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Smash TV
Developer	Williams
Publisher	Williams
Designer	Eugene Jarvis, Mark Turmell (co-designers) Jon Hey (sound effects)
Released	1990
Genre	Run and gun/Multi-directional shooter
Mode(s)	Up to 2 players, playing simultaneously
Platform(s)	Arcade, NES, Super NES, Sega Master System, Sega Mega Drive, Sega Game Gear, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, Amiga, Atari ST, PC, Xbox 360
Input methods	Joystick
Arcade cabinet	Upright
Arcade system	Williams Y Unit
Arcade sound system	M6809 @ 2 MHz Yamaha YM2151 @ 3.57958 MHz HC55516 2 x DAC.
Arcade display	Raster resolution 410×256(Vertical) Many Colors

Smash TV is a 1990 arcade game created by Eugene Jarvis and Mark Turmell for Williams. Home versions were developed for various platforms and most were published by Acclaim Entertainment.

The game format was very similar to that of Eugene Jarvis' earlier Robotron: 2084, with dual-joystick controls and series of single screen areas. The theme of the game involved players competing in a violent gameshow (set in the then-future of 1999), probably inspired by the novel, and its 1987 movie adaptation, The Running Man.

The game featured verbal interjections from the gameshow host including:

• "Let's Go!" (when first starting the game)
• "Bingo!" (when inserting a coin or picking up the smart bomb)
• "Good Luck...you'll need it!"
• "I'd buy that for a dollar!" (a RoboCop reference)
• "Big Money! Big Prizes! I love it!"
• "Dude!" (when you got an extra life)
• "No Way!" (Game Over; also uttered by the bosses)
• "Total Carnage! I love it!"

The last quote gave itself to the title of the 1991 follow-up, Total Carnage, which, while not a direct sequel, featured similar gameplay.

The announcer in the game was voiced by sound designer Paul Heitsch. The script was created by the game's sole composer and sound designer Jon Hey. The voice of General Ahkboob in the sequel "Total Carnage" was that of Ed Boon, coding creator of Mortal Kombat. In the SMASH TV flyer image [right] the hands at the console are Ed Boon's (left) and Jon Hey's (right).

This game is somewhat (in)famous for its graphic nature and for its later versions, where players could enter "The Pleasure Dome" (a possible reference to the Frankie Goes to Hollywood song "Welcome to the Pleasuredome," itself being a reference to the Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem Kubla Khan "A stately pleasure-dome decree" ) for beating the game (if they collected 10 elusive keys).

On the 2005 game Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories, there is a side-mission called 'Slash TV', which parodies this, where the player's character is surrounded by enemies, and is awarded cash for eliminating waves of them. The camera angle changes from the game's traditional third-person "over the shoulder" view to a slightly angled overhead view so it looks like the original.

According to his Konquest Mode profile on Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, the character Johnny Cage once took part in a celebrity version of SMASH T.V., defeated Mutoid Man with his Forceball attack and gave his prize winnings to charity. Then he went and killed them all to get it back.

Smash TV was heavily ported to consoles, including the following: NES, SNES (as Super Smash TV), the Sega Game Gear, Sega Genesis/Sega Mega Drive (as Super Smash TV) and Sega Master System. On some home systems such as the NES, players had to use the directional pad on the second controller to control the direction the character would shoot on-screen.

Home computer versions were produced by Ocean for the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST and Commodore Amiga, all released in early 1992. The Amiga version scored 895 out of a possible 1000 in a UK magazine review.^[1] The Spectrum magazine CRASH awarded that version 97%, a rating which proved controversial as the game was very different from the arcade; the programmers believed a game more closely resembling the coin-op would be impossible on such a system.^{[citation needed]} The Amstrad and Commodore 64 versions are similar to this and again, very different and much more basic when compared to the Williams original.

It was also part of the Midway Arcade Treasures collection, which was released for the PC, Nintendo GameCube, Xbox and PlayStation 2 in 2003.

Smash TV has also been made available for download through Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade service on the Xbox 360 and is the first version of the game to officially allow two players to play the game online. It costs 400 Microsoft Points to purchase on the Xbox 360. (400 Microsoft Points is roughly $5 or £2.50)

In an interview made available by Midway Arcade Treasures, Eugene Jarvis and Mark Turmell both agreed that a Smash TV 2 game had been thought about.

• ^  Douglas, Jim (December 1991). Smash TV (review of Amiga version). ACE (UK magazine published by EMAP), p. 80–85.

• Mean Machines - Smash TV review
• Arcade-History Database entry
• Smash T.V. at MobyGames
• Smash TV at the Killer List of Videogames
• SydLexia.com Smash TV
• Smash TV at World of Spectrum

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