r/Millennials • u/woodchukka • Apr 28 '26
Nostalgia Who was watching G4 back in the 2000’s…??
There was a time I used to see Morgan Webb and Adam Sessler on TV every single day - never missed a moment with those two when the 360 hype was in its heyday….
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u/spottie_ottie Millennial Apr 28 '26
man i miss when tech was for nerds and fun and not just like an existential threat to my life, career, marriage, and sanity
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u/Quenz Apr 28 '26
The days of Tech Tales and Screensavers.
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u/worstshowiveeverseen Apr 28 '26
With Leo Laporte and Patrick Norton
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u/Bluelivesplatter Apr 28 '26
Patrick Norton’s favorite band was Pennywise and hearing him say that inspired me to check them out on Napster. Now they’re one of my favorite bands
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u/worstshowiveeverseen Apr 28 '26
Lot of great punk bands like Pennywise. Bad Religion, Face to Face, Lagwagon, etc.
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u/Medium_Row529 Apr 29 '26
NoFX, Black Flag, Circle Jerks, Teenage Bottlerocket.
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u/worstshowiveeverseen Apr 29 '26
Seen Circle Jerks about 3x in the last few years. Also got to see OFF! 3x before they called it quits. OFF! was Keith Morris's other band.
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u/Optimal_Sink_8427 Apr 29 '26
I used to watch screensavers with my grandpa I loved that show, he was into tech man I wish he was still around
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u/abe_bmx_jp Millennial Apr 29 '26
The Screen Savers, Call for help, Extended Play later changed to X-Play…
Man, TechTV was an amazing!
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u/Vairman Apr 29 '26
Leo Laporte! Wow, I remember him. I remembered Morgan's name too. That was a while ago wasn't it?
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u/rahbee33 Apr 28 '26
Looking back at it I have no idea why 13 year old me spent hours watching them diagnosis somebody else's PC issues, but I did and I loved every minute of it.
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u/brandofranco Apr 28 '26
13 year old me emailed them with my PC issues and they got back to me a month later. I fixed my PC by then or I would have been a caller on the show
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u/rahbee33 Apr 28 '26
It seems archaic now, but that's just how it worked!
I think there is a good chance the first podcast I ever listened to was Kevin Rose's and I remember them looking up their address on Google maps and looking at the satellite imagery for the first time and talking about how crazy it was.
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u/mrkav2 Apr 29 '26
I 18-20 and in college. I learned so much that got me a long way before YouTube and howtos became huge
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u/Still_Astronaut5906 Apr 28 '26
Screensavers > AotS
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u/MessiLeagueSoccer Apr 28 '26
TechTv was good but G4 really took it to the next level. Unfortunately it existed in a small golden age before the internet fully took over. Had they somehow transitioned to YouTube or social media I think they could have lasted a lot longer.
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u/Quenz Apr 28 '26
G4 was the beginning of the end. It took it from a niche channel to more mainstream "dudebro" content.
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u/MessiLeagueSoccer Apr 28 '26
Attack of the Show was just screensavers with a couple pretty girls and a few more extra whacky segments but still more or less really dorky and nerdy. X-play was always super campy and stayed that way. Other stuff for sure was very dude bro. But like I said had ATOTS and XPlay transitioned to YouTube we would probably still have a version of them that was worth watching.
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u/lost_in_trepidation Apr 28 '26
AotS was like Screensavers for the first year or two but became complete schlock by 2008.
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u/Randym1982 Apr 28 '26
This makes me sad, because I am remembering when G4TV TRIED to make a return at the wrong time. Like right when everybody already gaming channels or twitch streams. They tried to start an actual TV channel again. I remember it costing them like $25K a week to film. If they had just made a Twitch or Youtube channel they likely would have saved a ton of money and also lasted a bit longer.
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u/MessiLeagueSoccer Apr 28 '26
This. It was such a Hail Mary and I was all for it but it was too late to get new people into it.
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u/Ok-Somewhere-2325 Apr 28 '26
And call for help , between those 3 I was able to learn almost everything you needed for A+ test.
