In the early nineties there was a children's program on British television called Bad Influence. It was about video games, and was presented by 90s CITV superstar Andy Crane, who I now presume to be long-dead, and also the not indaequate bosom of Violet Berlin, whom I caught presenting some cheap video game show on cable TV a few years ago, bosom intact. Even watching now I am unable to discern whether Andy and Violet ever actually played or understood video games to any serious extent. I think Andy was probably just out to impress his kids-- he has that smack of desperation to him-- but maybe Violet was the real deal, I don't know. She at least has an open-minded haircut.
For some members of the forum, the show needs no introduction, of course. I'm sorry for wasting your time, J-Man. But this post will not have been in vain, because guess what? There's hours of the damn thing up on Youtube. (It's interesting, isn't it, the way that the criminals of our past are being punished by the modern age. You could probably say something stupid on TV with confidence in 1992, safe in the assumption that the review of Sonic 2 in which you said of one level "it's called the Casino Night I think it's set in Las Vegas" would perish in the archives of television studios just as it did in your classmates' minds-- unsuspecting of the digital revolution that awaited just beyond the turn of the century that would see your broadcasted blunders preserved forever online, ripe for the mocking. And those fifteen years haven't done you any favours, kid.)
So I was making my way through the first series-- and I highly recommend it, by the way-- when something curious happened. At the beginning of Episode 4, where that critical review of Sonic 2 shows up, Violet Berlin holds up a piece of paper and says "this is a copy of the first ever rough sketch of Sonic."
Violet's bosom then explains, suspiciously, that the picture was given to her by "Mr Kunari, his creator, when I was in Japan recently." Mr Kunari? Sonic's creator? Who was this Mr Kunari? A fabrication? An imposter? Miyamoto playing a joke? We may never know, unless you guys know something I don't, which is quite possible. It's not like I've been paying attention recently.
Anyway, that isn't even the highlight of the episode. Further on Andy Crane visits a special school and mocks some disabled children, tormenting them with cruel virtual reality games that primitively mimic a world they cannot possibly experience and also look excrutiatingly boring to play, and later thinly masking his terror as a disabled child enthusiastically identifies a car sign. There's also a good bit where Violet points to a computer monitor and explains that "this flat screen is a window on a virtual world," adding mysteriously, "this world was designed for the police." And those of you who aren't J-Man might be amused by a special report from the excitingly-named Z Wright, who provided British children a dizzying look into the video game scene of America-- a land, it seemed to me as a child, where everything was bigger, better, and had more people called Z in it. (Z mentions, tantalisingly, that a cartoon based on Sonic is rumoured.)
You can never go back.
Edit: oh yeah, here's the link.
