By Todd Russell
The 80s were cool in a number of ways, our game shows even had video games as contests like this one called Starcade “TV’s first video arcade gameshow” broadcast 4/27/1985 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkmJv9H1BD4)
One of several benefits of Starcade was familiarizing gamers with different games. In the episode above, I only recognized one of the five games (Elevator Action, one we have score chased already at PGM) they were competing on and became interested in Change Lanes (Taito) and looked it up: Change Lanes – Videogame by Taito | Museum of the Game. The grand prize for the winner I recognized, Super Zaxxon. That’s a fun game where you pepper this snake boss at the end. I always like the view of Zaxxon games.
Back to Change Lanes, similar controls of Sprint, with the steering wheel. Got to check this one out. Taito published so many games back in the day.
According to Wikipedia, Starcade (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starcade) had 123 episodes with 4 pilots:
“Starcade was produced by the JM Production Company to air on WTBS and later syndication by Turner Program Services (TPS). Starcade was the first video arcade game show and set the blueprint for similar game shows like Video Power, Nick arcade and Arena. The show was used to sponsor and showcase brand new coin-operated machines of the golden age of arcade video games.”
Another neat thing about YouTube is finding/watching/exploring older, sometimes obscure TV shows and there are many episodes of Starcade available, see this search to find more: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=starcade+tv+show
I need to look up Video Power, Nick Arcade and Arena as well, because drawing a blank on those, too.
Have you seen Starcade before? What do you think? Wish we had game shows like this on in 2025? Apparently, there have been numerous attempts to reboot Starcade, including one by Jirard the Completionist via G4 (see: Jirard The Completionist Character Removed from Sea of Stars game over Charity Controversy).