Nerding Day: MaxiVision Power Video Challenge (Patreon)

For one glorious 30-minute time slot in 1992, a commercial of limitless hype aired once and then never, ever again. It was for a product too spectacular for reality hosted by men too excited for human hearts. It was an infomercial for the MaxiVision 30-in-1 video game cartridge not licensed for (but potentially compatible with) your Nintendo Entertainment System.

Look upon it. Gleaming in gold, it claimed to contain every genre. Van. Horse. Miscellaneous. And they spared no expense to tell us about the "MaxiVision Power Video Challenge," a name no one will say right for the full run of its existence. Computer, generate clip, parameter: MaxiVision:

Those are the finest title graphics 1992 had to offer, electrified and exploding. An entire studio audience is cheering for a NES arena championship, and you bet your ass that was Terry "Hulk ""Hulkster"" Hogan" Bollea floating by. It's a 30-minute Nintendo commercial starring Hulk Hogan! I didn't see this when it first aired, but if my high school girlfriend was standing next to it and telling me she was pregnant, I'd say, "That sounds important too, Nintendo Hulk Hogan."

Look at this entrance:

Hulk Hogan smashes through a wall, chains together a three signature gesture combo, and the first little boy whose hand he shakes loses his mind and grabs hold of him, trying to make this moment last forever. Before we found out he was racist and dead, Hulk Hogan was the best-case scenario for any sudden intruder.

The co-host is infomercial specialist, Mike Levey, who is a world class talent when it comes to excitedly shouting about revolutionary home solutions for half an hour, but he looks like a CPR mannequin next to Hulk Hogan. Hulk Hogan approached this commercial for an unlicensed Nintendo cartridge with the same energy he would use to fuck the amphetamines out of a leopard. And he never stops. Every kid he is splashing sweat on would still test positive for steroids today. There isn't an animal trainer in the world who wouldn't shoot Hulk Hogan for his performance in the MaxiVision Power Game Challenge.

Hulk and "Maniac" Mike introduce the three teams of video game players, each of them coached by a WWF wrestler, and we get our first clue something isn't right. Don't get me wrong, all of this is perfect; but that's part of the problem. There's no chance this is a real competition. The way these kids hit their marks and absolutely nail their cues destroy any illusions they are leading video game champions. You don't go from being good at Mega Man 4 to cutting a flawless promo with The Honky Tonk Man. Oh, if you're too young to remember, Honky Tonk Man was like an evil combat Elvis. This scene is the longest anyone has touched him without getting a guitar broken over their head.

The White Team is led by "Mr. Wonderful" Paul Orndorff. He's harder to explain than the Honky Tonk Man. He's a Default Beef whose wrestling costume was underpants, and he didn't have much of a gimmick other than saying his name too much, in mean-spirited ways. Like he might tell you he has a "wonderful" plan to crush your skull, and the tears of your wife will sound "wonderful." I can't stress enough how often he called things wonderful. He's like if The Thing picked his superhero name sarcastically after Mr. Fantastic landed on his, and then never let up about it.

The last team is coached by Koko B. Ware "The Bird Man", and he's harder to explain than "Mr. Wonderful" Paul Orndorff. He's a little round neon monster, and then someone added a parrot. Imagine you were making a character and put every last point into Meat and Jumping, then someone told you those don't work together, so you said, "Fine, take half from each and put them into Bird. For equipment, I'll take cocaine." He's many things in too many directions, and all of them are a little bit bird in ways that don't make sense. For instance, he calls himself, the audience, and these child actors "birds" the same way a madman might if he was taking ostrich medication. Never mind, I think I figured out how he happened.

Speaking of crazy, it is absurd how good this is. The set is incredible, and this is an all-star giving it their everything. It's a miracle. To sell this garbage multi-cart, they hired TV's top infomercial host, three main event wrestlers, and Koko B. Ware. Not all of it flies high like a bird, though, birds.

Meet Richard Frick. He's the off-brand video game producer behind MaxiVision 30-in-1, and he has no prayer of matching this show's energy. In his desperation, he invents and instantly retires the MaxiVision fist-pump handshake (above). He explains the cartridge contains not just thirty games, but thirty great games in a way far too combative to be true. Also suspicious, Mike and Richard take turns reassuring viewers the cartridge will run on your Nintendo Entertainment System. He and Mike have an entire conversation where every second word is pronounced with scare quotes. These "great" and "complete" games with "3D graphics" should "run" just "fine" on your "N.E.S. home game personal system." Or as Koko B. Ware might put it, "That bird holds a lot of eggs, birds!"

