| Reviews on the Run | |
|---|---|
Logo used since 2007 |
|
| Genre | Video games |
| Format | Daily |
| Created by | Victor Lucas |
| Developed by | Greedy Productions Ltd. |
| Directed by | Victor Lucas |
| Theme music composer | Audio Network Canada Westar Music Tommy Tallarico Studios |
| Country of origin | Canada |
| Language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 8 |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) | Victor Lucas |
| Producer(s) | Victor Lucas Rob Koval |
| Location(s) | Vancouver, British Columbia Toronto, Ontario San Francisco, California Los Angeles, California |
| Running time | 30 minutes |
| Production company(s) | Greedy Productions Ltd. |
| Distributor | Greedy Productions Ltd. |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | G4 Canada Citytv |
| Original airing | 2002 |
| Chronology | |
| Related shows | The Electric Playground Greedy Docs |
| External links | |
| Website | |
Reviews on the Run (formerly known as Judgment Day in the United States) and "Reviews on the Rock" in the earlier seasons of the Electric Playground is a video game review TV show hosted by Victor Lucas and Scott C. Jones (permanently replacing the position vacated by Tommy Tallarico). The show is produced by Lucas' company Greedy Productions. The two hosts rate games independently on a scale of .5 point increments from 0 through 10, with 0 being the lowest and 10 being the highest. As of December 2007, Reviews on the Run airs in Canada on G4 Canada, Citytv Toronto, and Citytv Vancouver, with pre-2006 episodes airing on G4 in the United States. The show was previously shown in Canada on A-Channel, Space, Razer, and OMNI.1.
The show is filmed on location at several different locales around Vancouver, British Columbia. Episodes are also occasionally recorded in other cities, such as Tokyo, Japan. A common trademark of the show is to have the hosts stand in frame as video game footage is projected onto an object in the background such as a billboard or the side of a building. The show is filmed over the course of several hours and later edited to fit the show's thirty minute time frame.
Contents |
Reviews on the Run began as a segment on The Electric Playground at the end of each episode. In 2002, the show was spun off into its own half hour program. For the United States audience, it was renamed to Judgment Day.
On January 13, 2006, Lucas announced on the G4 forums that Judgment Day was no longer going to be produced for G4. The program stills run internationally (including on G4 Canada) as the original Reviews on the Run.[1] Specific details about the negotiations have not been disclosed, and the show has not returned to U.S. airwaves with new episodes since then.
On December 31, 2006, Lucas announced on The Electric Playground forums that Greedy Productions had canceled its contract with CHUM television, which broadcast Electric Playground and Reviews on the Run on Space and A-Channel, and signed a two year exclusive deal with Rogers Communications, to broadcast the shows on G4 Canada and then additionally on other Rogers owned TV stations.[2] Reviews on the Run aired on OMNI.1 from January 28, 2007 to September 3, 2007. On December 15, 2007, Reviews on the Run premiered on Citytv Toronto and Citytv Vancouver. On June 2, 2008, G4 started airing episodes of Judgment Day as a part of their G4 Rewind block.
On February 17, 2010, Lucas announced on The Electric Playground forums that Reviews on the Run would become a daily show, beginning March 1, 2010, and that the scope of the show would be expanded to include reviews of Blu-rays, movies, gadgets, tech, PC and console gaming peripherals, hardware and graphic novels.[3]
Victor Lucas and Tommy Tallarico have been both co-workers and good friends since their first meeting at E3 in 1995. Onscreen the two enjoy plenty of brotherly scraps, with Tallarico typically playing the role of a more aggressive, even gutter-minded gamer and Lucas being more businesslike and sedate. During the "Hardware" segment of Reviews on the Run, Tallarico has occasionally taken the video gaming hardware (console controllers for example) that they were reviewing, and put it down the front of his pants he was wearing, to the disgust of Lucas.
Due to commitments with Video Games Live, Tallarico was absent for six episodes from the 2006 season, and the majority of the last two seasons (though he has returned for a few select episodes) Geoff Keighley co-hosted with Lucas in all of the 2006 episodes. Tallarico missed the 2007 and 2008 seasons of the show, which featured a number of guest hosts, including Keighley, Scott Jones, Tom Russo, Marc Saltzman, José "Fubar" Sánchez, Ben Silverman, and Steve Tilley.