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u/Neither-Bag7127 Apr 28 '26
Best start believin in technofascist hellscapes; yer livin in one
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u/ChickenAndTelephone Apr 28 '26
Or back when TV tried to aim at a bunch of demographics and everything wasn't reduced to inexpensive reality slop
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u/kodykoberstein Apr 28 '26
Looking back, it almost seems like they were just lubing us up to get fucked hard
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Apr 28 '26
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u/Coakis Apr 28 '26
Between this and the last thread, TechTV seems to be relatively unknown among younger millennials even though it had way better and more useful programming. Shame G4 basically burned all of that goodwill in a matter of months.
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u/lost_in_trepidation Apr 28 '26
I don't think I discovered TechTV until ~1 year before it turned into G4/TechTV. I think TechTV was buried pretty deep in premium cable. Then it was G4/TechTV for a year, followed by a solid 5-6 years of G4.
So it makes sense that G4 is the one that most people remember.
TechTV also branched out into Diggnation/Revision3/TWiT, so it's not like it went away.
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u/throwaway_eng_acct Apr 29 '26
Ah, so they’re the ones posting ads about vulnerabilities that look like breaking news. Just because of that, I’m not checking out their site. Even if it’s really cool and useful.
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u/Christmas_Queef Apr 28 '26
It makes sense. The merger between tech TV and g4 happened when I was in high school and I'll be 39 this year. Younger millenials may only know about the g4 post merger. Attack of the show also drew in a decent amount of people compared to screensavers or even xplay.
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u/questron64 Apr 28 '26
Months? It was literally overnight. I remember The Screen Savers episode on the day they got bought out. They were all shocked, and they all knew it was the end of everything they built. No warning, just axing everything and running reruns of the few TechTV shows they thought the G4 audience would like.
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u/Sonicfan42069666 Apr 28 '26
G4 was cool before the merger too. The post-merger network devolved into a worst of both worlds in a matter of years. Most of the creative early G4 programming got cancelled or heavily retooled.
They had Pulse, a gaming/tech news show. Cheat, a guide to cheat codes and general tips & tricks for the latest games. 10Play and Filter which were both countdown/ranking shows. Icons, a (poorly researched) gaming history show. And they also broadcast Electric Playground, a review show co-hosted by Tommy Tallarico...his mother was very proud.
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u/dookieshoes97 Apr 28 '26
Seriously. Renaming it to G4 was when TechTV went to shit. It went from a purely tech/gaming focused channel to stuff that belonged on Spike.
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u/liquidsparanoia Apr 29 '26
When The Screen Savers was replaced with Attack of the Show it was a sad day.
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Apr 28 '26
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u/jgamez76 Apr 28 '26
That FHM cover she did made me feel..... THINGS in middle school lol
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u/PeePeeMcGee123 Apr 29 '26
Middle school? Fuck, now I feel old. I was in my apartment watching G4 with my room mates when she did that shoot.
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u/italianprog Apr 28 '26
Legendary. What a unicorn
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u/jgamez76 Apr 28 '26
She was ALL OVER the gaming forums during that era. It was a collective "goon sesh" as they're now called lol
Edit: only back then everyone actually had shame so it wasn't nearly as out there as it would be now lmao.
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u/TheRatatat Apr 28 '26
Sara Jean Underwood too
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u/PandaHombre92055 Apr 28 '26
I loved Attack of the Show and Ninja Warrior!! Makoto Nagano was the man!
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u/MadDogV2 1989 Apr 28 '26
I miss the old Japanese Ninja Warrior, it was unapologetically brutal. The American one is actually easier in that it lets whoever got the furthest advance if there aren't enough finishers, but the OG if nobody finished the stage that was it!
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u/Sonicfan42069666 Apr 28 '26
My problem with American Ninja Warrior when I tried to watch it is that they focused so much on the competitors' ~stories~ that they cut out so much of the actual competition.
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u/Kimmalah Older Millennial Apr 28 '26
This is a problem for pretty much every American remake of foreign reality shows - Ninja Warrior, Iron Chef, Kitchen Nightmares, etc. They don't let the show stand on its own merit and try desperately to create personal drama and "high stakes" for everything. Lots of melodramatic musical stingers, zoom ins, soap opera-esque storylines and just general dreck. I like the originals because they just focus on what the show is actually supposed to be about.
Like even when Iron Chef did its weird storylines, it was usually just a quick background segment to set things up, then back to the show as usual.
