When I was a kid, I loved arcade games. (Who am I kidding--I still do...) I would drop everything if I saw an arcade cabinet somewhere and start begging my mom for a quarter.
We used to fly to Florida every year at spring break to visit Grandma. And every year, we'd arrive at the airport, check in with the skycap, and walk up the long ramp toward the security checkpoint. And the Kent County International Airport had, in addition to a bar and restaurant and gift shop and observation deck, its own video arcade. Every time we went up there, my brother and I would go tearing off for this arcade while waiting for our flight to leave.
And in a time when arcades were stocked with games like Zaxxon, Frogger, Ms. Pac-Man, and the like, the KCIA arcade had Night Driving, Pong, and other such monochrome games that even an Atari system would laugh at as being primitive. The selection was crap, the presentation was crap (they were all mounted in ugly generic cabinets), everything about it was crap. It was an arcade, yes, but I never wanted to play anything in that room. And they never bothered improving it, because--let's face it, where else are ya gonna go for video games, kid? You're stuck at the airport; you wanna play video games, you'll play the crap we chose for you.
That's pretty much how I feel about GSN nowadays. The selection is crap, the presentation is crap, everything about it is crap. It's a channel for game shows, yes, but I never want to watch anything on it. And they never bother improving it, because--let's face it, where else are ya gonna go for game shows, kid? You're stuck with us; you wanna watch game shows, you'll watch the crap we choose for you.
So I don't. Unless I'm missing something, I believe the last thing I watched on GSN was "What's My Line?", back when they were running it every night at 3am.
