This is a blog post, where VGC writers post irreverent and (occasionally) entertaining coverage of video game culture.
Cards on the table: there are lot of people, myself included, who didn’t think it was possible to bring back GamesMaster.
Ever since I discovered that Channel 4 was wooing advertisers back in February for the show’s potential return, I was adamant that it was a bad move.
The original show was the perfect storm – a charismatic presenter, a brilliantly and deliberately ‘miscast’ serious TV host as the titular GamesMaster, a bunch of entertaining challenges – all during an era when video games received little to no mainstream media coverage.
GamesMaster was exactly what I needed as a kid. When it first aired in January 1992 I was 9 years old and already obsessed with video games, and being able to watch a show about it on TV with my dad (who probably enjoyed it for the innuendo I missed at that age) was the perfect affirmation that my hobby was legit.
That was 1992, though. It’s now nearly three decades later, and you can’t move for video game media. You only need to glance in the direction of YouTube or Twitch and you’ll get all the games content you could ever hope for.
What’s more, video games have very much entered mainstream acceptance. Take press coverage, for example: the likes of the BBC and the Guardian, who would previously have only touched video games if it was related to some sort of moral panic, now regularly cover the medium.
So with all that in mind, how could a new GamesMaster possibly work? And, more to the point, now that video games are all over the place, who really needs it?
That was my stance until Sunday night, when the first episode of the new reboot premiered on the E4 YouTube channel. Then it all changed. You can watch that episode here:
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The secret to the new show’s success is that it replicates so much of what made the original so well-loved, especially those three key elements mentioned above.
First, the charismatic presenter. I will go to my grave saying that Dominik Diamond is Mr GamesMaster, and that nobody else could ever hope to fit into his gloriously unfashionable red suit, but in Rab Florence, Channel 4 absolutely nailed the casting.
Florence has been presenting video game content for more than a decade and a half. Before YouTube even …….