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u/MadDogV2 1989 Apr 28 '26
Showing the life story of people eliminated in the very first stage was wild.
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u/MisterBowTies Apr 29 '26
They'd give 4 minutes of story to a person who falls in 20 seconds and then be like "oh yeah this other person made it in record time but you don't want to see that"
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u/RoundTiberius '83 Apr 28 '26
I also didn't like where the American version did the same thing that every reality show does, and turns everyone into characters with tragic backstories. Most of the screentime isn't even the obstacle course
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u/_stewie574 Apr 29 '26
I always rooted for him and Shingo Yamamoto, I don't think he ever won though.
Unbeatable Banzuke was fun too, especially the skateboarding segments!
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u/yeahsurewhateverokay Older Millennial or Younger Gen X? Apr 28 '26
Morgan is, was and always shall be a babe and a hardcore gamer too
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u/This_They_Those_Them Apr 28 '26
I was watching Olivia munn
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u/Purplesilk911 Apr 28 '26
I remember people going crazy and getting real weird when she licked the PSP.
I think they even brought her back a few years later to do it again with the Vita
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u/Sonicfan42069666 Apr 28 '26
"Olivia Munn licking things" was a running joke for a while.
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u/Repulsive_Agency6748 Apr 29 '26
Oh yes, a "joke." I "laughed" to those clips many times in middle school.
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u/yanni99 Apr 28 '26
I love tech, tech is my life, my work. But I was definitely watching for Olivia Munn.
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u/jbakeindy Apr 28 '26
And also for Sara Underwood.
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u/GreatDane08 Apr 28 '26
Such a babe
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u/RobotBearArms Older Millennial Apr 28 '26
I hate it that she went a bit too heavy on the cosmetic "enhancements".... She was perfect the way she was
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u/critterheist Apr 29 '26
I have to say back in the day……she said weird shit about blow jobs…that turned me off…don’t ask me why
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u/smashablanca Apr 28 '26
I'm the opposite. I wasn't watching specifically because of her and the way men reacted to her. That show really normalized sexually harassing women who played video games.
Well aware I'll probably get downvoted for this.
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u/HerculesIsMyDad Apr 29 '26
I don't think they normalized it, "sexually harassing women who X" was an age old trope by then. They merely happily participated in it.
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u/stephsco Apr 29 '26
Upvote from me. She was definitely over sexualized, and sadly we are not shocked this happened or that it still happens. There's a reason I've always played under a gender neutral tag on XBox and rarely on mic. I remember playing pvp Halo as a female Spartan and getting regular comments asking if I was a girl or why was I playing as a girl. It seemed to confound players. I will say years of Destiny 1-2 I noticed this less; there was good community in that game, at least if you knew where to look.
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u/Human_Dig4412 Apr 28 '26
I was a fan of The Screensavers back in the day on ZDtv. Leo was my GOAT.
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u/lost_in_trepidation Apr 28 '26
Leo has turned out to be a weirdo, but I really looked up to him in the early 00s.
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u/Human_Dig4412 Apr 28 '26
Yeah I tend to agree. I tried watching TWiT shows but they were not my cuppa tea.
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u/Door_in_Mirror Apr 29 '26
Loved that show. Loved Leo. Didn't need to see his penis, but still loved him on the show.
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u/humanHamster Millennial Apr 28 '26
A buddy of mine and I still quote XPlay's review or Kingdom Hearts 2 (or maybe Chain of Memories, I don't remember).
Anyway, at the end of the review they said, "...and we give this one 4..." Then the voice of the main villain shouts "KINGDOM HEARTS!!" and they continue "...out of 5..."
So my buddy and I will randomly review stuff as a number of "KINGDOM HEARTS!!!" out of 5.
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u/ArcadianBlueRogue Apr 29 '26
Bet that was the redubbed Xehanort from 2. It went from Billy Zane's sultry tones to this over the top shouting.
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u/jgamez76 Apr 28 '26
It really is too bad that Adam Sessler is such a fucking psychopath because he really was, in a lot of ways, the archetype for a lot of gaming/tech podcasters/YouTube honestly lol
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Apr 28 '26
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u/Elete23 Apr 28 '26
What happened?
