Remembering G4: Part 4: Judgment Day

Despite getting the axe in America, the show still lives on.

Alright, let me take you back to 1995 in Canada. Victor Lucas and Tommy Tallarico start The Electric Playground. It was unlike any show that had come before or since. The show had interviews, news, and what I’m going to focus on in this edition of Remembering G4 is the review portion of Electric Playground titled “Reviews on the Run”. This had Tommy and Vic doing a very Siskel and Ebert style of being in a location and video projected on various objects. Now let’s fast forward to 2002 when G4 launches. It had shows dedicated to action games like Blister, sports with Sweat, and trailers/cinematics in Cinematech. Reviews on the Run would eventually spin off from EP and in the US, G4 showed it from its launch in April of 02 all the way to 2006.

The show had many segments including “Buried Treasure” in which Tommy or Vic would highlight a hidden gem of a game. These varied from handheld, classic, or PC. There was also “Classic Reviews” in which, as the title implies, a review from a previous episode would be shown. Then there was “Versus” in which two games of a similar genre would go head-to-head in a “which is better” route. Perhaps the most anticipated Versus in Judgment Day history was in 2004 when Halo 2 and Half-Life 2 both released and went head to head. You can watch below.

Now here’s the part when I talk about what happened a couple years later…

When G4 was going through its identity crisis in the mid-2000s it didn’t know if it was a gaming channel, a Spike TV ripoff, or both. Judgment Day was cancelled to the dismay of many fans who preferred Judgment Day to X-Play. However, up in Canada, Victor Lucas was just getting started. In 2008, Electric Playground became EP Daily and Reviews on the Run improved as well to cover more than just games. Later on, Reviews on the Run would return to Electric Playground as both shows run on G4 Canada would end. In a piece of complete irony, Electric Playground would be the final gaming show on G4 Canada in 2015 as X-Play and Attack of the Show ended 3 years prior.

Electric Playground would find a new home on the internet as the show is still going strong all these years later. The great thing is that old episodes of Reviews on the Run would find their way to YouTube officially in the form of Victor Lucas releasing episodes on the Electric Playground Network YouTube page which you can find here.

That wraps another edition of Remembering G4. Next time I will be focusing on G4TV.com and how much that show is missed.

Stay classy.