Dominik Diamond presents the first episode of TV's first ever video game magazine show.
Launching on Channel 4 in 1992, GamesMaster brought video games to teatime television, with a mixture of challenges, celebrity guests and expert reviews, all corralled by the disembodied head of astronomer Patrick Moore (in character as the titular GamesMaster) and the winking, pun-filled humour of host Dominik Diamond.
The conundrum of how to represent the excitement of playing video games on television has been a decades-long debate (and one ultimately sidestepped by the rise of E-Sports, Twitch livestreams and Let's Play YouTube videos). GamesMaster adopted the tried-and-tested challenge game show format, as young hopefuls played popular games of the day and competed for the coveted Golden Joystick, in front of a spirited studio audience with live commentary from Diamond and a roster of games critics and pundits (including many journalists from the then-booming world of video game magazines, such as Mean Machine's Julian 'Jaz' Rignall).
Moore, a household name thanks to decades as the nation's leading authority on astronomy and host of The Sky at Night, is here cast as an ambivalent outsider figure: a character whose camp, cantankerous quality was no doubt informed by the veteran broadcaster's relative ignorance towards the likes of Sonic the Hedgehog and Simon's Quest.
In this edition, the first episode of the series' initial seven-year run, the GamesMaster format appears almost fully formed, complete with a gothic-industrial, retrofuturistic aesthetic that saw St Paul's Church in London transformed into a chaotic, steampunk rave - a neat approximation of the grungy spirit of the pop cultural moment, and the attitude of video game fandom of the time. Future episodes would see Diamond and co taken to prison, hell, heaven and back as they followed the medium through this surge of popularity across the 1990s.
Challenges in this edition include a coin-collecting race through Nintendo platformer Super Mario Bros. 3, a gunslinging jaunt through the 'full motion video' Western shoot-em-up Mad Dog McCree, and a head-to-head on the football game Manchester United Europe between a young man from Bishop's Stortford and Wimbledon striker John Fashanu.
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That Was the 1990s
Revisit the end of the 20th Century, as we knew it...
The 1990s had a lot to live up to. At the tail end of the 1980s, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, thawing of Cold War tensions, and symbolic fall of the Berlin Wall gave the following decade the charge of a new era – or at least the end of an old one. Political scientist Francis Fukuyama went one further, declaring what he saw to be the definitive victory of liberal democracy to be 'the end of history' itself.
Rather than closing the book on history, though, the 1990s passed the baton between the centuries, seeding themes still relevant today across politics, technology, culture and society at large, from the blanket, up-to-the-minute coverage of the Gulf War, to a growing concern for the environment, to revolutions in science that transformed the food we eat.
In Westminster, almost two decades of Conservative rule gave way to the charismatic optimism of New Labour, which was buoyed by the pop cultural moment of “Cool Britannia” on screen, in galleries, and on the airwaves. Yet, even during this period of puffed-up national pride, the union itself was a topic of debate, with devolution processes underway in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – where the historic Good Friday agreement to put an end to the Troubles was signed.
Elsewhere, the perfect marriage of consumerism and technology continued, as our lives became increasingly digital and connected. The boxy desktop PCs, snail’s-pace dial-up modems and Y2K ‘Millennium bug’ hysteria may now seem quaint, but they pointed towards our current, always-online era. History, as ever, marched on.
46 videos in this collection
1
2
Digital World
3
National Minimum Wage: Journey
4
New Years Eve 2000 on London Underground
5
COI: Welsh Referendum - A Voice For Wales - COI/WOFF465/020
6
Scotland Today Scottish Parliamentary Special
7
Our Friends in the South
8
First Cabinet Meeting
9
Action 2000: Booklet As Hero
10
Y2K Fever!
11
Business of Tomorrow
12
Meat Crazy!
13
Tomorrow's Lunch
14
Birds in Crisis
15
Meridian Tonight (11.8.99)
16
Gamesmaster [07/01/92]
17
Go Wild! [19/12/91]
18
Reeves & Mortimer / Nirvana (Tonight with Jonathon Ross)
19
Moviewatch [17/01/93]
20
Girl Power
21
Future Rail
22
Opening of Waterloo International and Channel Tunnel Inauguration
23
How They Built the Channel Tunnel
24
Tony Blair's Handwritten Pledges
25
Toying with the Future
26
An English Estate
27
The Trouble with Art
28
The Gulf between Us
29
Enter the Dragon
30
Coverage of the Gulf War
31
Review of the Year
32
This Is 5!
33
Schoolgirl's Peace Letter to Tony Blair
34
Platform Referendum Special
35
Relatives of Gulf Servicemen
36
News 25.1.91 8.00 P.M. ITV (Gulf War Report)
37
Channel 5 Test Transmission [12/03/97]
38
COI: Modern Apprenticeships - Chicken & Egg - Revised - COI/DFEE418/040
39
Princess Diana
40
Princess Diana Memorial Coin
41
The Mending of Manchester
42
A Day in Our Lives
43
Sundial
44
The United Kingdom
45
President Clinton and John Major at Downing Street
46