Next we meet the official panel of MaxiVision Video Challenge competition judges, a stupid, pointless act of theater. They don't even bother trying to join in this hype, and Hulk Hogan has no idea how to deal with men this dull. He's only ever met people either excited to meet Hulk Hogan or terrified to encounter a werebrisket. He is instantly furious and threatens them with, "YOU GUYS, YOU BETTER BE ACCURATE." And in that moment you see real fear because they know they have no way of doing that. They are fake judges for a fixed competition, and they also know it would take hours to make Hulk Hogan understand what that means. Far longer than it would take for him to strangle you.

In another act of meaningless theater, a girl named Julianna will randomly select one of the thirty titles for each round. Or as Hulk Hogan puts it, "She's gonna press the button to start the game!" It's hard to explain why it bothers me, but he says it in a condescending sing-songy voice, the way a serial killer might taunt you for trying to pick up your own fingers. Julianna didn't like it either, but she pushes the button and we "randomly" get our first game. It's Number 6: Venice Beach Volleyball.

Over footage of someone just completely fucking up in Venice Beach Volleyball, Hulk Hogan reads us copy about this "way rad beach volleyball game." If Honky Tonk Man saw you playing video games this badly, he would snap you in half with a rolling neck breaker and leave you for dead. Oh, scattered human remains reminds me of how I know Julianna's button isn't really random. Because not all of the thirty games on this cartridge are safe for children. Most of them are poker, a couple of them are lewd, and another is Chiller. Chiller is a game about blasting dead bodies apart with a gun; here's a screenshot:

I don't think they'd want this coming up randomly in front of a studio audience with Hulk Hogan reading, "Shoot a murderer's collection of human heads in this tense puzzle game of sexual torture, dudes! Wow! This Maxi Game Vision Championship is unbelievable, brother!" How would Koko B. Ware even coach a child through this? Wait, I know. "Shoot the nude bird! In its gruesome birds, Bird!"

I'm getting distracted. What "great" game were they "playing"? Oh, right, volleyball. Let's see how it's going.

This is going to sound crazy, but hear me out: it might have been a bad idea to hire wrestling villains to coach kids' video game teams. Honky Tonk Man's only coaching technique seems to be pumping his fist in the way of this boy's vision. It's worth mentioning he's also in a sequin jumpsuit and having a screaming match with Hulk Hogan. Between all that and the black market bird adrenaline seeping from Koko B. Ware, every one of this boy's senses is being assaulted. There has never been a more distracted Nintendo playe– hey I got a question for y- HAVE YOU EVER BEEN TO THE MOON!?

That's the question Koko B. Ware asks in response to Hulk Hogan's question about his team's beach volleyball video game strategy. And he never gives Hulk Hogan a chance to answer. He immediately says, "WE HAVEN'T EITHER, BROTHER!" I don't know why, and neither does he, but he means it. His lungs nearly gave out trying to share i– oh my god, I get why Koko B. Ware is a "Bird Man"! It's because he only makes noises a parakeet would make if it lived next to an electric chair!

"Mr. Wonderful" Paul Orndorff, by the way, says his team is "wonderful," like he did earlier, and like he will again.

In a surge of noise and color, but no game footage, two of the children are declared the winners of round one and we're back with Richard Frick. He seems frustrated we aren't getting it. Maybe it's because he's trying to project pro wrestler energy without quite getting it, but it is coming out like he is so pissed off this fucking thing with the thirty goddamn games on it. God damn it, fucking look at these thirty boxes. It's like all these, you sons of bitches, but in one fucking box!

"And you're sure this works on a Nintendo compatible home arcade unit?" the host keeps asking in different ways.

"Y-yeah, it… should," Richard answers, less confident each time. If you went into this assuming Richard's Nintendo cartridge worked in a Nintendo, you don't anymore. The crowd loves every second of this, by the way.

I'm not sure why. Big compatibility fans, I guess.

Julianna hits the button and gets #18: Baby Boomer. Hulk Hogan explains, "It's the ultimate test of marksmanship. It challenges you to save Boomer from the world's perils. And a surprise ending awaits those accomplished few who can complete the game!"

To be clear, it's a game about shooting at a baby. Hopefully at things near the baby to protect it, but also to help the baby pick up cash. It's like a video game adaptation of Hard Boiled after 700 international misunderstandings.

And there's no hiding how it looks like garbage. It's only the second showcased game from the MaxiVision 30-in-1 Megacart, and you're shooting at a baby drawn by someone too lazy to call untalented. Maybe Baby Boomer's "surprise ending" Hulk Hogan mentioned is interesting! This would normally be another unsolved Hulk Hogan mystery, but I have that game. I can just beat it.