In early 2010, co-host of "The Totally Rad Show", Jeff Cannata, joined the cast as a guest reviewer. Shortly thereafter, he accepted daily duty, reviewing newly released Blu-rays alongside Miri Jedeikin.
On June 11, 2009, Lucas announced on The Electric Playground website that Scott Jones would be joining him full time as his co-host on the show.[4]
During the Hardware segment of the show, Hardware Girls show off pieces of video gaming hardware, while two of the reviewers review the product in question. Hardware Girls are usually shown wearing T-shirts that have messages relating to video games and gaming (for example: "I've got collision detection"). Lost cast member Evangeline Lilly's first job in television was as a Hardware Girl for Reviews on the Run, which was referenced when the Lost video game was reviewed on the show. Donna Mei-Ling Park and Briana McIvor, Former correspondent and current Co-Host respectively for the Electric Playground's successor EP Daily, were also a Hardware Girls.
The following is a list of games that have been given a perfect 10/10 score by both hosts since the expansion to the half hour format.
| Game | Reviewers |
|---|---|
| Grand Theft Auto 3 | Victor Lucas Tommy Tallarico |
| Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time | Victor Lucas Tommy Tallarico |
| Burnout 3: Takedown | Victor Lucas Tommy Tallarico |
| Burnout Revenge | Victor Lucas Tommy Tallarico |
| God of War II | Victor Lucas Tommy Tallarico |
| Halo 3 | Victor Lucas José Sánchez |
| The Orange Box | Victor Lucas José Sánchez |
| Grand Theft Auto IV | Victor Lucas Scott Jones |
| Grand Theft Auto: The Lost and Damned | Victor Lucas Scott Jones |
| Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots | Victor Lucas José Sánchez |
| Flower | Victor Lucas Scott Jones |
| Batman: Arkham Asylum | Victor Lucas Scott Jones |
| Assassin's Creed 2 | Victor Lucas Scott Jones |
| Pac-Man Championship Edition DX | Victor Lucas Scott Jones |
| The Ico & Shadow of the Colossus Collection | Victor Lucas Scott Jones |
| Resident Evil 4 | Victor Lucas Scott Jones |
| The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword | Victor Lucas Scott Jones |
This list includes games that were given a 10/10 score by a reviewer, but was not unanimous.
The lowest rated game ever on the show was Halo Jump for the ipad,which reviewer Shawn Hatton gave a -10, making it the second game to score less than 0 on the show. The first 0/10 was given by Tallarico for the game High Heat Major League Baseball 2003; he hated the game so much he stormed off partway through the review, followed by sounds of a car screeching away. The lowest rated handheld game was Wacky Races: Crash and Dash (Nintendo DS), which received a 0/10 from Tommy.
Here are a list of games that got perfect 10 on handheld on the show since it went on from Victor, Scott and Tommy:
Namco Museum Battle (PSP), New Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo DS), Ken Griffey Jr's Slugfest (Gameboy Color),Yoshi Island Advance (Game Boy Advance) and God of War: Chains of Olympus (PSP). Flipnote Studios (Nintendo DSi) and Sketch Nation (iPhone/IPod) both got a 10/10 since the show went daily by Victor, making the highest-rated downloadable games to date since it the show became daily. Papa Sangre (iphone/Ipod) received a perfect score from Scott Jones. Plants vs. Zombies (DS) is the first 10/10 by New host Shaun Hatton
Sometimes, the two hosts will have completely differing opinions on a game, with one giving way different scores than the other. (An example of this was the 2005 review of We Love Katamari; while Lucas enjoyed the gameplay and pointed out the good of the game, Tallarico hated the game, particularly its music. The result: Lucas gave it an 8.5/10 while Tallarico gave it a 3/10.) Another example of this happened while reviewing The Green Hornet Victor enjoyed the movie giving it an 8.0/10 while Scott Jones gave it a 4.0/10. Perfect Dark for Nintendo 64 is another example when Victor gave the 10/10, while Tommy gave it 9.9/10. That game could have gotten a first perfect 10/10 on the "Reviews on the Run" segment on the Electric Playground.