Gaming in The Clinton Years

We have a challenge to EIDOS. In Tomb Raider 3, create a storyline in which Lara gets breast cancer. Imagine the drama of a vulnerable Lara Croft still persisting on her wordly adventures despite her illness. It needs fleshing out, no pun intended, but we guarantee the gaming world would be shocked, stunned, and moved by the effort to make Lara's character more meaningful.

In the mid-1990s, a man named George Wood created a TV show dedicated to video games on a Maryland public-access channel, called Flights of Fantasy, much to the uproar of the gaming community. The show gained quite a few detractors; Wood was not known for his playing skills, research or good taste, and the production was rather cheap. He would also tend to go off-topic, sometimes markedly so, in a very fervent manner.

It had a small following, being a local public-access show, but would have been Lost Forever, had Wood not joined a video gaming association called NAViGaTR[1], who archived the entire series, edited each episode and put it onto YouTube as renamed Gaming in the Clinton Years, This is how most people know of Wood.

It can be seen either here, or in its original unedited format here.

He is, shall we say, a polarizing sort, and something of an easy target, so please follow the Rule of Cautious Editing Judgement.

Tropes used in Gaming in The Clinton Years include:
  • Anime Hair: George Wood sported a bright red hairdo in the last few videos credited to him.
    • Other videos showed him wearing a rainbow hairdo as well.
  • Artistic License: Law / Critical Research Failure: One of Wood's trademark "great game ideas" - having to drive your pregnant wife to the hospital while she's in labor, but obeying traffic laws and the speed limit because if the cops catch you it's game over. In reality, if a cop pulls you over for speeding and sees a woman in labor in the car, they'll escort you to the hospital themselves.
  • Damned By Faint Praise: The fact that this show compares Plok to Bubsy would be saying something, if not for the fact that the writers absolutely loved Bubsy.
  • Department of Redundancy Department: In his Super Metroid review.
    • "The station is completely deserted. No one is in the building."
  • Double Entendre: "I'm your morning Wood, with an overactive Wii."
  • Dull Surprise
  • Faking the Dead: According to NAVIGaTR, Wood allegedly died between 2006 and 2008. However, in 2009, a video showed up on YouTube showing George Wood on a local talk show talking about President Obama. Not to mention that NAViGaTR had been making a huge fuss about George Wood in anticipation for their big Halloween cruise party, in such a way that if he isn't alive than it's pretty disrespectful - not to mention how NAVIGaTR publicly and loudly claim his cause of death was a drug overdose, which is something you wouldn't really want to publicize regardless of whether someone were dead or alive.
  • Filler: Wood frequently shows clips from games he's reviewing with no commentary or editing.
  • It Is Pronounced "Tro-PAY": Pronounced Konami as "Konammy" in a few reviews.
  • It's Hard, So It Sucks: A common criticism for a lot of games, where the host complains that the only way to beat certain games is by using cheat codes... followed by complaints that the game is thus too easy.
  • Real Song Theme Tune: The theme to Gaming In The Clinton Years is a song from the NES game Shadowgate (specifically, the hall of mirrors theme). It predates Clinton's presidency, although the depicted game (Battletoads in Battlemaniacs) does not.
  • Stock Footage: Many of his four-minute reviews end with the intro cinematic of the game he's reviewing, with no commentary. Way to stall for half your review.
  • Take That: The Tail of the Sun review uses the back-of-the-box recommendation from PSX Power as conclusive evidence to not read said magazine.
  • This Is Going to Be Huge: Wood apparently believed that the Virtual Boy would be more successful than the Playstation.
  • Totally Radical: (on Donkey Kong Country's soundtrack) "Play it loud in stereo, DUUUUUUUUUUUDE!"
  • Unusual Euphemism: "Front-loaded anvils."
  1. ↑ The National Assoiation of Video Game Testers and Reviewers
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