The following is an interview I conducted August 31, 2000 with a person who
got to be a contestant on Video Power:


JTurb417: oh what wk did you play
gos81: chip and dale/duck tales
gos81: i think it was like first or second week in dec. it first aired

JTurb417: I still remember the day Johnny screwed up a question
JTurb417: plays the Battletoad song and then he says the answer is Chip and Dale
:D
gos81: he tried to get the four of us to sing his rap for him, then he was going
to say word
gos81: but we all got nervous and didn't say anything, and he ended up looking
dumb oops :-)
gos81: hehe
gos81: that was a fun show, i missed out on the neo geo on the friday show
however
gos81: really mad i screwed that day up heh


JTurb417: where did you find my site anyways? It has been up for a yr, but
hasn't been released to the public :D
gos81: google

JTurb417: I've been needing to add multimedia to the site. Do you have any
episodes of the show?
gos81: just one of the two i was in, and it starts at the first power play..
heh... we missed the on the spot thing


JTurb417: lol, like we need to see that
gos81: i actually got to stump him
JTurb417: well, I live near Saban tower .... mabye I can beg them for episodes
:D
JTurb417: ok, that was rigged right?
gos81: haha
gos81: uhm, well kinda

JTurb417: please tell me of the inner workings!
gos81: we were all given questions several weeks before hand
gos81: err one question apiece
gos81: it came int he mail along with a description of the show, the games we
would be playing, a contestant badge to get into the building, and blue index
card with a question taped to it that we were supposed to memorize
gos81: when we got there we waited outside for a while, then they took us in
with our family and the whole audience into a room
gos81: where they told us more about the show and like they would be using fog
in the opening, so people who were allergic should wait till it cleared, etc..
gos81: then they took the contestants up to a conf room type place where we
waited


JTurb417: did you get any food?
gos81: don't think so
gos81: well after waiting in the room they took us all down to makeup, where
they put way too much on
gos81: made everyone look shiny
gos81: then they took us to the set, where we met johnny
gos81: no one else was there
gos81: we saw him, steve was recording the 'promotional considerations'

JTurb417: I wonder what he said to you
gos81: they asked us how we want our names to look on those little blue cards
above the tv's
JTurb417: lol
gos81: there was a guy there writing it down and stuff

JTurb417: cheap assholes
gos81: they were all done by marker, cheap

JTurb417: yes, and you could tell
gos81: we got to walk through the mall a little bit, which was a bad idea, cause
it made everyone very picky
gos81: oh, i'll grab that, and that and that
gos81: which is why you see soo many people looking for stuff, they all saw it
before hand
gos81: so we went back to that room, and then they took us back down to the set,
which was now all nice and lit up, and the audience was there
JTurb417: IMO, I would've grabbed anything
JTurb417: w/o even looking
gos81: we had to sit in special seats, which were marked with tape, except some
kid was sitting in mine, and they kicked him out !!! heheh
gos81: hahha
JTurb417: lol
gos81: then the show started, and like we were supposed to ask johnny our
question...
gos81: mine was "How many burns are there in the new simpsons game"
gos81: i was number 3
gos81: and i saw the teleprompter said
gos81: Johnny:
gos81: and he started acting stupid
gos81: well, there is mr. and mrs. burns, the first degree burns, second degree
burns, etc..
gos81: taping lasted for around an hour i guess.
gos81: i had top score in the first power play
gos81: i only got one question right in the q/a thing

JTurb417: I have my theories on that too
gos81: but i still detest one of my answers was right, even though mr. bozo
(johnny) said it wasn't

JTurb417: all you need is one question right
gos81: yeah
JTurb417: then win the final power palay
gos81: then i completely kicked the other kids but in the final power play
gos81: and got to run through the mall
gos81: i got the secret game prize (solar jetman), and for it I got a nikko
remote control barracuda
gos81: they actually sent me 2 of them in the mail by mistake
gos81: we didn't get the games till a few weeks later
gos81: they sent me 3 domino rally sets when i should of only gotten 1 as well
JTurb417: neat
gos81: very unorganized heh..
gos81: friday i screwed up in the first power play

JTurb417: I always thought that you go to another room and exchange those boxes
:D
gos81: nah
gos81: they give you an invoice style paper with a list of all the games and
prizes listed out
gos81: and they mail it to you
gos81: the skateboards and bikes were not movable
gos81: alot of people always asked, take them, but they were attached to the set
and wouldn't go, nor fit down the slide
gos81: anyway, the thing that shocked me the most, and cost me like 5 seconds
gos81: was that the velcro which held the games on was incredibly tight
gos81: i actually thought i was going to rip the box
gos81: i had to actually pull with my weight behind it to get the suckers off
gos81: they weren't just 'placed on' they were stuck on

JTurb417: oh my
JTurb417: those cheap bastards
JTurb417: my idea was to go to the top and just start throwing games down the
chute
gos81: they told us we couldn't do that
gos81: if we through stuff down the chute, we had to be down within 5 seconds or
we lost everything
gos81: on our friday show, the secret game was ultima (something) and the kid
got a game in the ultima series, and terry gave him the neo geo, and then after
the show one of the crew said it wasn't the right ultima game
gos81: and they were like, what do we do, we have it on tape that we gave the
kid a neo geo, what do we do now
gos81: i am not sure if he ever got that thing

JTurb417: ROFLMAO
JTurb417: well for the chute thing, I've seen people do it before
gos81: they told us not to and most of us didn't want to risk not getting our
prizes

JTurb417: I never heard of that rule explained on tv :D
gos81: heh
gos81: what I always wanted to know is what they would of done if their
nintendo's crapped out in the middle of a power play
gos81: i never saw it happen, but it happened enough in real life

JTurb417: how do they set the games to a certain level?
JTurb417: when needed?
gos81: wondered that myself too
gos81: never got to see that happen
gos81: another thing i always wanted to know was how they managed to pause the
games, when you had the controller in your hands
JTurb417: oh yeah
JTurb417: VCR power :D