What? It was the wrong baby? By gun and terror you led this baby home, but to a different woman missing her child? And then the game tells you to wait for the sequel which actually did come out 35 years later, a real thing that ha"VE YOU EVER BEEN TO THE MOON!?" is what Koko B. Ware might say if he saw me getting this distracted.

Like face and heel wrestlers having a friendly chat about Nintendo strategy rather than a chair fight, the show's kayfabe is shattered by a shot of this girl furiously navigating Baby Boomer's opening text crawl.

Hulk Hogan checks in with "Mr. Wonderful" Paul Orndorff about his thoughts on Baby Boomer, the game where you shoot at a baby, and it's wonderful, along with so many other wonderful things. None of it is happy, though. It's coming out with much more fury than you're picturing. This man has only one way to describe things, and it's starting to make him angry. A boy behind him pretends he's controlling footage of a baby crawling off a cliff, and then a thing happens you never would have expected, but will sound obvious after you hear it…

… Koko B. Ware attacks one of the children. Maybe because these are men used to solving every problem with violence, or maybe he mistook the boy's controller for a rival's plumage, but Hulk Hogan doesn't ask. He simply sends this unhinged man back to his team of youngsters playing Baby Boomer, the game about shooting a baby. I will never stop thinking about this video for as long as I live. My new scale for greatness is The MaxiVision Power Video Challenge and things that aren't The MaxiVision Power Video Challenge.

"Mr. Wonderful" wins the Baby Boomer round, and finally means it when he calls something "wonderful." I don't know what his team did to come out ahead in a 60-second match of not quite killing a baby, but one factor might have been they were playing a different game. That's Pesterminator on the screen behind him. Everything here is at least a little bit wrong, but screaming by too fast to process. It's like riding Koko B. Ware through an emu stampede. All we can do is keep moving, and the only one who thinks things are normal is Koko B. Ware. Speaking of things not being normal, the host of this commercial throws to a commercial break.

This sub-commercial says if we tried to buy all thirty of these games individually, it would cost us almost $1500! It would also require a fucking world-record streak of bad decisions, but sure. You'd have to buy a $50 game about shooting corpses and another $50 game about shooting a baby, then somehow get to the store 28 more times before the FBI profiler attached to your case found you.

Playing this second commercial was maybe a mistake. When you take away the glamor of The Honky Tonk Man, the cheapness of American Video Entertainment's scheme starts to show. When you see a kid put a cartridge into a Nintendo with the name filed off covered in furniture pads before the bare minimum of animation flops out of his TV, you don't think "hell yes." You think, "It's nice that in Herzegovinian prisons they let the inmates build their own Ataris."

It's so shady it genuinely makes you wonder, is this legal? I doubt I'll get arrested for this, but what does an unlicensed sexual torture and also volleyball cartridge do to my Nintendo's warranty? Did selling this get them sued? I can answer that last one: yes! Kind of! This is from an interview Richard Frick did with a Nintendo website:

Ha ha what the fuck. I'm getting distracted again. Where were we… 3 SIMPLE PAYMENTS OF $49.95!?!?

For thirty games, some of which aren't finished, all of which are bad, they want $150 plus shipping and handling. And here's another detail that goes from unexpected to obvious in an instant, but when this cartridge shipped, it only came with fifteen games. I don't have time to get into all the details; the main commercial is back on and "Mr. Wonderful" is explaining his plan to Hulk Hogan.

He isn't going to tell him! Because, and I quote, "everything is WONDERFUL!" Paul "Mr. Wonderful" Orndorff is so lucky his name isn't more specific. If he was called something like "Mr. Obsequious" he would simply overheat and burst the first time he had to describe anything.

They play more games, and it's possible they really are choosing them at random because they make these middle schoolers play Tiles of Fate which is Mahjong with one screen of RPG lore taped to it. "A non-stop, action-packed challenge of a lifetime!!!" bellows Hulk Hogan about fucking Mahjong.

They also play Pyramid, a garbage Tetris made out of triangles, but that's not how Hulk Hogan puts it. Like all these unbelievable games, he describes it as 7,000 cubic meters of roaring, pressurized air blasting the hair and skin from the skull of his co-host. On the subject of co-hosts, they replaced Richard Frick during the commercial break.

Let's meet this young man desperate to introduce himself or even get a word in! But instead of doing that Mike reassures us this thing should play fine on the NES you already have, and says, "Hulk, take it away!"