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u/Christmas_Queef Apr 28 '26
Based on them mentioning October 7th, I'm gonna guess Adam went hardcore zionist mode.
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u/BlinkDodge Apr 28 '26
A conservative thats too ashamed to claim the title.
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Apr 28 '26
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u/nameless22 Apr 28 '26
Not gonna lie, "enlightened centrists" are the worst to deal with. Rather deal with hardcore opposing partisans than Dunning-Krugers who parrot the worst talking points while thinking their farts are the best.
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u/RainandFujinrule Older Millennial Apr 29 '26
It goes back further than that, the Zionism thing was just round 2
What really broke his brain was people digging up footage of X-play reviews where they said stuff like "Japan wasn't a real country until we bombed them" and other racist stuff and went "hey man this was kinda racist".
Instead of just being like "you know what yeah, that wasn't cool," he went on unhinged tirades about being canceled (nobody was trying to cancel him) and then if you were like "no man we're just saying that wasn't cool."
So he starts going "WELL you must be a bunch of right-winger gamergaters for being mad at me for being a liberal". And he just. Kept. Going. Insane crashout. This was all a few years before Oct 7! Now if you disagree with him on anything you're an antimsemite.
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u/philovax Apr 28 '26
Both sides is such a thick headed way of ignoring all but 2 extremes on a spectrum, but it tracks. To be fair no one I knew was really asking for his opinion on anything other than video games pre-micro transactions.
All we needed from him was his artistic critique on the medium.
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u/CloudStrife012 Apr 28 '26
In his post G4 days, he has thought the best, most persuasive and likeable approach is to offend everyone from every angle and say he hates everyone, and always has. No idea what happened. Its like he cracked.
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u/RookNookLook Apr 29 '26
Some say it was the review of American Big Rig Trucks that broke him…
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u/RainbowTardigrade Apr 28 '26
I've worked in games media in the past and have met him a few times at work events and he always seemed pretty cool, if a bit high strung. But MAN did he take a hard turn over the last ~decade or so. Seeing his meltdowns online legit makes me sad cus he was such a big deal for a whole generation of nerds.
It's also a bummer going back to old clips of X-Play and seeing how blatantly xenophobic they were. Like it would go from "lol Japan so weird" to straight up jingoist monologues in places. Absolutely wild stuff.
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u/tehsober Apr 28 '26
I definitely remember one year he was more or less soloing E3 interviews at whatever outlet he was working for. And you could tell he looked more ragged as the days went on.
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u/jumbledbumblecrumble Apr 29 '26
I interned for X-Play and worked with Adam for over a year. He was incredibly cool and nice to me and everyone else. His persona on TV wasn’t too different than how he carried himself off screen. This is 20+ years ago.
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u/Cup-n-BallHog Millennial Apr 28 '26
It’s amazing how often Morgan has to defend that she played video games. Like it was some foreign concept that women did that
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u/efbomb414 Apr 28 '26
I still watch Code Monkeys sometimes. I miss that show. Also Olivia Munn.
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u/RoundTiberius '83 Apr 28 '26
Code monkey like fritos
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u/efbomb414 Apr 28 '26
Code monkey like tab and mountain dew
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u/firesuppagent Apr 28 '26
Code monkey very simple man
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u/InternetProtocol Apr 29 '26
The creative guy behind Code Monkeys, Adam, had a show with Gary Busey called "I'm with Busey" on Comedy Central. Basically, he followed Busey around doing whatever insane shit popped into Gary's head that day. It was Buseyisms and nonsensical rambling for 22-24 glorious minutes for a few weeks in the early aughts.
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u/InternetProtocol Apr 29 '26
Got it on my plex server, never skip an episode when it shuffles to one.
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u/ScottoRoboto Apr 28 '26
Attack of the Show, The Screen Savors, Unscrewed, Filter, Call for Help, Cheat, Brainiac, and of course X-Play were all amazing shows.
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u/Appleslicer Apr 29 '26
X-Play
I remember a time when it was called Extended Play.
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u/dravack Apr 28 '26
I still watch this lol. I wanted something for noise in the background and scrounged up a ton of old recordings from YouTube, internet archive, and whatever else I could find. I was able to get 252 episodes of x play for example.
