lastcontinue | Introduction to GameCenter CX: Foundations (Reply)

In the welcome post for my blog, I've mentioned that GameCenter CX is a TV show "which features a comedian struggling to complete older games, classic or otherwise, mostly dating from the Famicom/NES to the PlayStation era". In practice, that remark doesn't actually cover the evolution of the show from its very first season in November 2003 to the seasons following it. But how did the show evolve, you might ask? Well, I might as well tell you now (and hope I don't accidentally plagiarize from Crunk Games while I'm at it)...

The first episode of GameCenter CX aired on November 4, 2003, on Fuji TV TWO, one of Fuji TV's satellite channels. In this inaugural episode, the comedian-host, Arino Shinya, visited Taito Corporation in order to do a profile on the company. Throughout the episode, Arino was dressed in a mint-green worker's uniform, not unlike a worker at a game manufacturing plant; in fact, he even had a job title of "Manager" to match his salaryman persona--a persona which has persisted as of today, modulo a job promotion to his current title of Section Chief. The episode consisted of:

a presentation of Taito's classic titles;
an interview with Nishikado Tomohiro, the creator of Space Invaders; and
an attempt at beating Takeshi's Challenge (たけしの挑戦状, Takeshi no Chosenjo), a game supervised by Beat Takeshi (better known in the West as the famous film director Kitano Takeshi) notorious for its impossible difficulty and confusing goals.

The remaining episodes from the first season, which lasted from November 4, 2003 to May 30, 2004, all followed a similar formula to the first episode--with each episode featuring a visit to a major Japanese video game company to interview various game developers. The following were, in order of importance, the main segments of episodes in the first season:

"I'd like to meet this person" (この人に会いたい, Kono Hito ni Aitai)--in which Arino interviewed game developers working at the featured video game company; and
"Arino's Challenge" (有野の挑戦, Arino no Chosen)--in which Arino was given a task to complete in a particular game developed by the featured video game company. The challenge would either involve finishing the entire game, or it would be a smaller-scale task such as defeating the boss of a particular stage or getting a specific high score. While the majority of the games that were featured are retro games, two in particular--Steel Battalion for Xbox and Angelique Trois for PlayStation 2--were on then current-gen platforms and are still, according to my definition, too new to be considered retro.

Starting in the second season, however, the production staff of GameCenter CX discovered that it was more challenging (pun intended?) than expected to dedicate each episode for video game companies profiles--given that the original developers of the game franchises being featured may not always remain at the companies being profiled, it became difficult to sort out the rights associated with the game franchises that the production staff would like featured. Moreover, the "Arino's Challenge" segment had always been popular among viewers. As a result, the challenge segment became the main focus of GameCenter CX, with the goal revised to finishing the entire game being challenged and showing the audience the ending (or part thereof)--and this focus remains unchanged to this day. The creator interviews were shortened for the second season, and were scrapped from subsequent seasons.

Tomorrow, I'll talk about the supporting segments in GameCenter CX. Looks like I'll have some fun with those...

(And if you're wondering what the "CX" in the show title stands for--it is derived from Fuji TV's callsign, JOCX-TV.)