Remembering G4 Part 3: Cinematech (FKA: C+Tech)

Being the winner… or the survivor doesn’t always mean everything is alright.

Ah, where oh where to begin. Well, as the header says, this (Cinematech) was the longest lasting of the 13 G4 Originals from mid 2002 to around 2007/2008. Which isn’t really saying much due to the length of time it reigned but in a way affected people. Also I honestly did not plan to have the first three editions be A, B, and C. It was simply what came first to my mind.

Cinematech was a show that had no voice overs, no hosts, nothing. It was a precursor to a lot of the content that is now popular on YouTube and was essentially a random list of different video games and for each random video game on the list there was either gameplay, a trailer, some cutscenes or something in-between. It was truly cinematic. It could just be the fact I like music scores rather than lyrical music but I was in love with the show the first time I saw it and even deeper during G4 Rewind back in 2008.

I remember waking up and purposely missing school back in the beginning of June 2008 and that every single day would be a big ol’ sandwich of Cinematech, ______, and then X-Play. That first day would be Cinematech, G4TV(dot)com, and then X-Play. Like Blister, there would be special episodes dedicated to retro games and there was even a collaboration between G4 and GameSpot back in 2005 and it was the various personalities such as Greg Kasavin, Ryan MacDonald and Ryan Davis (his other car is a Bombcast) which was dedicated to arguably the greatest year in Video Games: 1998. They would show gameplay followed by a block of text, do a cutaway to a GameSpot personality giving some background information, or in the case of Ocarina of Time would do a then & now from Ocarina to Twilight Princess.

Only for archival will I be bringing about the dark side of Cinematech which was Cinematech: Nocturnal Emissions which, as I mentioned was the dark side of Cinematech. This spin-off mainly focused on violent, foreign, and other Mature rated video game titles. It only ran for a couple of years and, surprisingly when combined with the original Cinematech, the two shows totaled for over 400 episodes.

Back in 2013-2015 when I was writing at VGU I used to do a podcast called “The Dual Shock Show” which was a PlayStation-centric podcast back when I had lost faith in Microsoft and had most of my Xbox 360 game collection ravaged by Hurricane Sandy to the point where I was freaking out due to the loss of all I had accumulated and also some undiagnosed PTSD from that storm. Whenever I would bring up anything G4 related on the show my co-host would mention that he didn’t get to play that many video games in his youth and Cinematech was kind of a way he could peer into the looking glass and see what was inside.

Cinematech would be cancelled in 2007 with reruns filling any airtime before the shows return in the form of earlier episodes from the good old days. After the G4 Rewind experiment was deemed a failure, despite the praise from everyone on the G4 message boards, a mere husk of it would remain as a facade for X-Play reruns. Cinematech, your watch has ended and I thank you for the life you led.