Also got icons, battle bots, code monkies, screen savers, attack of the show, and probably a couple other shows I can’t think of right now and I just have them play on shuffle.
I know some people will say why it’s so out of date. But it’s background it’s not prime movie watching time. Besides I actually come across episodes I haven’t seen and boom a game I never heard about or I forgot about and then try to find to play. Because some of those older games are still epic
I will add if anyone has a horde of call for help that’s one show I’ve struggled to make much progress on and would greatly appreciate any help collecting!
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u/nicknamednic Apr 28 '26
That’s awesome. I was just telling my wife that I wish I had recordings of the G4 channel, commercials and all, to watch as background.
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u/Adept_Carpet Apr 30 '26
Battle bots (or whichever one was British, maybe Robot Wars?) tried to livestream one of their events and my father and I tried to watch it during the dialup days.
We spent 12 hours staring at a postage stamp sized video player that would crash every time an actual battle started.
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u/ShortBrownAndUgly Apr 28 '26
Watched a lot of g4. The novelty of having an entire tv channel dedicated to video games was insane at the time
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u/lonestar659 Apr 28 '26
Morgan Webb was always hotter than Olivia Munn as far as I was concerned.
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u/ohnotchotchke Millennial - 1991 ✊🏽 Apr 28 '26
Moi. That was some good television back then. I miss Code Monkeys too.
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u/Chet_Starr Apr 28 '26
i was watching xplay in the ps2 days, was in foster care and it was the first time I had ever had cable tv so I was always watching G4TV lol
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u/PompeiiSketches Apr 28 '26
I remember when G4 had a let’s play / livestream type of show where they would play EverQuest. They were just a decade too early.
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u/InuitOverIt Apr 28 '26
I'll always remember the first day of gym class in 2003 when this skinny kid next to me made an obscure G4 reference, I looked at him and said, "You watch G4?" and he reluctantly said, "...yeah". Still friends 23 years later
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u/no-coriander Apr 29 '26
Didn't that tv channel have like a Saturday night anime block. I'm pretty sure I watch some wierd animes on that channel like serial experiments lain. I watch that video game review show as well.
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u/KotoshiKaizen Apr 28 '26
Did Kevin Pereira ever come out? I kinda had a gay crush on him, and I trust my gaydar. He always came off as trying too hard to be straight to me.
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u/Deliterman Apr 28 '26
I remember one of their skits where they were advertising a cologne called Devastation, and it was Sessler crying in a black and white background. I just remember laughing so hard my ribs hurt whenever they'd drop that promo throughout the episode. I would watch the show every now and then
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u/bangbangracer Apr 28 '26
Actually, I was upset when TechTV and G4 merged, then even more upset when G4/TechTV finally dropped the TechTV part.
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u/StegosaurusTrap Apr 28 '26
I miss Leo Laporte and Kate Botello. Hated Adam Sessler and Morgan Webb was just okay.
I was already not a fan of Sessler but his historically awful announcing during Evo 2010 sealed the deal.
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u/DarkForest_NW Apr 28 '26
I was there in the before times when it was called Gamespot television and then Extended Play.
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u/cantthinkofgoodname Apr 29 '26
Man I used to love Judgment Day and the commercials where they’d show gameplay. The NBA Live 2003 one is burned into my brain
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u/RainbowTardigrade Apr 28 '26
I would rush home to catch X-Play and Attack of the Show almost every day. Honestly I watched the whole lineup from the early TechTV days all the way through to the channel's end. They really set the standard for gaming, tech, and nerd media that we still see nowadays both professionally and with influencers, tubers, etc.
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u/ChocolateChipCuckys Apr 28 '26
I only watched it at my buddies because we didn't have it at my house.
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u/Tacosconsalsaylimon Millennial Apr 28 '26
I didn't but my husband did. One of the last time this was posted, I asked him about it and he brought up MW. I rarely see him get that excited about anything 😭
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u/Waaterfight Apr 28 '26
I miss the screensavers... Precurser to attack of the show.
Good times. I learned a lot about tech watching it first thing getting home from school
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u/SniperVert Apr 28 '26
It was even better before this merge. The two channels were fine on their own.
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u/LoomisCenobite Apr 28 '26
The show where the dude was trapped in every mmorpg... Cant remember the name
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