We set a pretty awesome task for ourselves ... 'create an interesting show in which the viewers could vicariously participate with a subject that was virtually impossible to tape.'

We had to devise a way to shoot the game screen without interfering with the player and without getting the game scan lines, capture the score when the time limit ran out (keeping in mind that the game would probably be adding to the score), and deal with the  interference in the video caused by the neon STARCADE! sign.  If that wasn't enough, the Pilot featured 24 contestants, all playing at the same time on 24 separate games - 8 Defender games, 8 Pac Man games, 8 Centipede games. We enlisted the help of Nolan Bushnell, Inventor of Pong and founder of Atari, to find the first contestants. Auditions were held throughout California at Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatres, then owned by Nolan Bushnell.

To make our task even more challenging, we added smoke, a visiting celebrity and a host who was not a TV host but rather a Hockey player - Mike Eruzione, the Captain of the gold medal winning US Olympic Hockey Team at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid.

It was impossible ... but we did it anyway.

The Original STARCADE! Pilot aired on several TV stations in California in September 1981 and became the prototype to sell the concept to NBC television ... and later to Ted Turner (WTBS & CNN)... but that's another story ...