''When Games Attack'' is a British television show, that originally aired on
Bravo
Bravo(s) or The Bravo(s) may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Music Groups and labels
*Bravo (band), a Russian rock band
* Bravo (Spanish group), represented Spain at Eurovision 1984
*Bravo Music, an American concert band music publishing company ...
from 2004 to 2005. The show is presented by
Dominik Diamond
Paul Dominik Diamond (born 31 December 1969) is a Scottish television and radio presenter and newspaper columnist. He is best known as the original presenter of Channel 4's video gaming programme '' GamesMaster'', as host of ''The Dominik Diamon ...
and created by Jonny Ffinch with whom he had previously worked on
GamesMaster
''GamesMaster'' is a British television programme which originally aired on Channel 4 from 1992 to 1998. In 2021, it returned for a new series on YouTube and E4. It was the first UK television programme dedicated to video games.
Dominik Diam ...
. Its focus was
video games
Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device to gener ...
.
Stage
''When Games Attack'' was not based in a studio, instead, it was filmed in a different location for each episode with the locations usually dictating the sort of humour and jokes Diamond used in each 30 second link between segments.
Examples of locations:
* A Fruit & Veg stall (Dominik ends the episode claiming he will go home with "A banana for the wife")
* Outside
Celtic Football Club
The Celtic Football Club, commonly known as Celtic (), is a Scottish professional football club based in Glasgow, which plays in the Scottish Premiership. The club was founded in 1887 with the purpose of alleviating poverty in the immigran ...
's stadium.
* Dominiks fishing trip (again, he makes a sexual innuendo saying something similar to "The times when you sit alone with a rod in your hand are the best moments of your life")
* A bus stop (In this episode, Dominik claims he laughs at tourists trying to figure out UK bus timetables, saying we all know they are as accurate as your average weapons dossier. This was during the claims about
Weapons of Mass Destruction
A weapon of mass destruction (WMD) is a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or any other weapon that can kill and bring significant harm to numerous individuals or cause great damage to artificial structures (e.g., buildings), natura ...
in
Iraq
Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...
.)
*
Las Vegas
Las Vegas (; Spanish for "The Meadows"), often known simply as Vegas, is the 25th-most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of Nevada, and the county seat of Clark County. The city anchors the Las Vegas ...
(Dominik gets "arrested" for speeding but warns the officer he "Knows
Richard and Judy
Richard and Judy is the name informally given to Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan, a British married couple who are both television presenters and columnists. They presented the daytime television programme '' This Morning'' from 1988 until 2 ...
", minor British celebrities.)
* Council estate. (Dominik ends the episode telling the viewers he is going to hang around street corners looking "hard" until his mother calls him in for tea. This is poking fun at
Neds
Ned is a derogatory term applied in Scotland to hooligans, louts or petty criminals.
Show structure
Each 30-minute show featured several sections such as:
"I'm Famous, Give Me My Joypad!"
Eight Premiership and
Championship
In sport, a championship is a competition in which the aim is to decide which individual or team is the champion.
Championship systems
Various forms of competition can be referred to by the term championship.
Title match system
In this system ...
football players took part in a head-to-head tournament playing
Pro Evolution Soccer
''eFootball'', formerly known as ''Pro Evolution Soccer'' (''PES'') internationally and in Japan and North America, is a series of association football simulation video games developed and published by Konami since 1995.
The series consists ...
. Alternately, it featured a dancing contest with five
glamour models
Glamour photography is a genre of photography in which the subjects are portrayed in erotic poses ranging from fully clothed to nude. The term may be a euphemism for erotic photography. For glamour models, body shape and size are directly rel ...
. The girl would usually wear clothing that was not suitable to dance in and compete at
Dance Dance Revolution
(''DDR'') is a music video game series produced by Konami. Introduced in Japan in 1998 as part of the Bemani series, and released in North America and Europe in 1999, ''Dance Dance Revolution'' is the pioneering series of the rhythm and dance V ...
or DDR for short. Before and after the girls danced, Dominik would often flirt with them, only to be shot down every time.
Behind the Game
A history of certain games ranging from
Space Invaders
is a 1978 shoot 'em up arcade game developed by Tomohiro Nishikado. It was manufactured and sold by Taito in Japan, and licensed to the Midway division of Bally for overseas distribution. ''Space Invaders'' was the first fixed shooter and set ...
to ''
Grand Theft Auto
''Grand Theft Auto'' (''GTA'') is a series of action-adventure games created by David Jones (video game developer), David Jones and Mike Dailly (game designer), Mike Dailly. Later titles were developed under the oversight of brothers Dan Hous ...
''. Viewers would be told the story of how the game was created, where the ideas came from and what impact it had on the world as footage of the game played with small facts scrolling across the bottom of the screen.
Head to Head
This section starred Dominik and two mute teddy bear puppets: a rusty-coloured one with a cream-coloured face and ears called Cugly and a white one with pink ears and paws called Queeny. For comedy purposes, Diamond and the two bears would appear to have been caught in the act of something (often illegal) such as a seedy chat line and selling uranium on the black market.
Each puppet would pick one of two video games that were similar such as ''
Tekken
is a Japanese Media mix, media franchise centered on a series of fighting game, fighting video and arcade games developed and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment (formerly Namco). The franchise also includes film and print adaptations.
The ...
'' vs. ''
Virtua Fighter
is a series of fighting games created by Sega-AM2 and designer Yu Suzuki. The original ''Virtua Fighter'' was released in October 1993 and has received four main sequels and several spin-offs. The highly influential first ''Virtua Fighter'' game ...
'' or ''Grand Theft Auto'' vs. '' True Crime: Streets of LA''. Dominik would then rate each game on graphics, gameplay and so forth with the losing puppet doing a "forfeit" which was usually either bizarre or very violent. The segment closed with a corny joke, such as after losing, Cugly is stuffed into a washing machine as Dominik exclaims "Don't worry, Cugly! It's all good clean fun!"
On Location
Dominik travels to locations around the United Kingdom and America ostensibly to review events such as the
San Diego Comicon
San Diego Comic-Con International is a comic book convention and nonprofit multi-genre entertainment event held annually in San Diego, California since 1970. The name, as given on its website, is Comic-Con International: San Diego; but it is co ...
, however these sections would more often present a thinly-veiled excuse for him to make fun of the people and places he visited.
When Flack Attacks
Caroline Flack
Caroline Louise Flack (9 November 1979 – 15 February 2020) was an English television and radio presenter and actress. She won the twelfth series of BBC’s ''Strictly Come Dancing'' in 2014 and presented ''The X Factor'' and later '' Love Isl ...
hosts a brief segment in which she travels around Japan looking at weird, wonderful and bizarre things such as giant robots, cosplay and how an anime is made. Frequently Flack makes note of how different eastern culture is from western culture. When she attended a cosplay convention, as grown men queued to take photographs of a presumably young girl in costume, Caroline pointed out that had they been in Britain they all would be arrested by now.
Bunch of Five
A chart that runs throughout the show. Often unique topics such as "The 5 worst abuses of women in videogame", "The 5 most disappointing endings", or "The 5 best videogame deaths".