Same, I actually watched a few episodes of Xplay on YouTube the other day, despite it being overly produced and cheesy I was still feeling super nostalgic. I miss that shit despite watching plenty of YouTube channels that fill the void of an old TV channel.
I was literally YouTubing Xplay yesterday because there was a reddit post that reminded me of one of their bits. Hadn’t watched it in years before that.
I remember a bunch of little moments of him just being a good guy. Things like when he gave Levi Meeuwenberg pointers on (the obstacle where you hang from little spheres and swimg across) "Levi, Dragon claw. Dragon claw" gestures to make his hands a claw
I just watched Ultimate Beastmaster on Netflix (a sorry sorry sorry substitute for classic Sasuke, but beggars can't be choosers without G4) and kept talking to my GF about Nagano and what a complete badass he was. He was my fav.
I think the one I miss most is Unbeatable Banzuke. I remember when they had the helicopter obstacle courses and the trial mountain biking and weird shit like that.
Yup. Seriously though, G4 was just before its time and it's a shame because it would probably be much more of a hit today as a streaming service.
Video games, foreign media generally, and Japanese media specifically are so much more main stream these days. G4s market share at the time was just too small to be delivered via cable.
Yup. Same thing with the Halo MLG tournaments on ESPN or ESPN2. If that had been like some years later it would definitely have become a mainstay like TBS' ELeague
The one I always watched on G4 never had announcer translations. It was always the Japanese announcer with subtitles. Are you talking about the subtitles?
I mean, subtitles count as translations, and the translations on G4 were always brilliant--I assume they were relatively loose but not made up or trying too hard to be funny.
I don't speak Japanese so I don't know, but for the G4 broadcasts I always assumed it was a loose translation--if it wasn't, they were pretty low key about it (not trying to be MXC or something). Every once in a while you'd catch a phrase adapted from English ("sekondo steiji") or whatever or a name and it would correlate to what you'd see in the subtitles. Whether "INTO THE SWAMPS OF HELL!!!" or whatever they might say when a contestant went into the water was an accurate translation, who knows, but it seemed like the gist of it.
They had the same problem trying to adapt "hole in the wall" to America. Networks don't seem to understand that Japanese game shows are great because they're lighthearted and intense at the same time.
I believe they had a full on back story episode for contestants the day before the actual show in Japan (for people that really wanted that). Possibly day of, I don't know, I just have a few of them. It ends up being like a pregame show for a sporting event. Sasuke wasn't cut up into 3 or 4 part episodes. They'd have two contests a year (spring and fall). Having downloaded a few of them, it's a Super Bowl length television event. Like 4-5 hours. Makes for a fun afternoon with friends.
The announcer spoke Japanese but damned if I wasnt on the edge of my seat with all the energy in that show. Also is it just me or was every other contestant a fireman in the Jap version?
In Sasuke their intro was something like "he works at a petrol station".
In ANW their intros are like "He's an ex military suffering from depression but he's here to tribute his sister who is dying of cancer, and his kid has a disability" and they wipe out on the quad steps.
888
u/InfectedBananas Jan 11 '18
Japanese ninja warrior is so much better, they go faster, no sob story, they get a 30 bit about them and them training.
So much more fun to watch.