Jared Rea

I just spent the last two hours bouncing in my seat as giddy as I was 14 years ago on Saturday mornings. It was also the first time in years I actually felt excited over cheering on a bunch of muscular weirdos running around in spandex. American Gladiators  is back alright and I have no idea how we survived without it.

There’s gladiators to love (Crush.. sigh), contestants to hate (Jeff Keller was a top of the line douche) and moments to completely mark out, such as Wolf’s ridiculous Canadian Destroyer during one of the Pyramid event. It’s a lot more brutal than it ever was which is great, but the show isn’t without its share of problems. A lot of the events could use some tweaking, such as the length of the Hang Tough field being way too short and the hoops in Assault being absolutely gigantic. When someone can drop a bomb from halfway across the field and score a point, you know you have a problem. Still, the original show featured a ton of tweaks as seasons progressed, so I’m hoping the revival does the same.

NBC is really on a roll with all of these high quality remakes and judging from Bionic Woman and now American Gladiators, I’m incredibly stoked for Knight Rider now. I mean, it has a Will Arnett as a talking car. How bad can it be? In case you missed it, another episode of American Gladiators will be airing Monday night at 8PM. Be there for mayhem, MAYHEM, MAYHEM! 

Like most people I know, I woke up on New Years day sore and suffering of a headache, except the pain was only coming from my knuckles. I forgot how much it hurt to play on an actual Pop’n Music arcade cabinet. It had been a year since I had last done so, easy.

In what can be considered foreshadowing for the rest of the year, a couple of my friends and I took a trip to our favorite arcade in Northern California, Sunnyvale Golfland. We came pre-loaded with Del Taco (oh god yes) and hit the place up nice and early. A lot has changed since I last stepped foot upon her slightly smelly property. Mainly a whole lot of games have gone missing, only to replaced by redemption games like the electronic jump rope and Deal or No Deal. You slip in your token and Howie Mandel comes out grinning. He wrings his hands a bit and lets you know how totally fucked you are.

And then you get tickets.

I don’t blame SVGL for trimming the fat though. Even though it’s one of the best arcades in the country for competitive play, they didn’t need two 3rd Strike machines and the like. It just made things twice as awesome. The dancin’ games are largely the same as when I left, but it was great to see that the Pop’n Music machine had been upgraded from the lowly 8 to the greatness of Fever. I feel guilty about it, but I played the Super Mario medley more times than I could remember.

I wish I could go more often, but it’s just too much of a hassle to do it these days on my formerly regular basis. Should things go according to plan, however, I’ll definitely be seeing it again soon.

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