Oh, television, what cultural bandwagon won’t you try to jump on?

Back in the late 1970s and throughout the ’80s and ’90s, the TV industry scrambled for the best way to draft off the heat generated by a new “fad” that had all the cool kids talking: video games. What show creators eventually came up with, however, wasn’t always so hot, but it was always fascinating—if not actually entertaining—to watch.

Make no mistake: The most absurd and outlandish examples didn’t come from a video game character simply starring in his/her/its own series. Yes, there’s a certain awfulness to be found in episodes of Pac-Man, Q*Bert, Battletoads, Double Dragon and The Super Mario Bros. Super Show. But it’s the run-of-the-mill awfulness typical to bad television and not the misguided, “Holy Shigeru Miyamoto, my eyes can’t unsee this!” abominations of translating the experience of one successful medium into another slightly related medium. That was reserved for the unholy marriage between the game show and the video game.

Yes, Virginia, there was a Q*bert cartoon. Now go to sleep. (Ruby-Spears Productions)

We check out seven TV game shows that tried to give viewers that same feeling they had playing video games without actually, y’know, playing the games (in most cases).

1. The Magnificent Marble Machine

If it’s one thing TV game shows have mastered, it’s creating spectacular, oversize props of otherwise mundane objects. Card Sharks‘ giant playing cards, High Rollers‘ giant dice and The Joker’s Wild‘s giant slot machine are all classic examples of this craft.

The Magnificent Marble Machine, which aired from 1975-1976 on NBC, took it to the next level with its larger-than-life pinball machine. Contestants would be teamed up with celebrity guests and answer questions in order to make it to the bonus level, where they were able to win prizes by playing on the biggest, honkin’ pinball machine they’d ever seen.

What prizes could they win? How about a brand-new Opel Manta. We think it might’ve been a car.

An Opel Manta spotted in the wild. (Rudolf Stricker/Creative Commons/Wikipedia)

Far from a success, The Magnificent Marble Machine always will be remembered for its giant, functional pinball apparatus. And you can’t underestimate the power of a huge, gaudy, TV game show prop, as Reddit user manfly pointed out in a post about the series in the Pinball community:

2. TV Powww

TV Powww producer Marvin Kempner’s idea for this franchised interstitial program was fairly promising: Make the show interactive for the viewer. But executing that concept with late ’70s and early ’80s technology would be a challenge.

What Kempner came up with was using a home video game system (first the Fairchild Channel F, then Mattel’s Intellivision) that was jury-rigged with voice activation. That allowed viewers to call in and play games live (or live to tape) by shouting “POW!” into the phone receiver to make the action happen. The gameplay then was packaged Dialing for Dollars-style as part of an existing local TV show or done during the host sections of afternoon programming on syndicated networks.

Beginning in 1978 in Los Angeles, the show idea spread to 79 stations across the country (and the world in some foreign markets) over its run, eventually petering out by the mid-’80s.

Still want to know more about TV Powww? Check out this nicely comprehensive YouTube video by T.V. Games.

3. Starcade

What’s more fun than playing video games? How about watching someone else play video games?

Actually, that’s not such a ridiculous idea nowadays, given gameplay complexity and the visual richness of modern games. But in the 1980s, when many video games revolved around some version of attack, dodge, advance, attack, the notion that you’d want to look over your buddy’s shoulder while he cleared the next screen of Gorf sounded pretty boring.

Still, that was the conceit for Starcade, a syndicated show that started out on Atlanta Superstation WTBS (now cable network TBS) in 1982 and ran until 1984. The series’ draw, however, was that contestants played top-shelf arcade games, like Centipede and Zaxxon. Special episodes also featured the cell-animated, laserdisc game Dragon’s Lair and the Star Wars arcade game.

“Dragon’s Lair” was animated by Don Bluth, the former Disney animator behind “An American Tail.” (Cinematronics)

Despite its relatively short life, Starcade has gained a bit of cult status, if only as a historical curiosity. The show has a website by its creators that features all 133 episodes (minus the “lost” 35th episode), and G4 aired reruns in the early ’00s.

4. The Video Game

The uninspired title should’ve been a tipoff to the syndicated show’s uninspired premise, which took liberally from Starcade.

To be fair, The Video Game, which debuted on the heels of Starcade‘s cancellation and ran from 1984-85, did add a twist. Contestants not only played arcade games, they also competed in video game-inspired physical challenges. In fact, this concept would later be refined for another video game TV show in the early 1990s.

5. Video Power

Initially a vehicle to showcase cartoons based on Acclaim video game titles in 1990, this syndicated series eventually morphed into a game show the following year.

Like its predecessors, Video Power was built around contestants answering questions and playing video games. But this series also was the first to take advantage of the home video game market and the then-growing popularity of the Nintendo and Sega systems, incorporating such hit titles as Super Mario Bros. 3, Sonic the Hedgehog and MegaMan.

Given that the show ended in 1992, it’s safe to say Video Power wasn’t too successful latching on to that popularity. Or maybe the series needed better question fact-checkers, as user Rozo-D pointed out in the Game Collecting community:

Watch the video, though, and you’ll be hard pressed to find an artifact that doesn’t scream early 1990s more with its fashion, set design, and theme song. “Say Video Power! That’s right. Word. VID-EEE-OH POW-ER!”

6. Nick Arcade

Similar in format to The Video Game, Nick Arcade primarily took Nickelodeon’s highly successful Double Dare model and gave it a video game theme. Contestants played a series of custom video games in order to advance to the prize round, The Video Zone.

In The Video Zone, cameras and monitors were used to put players “in” the video game, having them physically race through different stages before time ran out. Viewers would watch as the players ran and maneuvered around obstacles in front of a digitally created, video game backdrop.

Nick Arcade ran a little less than a year in 1992, but the cable network continued to air reruns of the 84 episodes through 1997.

7. Arena

This early ’00s G4 series took the LAN party concept and televised it. The show, which aired from 2002-04, pitted teams against one another on the video game battlefield—in this case, titles such as Halo and Call of Duty—as they advanced through an entire season to become the Ultimate Arena Champions.

Originally hosted by Travis Oates and Wil Wheaton (who left after a fallout with the producer), the show eventually became the TV launching pad for Kevin Pereira, who would go on to host G4’s popular Attack of the Show, with future Psylocke and Aaron Rodgers swordfighting trainer Olivia Munn.