The kids play another round of knockoff sad games while wrestlers shove them. "Mr. Wonderful" forms another "wonderful strategy" and "wonderful plan" to win a head-to-head minute of Wally Bear and the No Gang, and optimistically adds, "Everything is… won-der-ful! Won-der-ful! Won-der-ful! … won-derful." The chant doesn't catch on because how would the audience know that's what this was? "Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful," is how Paul Orndorff orders appetizers, or participates in a surprise party, or gives a eulogy. He could be talking about anything.

"NOISES AND BIRD NOISES" says bouncing maniac, Koko B. Ware. "VICTORY NOISES," he continues while his mentee behind him gets clumsily disintegrated. I'm not saying these men are bad video game coaches. It's more than that. I'm saying if your goal was to make children perform poorly at video games and leave liking them less, no three men could ever do a better job.

Okay, we're back with Mike. He's finally going to introduce this kid who must be some leading video game champio– wait, never mind. Mike ignores him again and throws to Julianna for another round of game competition.

Game competition isn't quite the right term, but I know what Paul Orndorff would call it.

From the chaos, Hulk Hogan gives the broadcast back to Mike who finally introduces the boy as Michael Elson, from the pages of Nintendo Power magazine! He claims to have played all thirty games on the MaxiVision 30-in-1 cartridge and his favorite is Menace Beach because of the "tense sounds, the killer graphics, and the crazy characters." He also says, "The 3D graphics are so intense! I feel like I'm actually in the game when I play." If you haven't played Menace Beach, this is like saying, "The top movie is Best of Wet Navy Cocks 7 Hours of Butt Boats Extended Play VHS because of the transcendent lighting and Mexican food."

It's such a bad take I'm suspicious of Michael Elson's credentials. But they held a copy of Nintendo Power up to Michael's head and I have that issue. I can just read it.

Let's see, he's not in the staff, or Game Play Counselor Profiles, or pla– wait! Got him! Page 101! He was one of the many children in 1988 who credibly claimed to have scored 999,999 points in T & C Surf Design! Adequate. Moderate!

This isn't nothing, but it's close. It's like if Michael Elson pulled a wheelchair out of a dumpster and said, "This is awesome, and I once wrote a letter to Professor Stephen Hawking." Oh, what luck! The next randomly selected game is his favorite, Menace Beach!

The kids are lucky to be able to take in those intense 3D graphics! They're also lucky each round is only a minute long because as you progress in Menace Beach, your captured girlfriend's clothes rot off. And I don't think Honky Tonk Man's jumpsuit would keep his boner a secret if his team got to this stage:

I have no idea how the wrestlers would deal with this. What am I saying? Of course I do. Paul Orndorff would say, "Wonderful shackles, wonderful panties, wonderful authorities charging into the studio!" And Koko B. Ware would roll into the crowd like a bowling ball yelling, "WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL? IT'S ONLY A PICTURE OF A BIRD AND 17 BIRDS ROWING A BOAT, BIRDS!" By the way, a few years after this infomercial, the perverts responsible for Menace Beach moved a few pixels around and resold it as a Christian game called Sunday Funday, but to be clear, Hulk Hogan is selling children the one with angry titti– damn it, I'm getting distracted again.

Paul Orndorff's kids suck at Menace Beach, so Hulk Hogan hopes he doesn't have to call him "Mr. BLUNDERFUL." It really rattles Paul. It's like someone pulled the rug out from under his life. The most precious thing he's ever known was taken from him, and he is in no emotional state to come up with some cute comeback. So he shoves Hulk Hogan and cries, "What are you saying!? Don't you call me Mr. Blunderful!" Hulk Hogan is stunned. He knows he fucked up.

"Sometimes you bird too far, Bird," Koko B. Ware would say after the show to a red-crested warbler he thought was Hulk Hogan. "Nonsense, brother! You know that dude was blunderful!" it would reply, in perfect Bird.

Somewhere in the smoky chaos, "Mr. Wonderful" Paul Orndorff wins what he thinks is called the Maxi-Fission Challenge! And for the first time possibly ever, his unique speech impairment would have led to him saying the perfect thing. Unfortunately, he's still too hurt to address the crowd, or maybe the camera operators are too tangled up in wires to find him. Either way, I think the secret to his success was spending less time than Honky Tonk Man and Koko B. Ware flapping his arms in front of the kids' faces. In the end his decision to stay out of their line-of-sight was a wonderful plan, but I would have liked to hear it from him.

Instead, we cut to Mike who is obliterated to dust in a pose-off against Hulk Hogan and then signs off for The MaxiVision Power Video Championships, because like everyone else here, he doesn't quite remember the name of this event. It will turn out not to matter, this commercial was technically fraud, so from all of us here at 1-976-THE-PENIS, good night!

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: David Shull, the world record holder for the only person to play pesterminator for more than three minutes. Incredible!

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