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Back when video games consisted of sprites rolling along parallax backgrounds, and their sound was no more than a few square-wave bleeps, Bad Influence! hit the air waves. It was a video games magazine show, produced by Yorkshire Television in Leeds, that had come at a time when video games were becoming big business. It began in the era of the Sega MegaDrive and Nintendo Super NES, and lasted long enough to see the launch of the N64, having had a fourth series ending in January 1996.
The first show was transmitted on 29 October 1992, but the series had been commissioned almost a year beforehand with the name 'Deep Techies'. This name began as a nickname for computer wizards invented by a producer at the BBC called David Allen, whom Bad Influence! producer Patrick Titley worked with on the BBC Computer Literacy project (a show called Micro Live).
Even in the early 90's video games were forming a bad reputation with parents and the press - people who really didn't know what they were talking about. The headlines said it all with the likes of "Nintendo killed my son!", and so this video games magazine show was aptly called 'Bad Influence!' - a name devised by one of the Associate Producers (Richard Maude).
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Presented by former Children's BBC presenter Andy Crane and a fresh faced, spiky-haired Violet Berlin, Bad Influence! immediately had chemistry and style that was unique. Broadcast in the 4:45pm slot of Children's ITV, Bad Influence! was shown weekly (on Thursdays for the first three series and Wednesdays during the last series). Each series ran for between 13 and 15 programmes with each show being 20 minutes long. Along with Andy and Violet were Z Wright, who was the US correspondent, Nam Rood, in the cheats section, and a panel of games reviewers. The final series also saw Sonya Saul presenting along side Andy. The studio was filled with computers, consoles and arcade machines around which an audience of young gamers could wander. Bad Influence! was devoted to news, reviews, and features. Each programme saw three new games reviewed, a brief news and previews section and several in-depth studio and location features in the UK, US and Japan. At the end of each show was the weekly competition, the prize for which was usually a copy of the main game reviewed that week along with the console to play it on. Ten runners-up also got Bad Influence! T-Shirts.
For the first three series, Bad Influence! was the number one show on Children's ITV each week it was on. Some viewers, however, did not like a couple of aspects of the show - the fact that it was children performing the reviews, and the rather strange Nam Rood character in the cheats section. It is true that some of the reviewers comments were little more than "The graphics are rubbish and there's no playability!". The fact is that the reviewers would not really have spent much time playing the games before recording their review. The children would arrive at Yorkshire Television on the day of filming and had only a few hours playing time with all the weeks review games between them in the office in which to form their opinions. As for Nam Rood, he provided some welcome comic relief, in the form of short sketches that became more and more bizarre and surreal over the series.
The studio features and location reports were always well researched and presented. These ranged from items such as looking at super computers like the Onyx Reality engine (the sort used to create the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park), and a look at how the music for games like 'Inferno' were created using an Amiga computer, to how digital image manipulation is used in advertising to make perfect photographs. A feature introduced in the final series was Virtual Violet', which saw Violet presenting some of her personal views on various gaming issues. For this appearance Violet was filmed in front of a blue screen and relevant footage played behind her as she covered items such as sequels, web cams and the Internet.
An innovative feature of the programme (long before any and every TV show had it's own website) was the 'Datablast' - pages of text displayed at speed during the end credits containing a condensed account of all the reviews, news, features and cheats of that weeks programme. If this was video-taped and then played back in slow motion, the pages of text became available to read. The show did get its own website during the last series and so the Datablast was no longer featured. Bad Influence! was also the first factual show on British television to be broadcast in Surround Sound.
Two editions of a spin-off Bad Influence! magazine were launched during the first series, and three spin-off shows were also made. The first was a 'Weekly report from the games shed' for GMTV, which was made in a re-dressed Nam Rood's shed, presented by Violet. Then two series were made hosted by Violet and one of the researchers, Steve Keen, for TCC (The Children's Channel). These were called 'Bad Level 10', made very cheaply, and relied on loads of free games footage from the developers. It was shot at a games arcade in Leeds called Centre 4, complete with the (very loud) noise of the arcade machines going off around the presenters. The same series was sold to Nickelodeon, under a new title ('Fish'n'Chips', because they had an animated fish character they wanted to include); and with an "enhanced" budget.
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In 2000, Yorkshire Television's Children's Department did have plans for a new programme to be produced in a similar style to Bad Influence!. It was titled 'Re:Play', but, sadly, the show never got commissioned and it now seems unlikely that such a show will ever see the light of daytime television again.
These days we've seen several attempts at producing a television show aimed at games players - 'Bits', 'Thumb Bandits', 'Cybernet' and so on have all come and gone, but none of these shows had the balance of games and technology that made Bad Influence! so successful.
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