I think I’m not the only one who yearns for a return of Nick Arcade. The early 90s game show featured kids answering trivia questions based around video games and then the winners attempting to navigate a virtual reality side-scrolling platformer to claim the top prize. It touched many young gamers’ hearts and made us hope that video games had a bright future as the subject of game shows. Unfortunately, Nick Arcade was cancelled only after one season and we never saw one again – until now.

To help sell Quantum Conundrum, the new game from Portal co-creator Kim Swift, iam8bit has put together a faux-game show based based on the title called “The Super Dimensional Quantum Learning’s Problems and Solutions Gametime Spectacular!!” If that sounds a tad bit ridiculous to you, you’re not alone. It almost seems like the whole thing was thrown together at the last minute and the title was just an afterthought based on stereotypical Japanese game show titles.

So how’s the actual show? It’s admirable that they kept the feel of the game in tact, but the actual content just isn’t very good. We do, however, get to see what Kevin Pereira has been up to since he left G4 and Attack of the Show. He’s the highlight of an otherwise atrocious attempt at trying to be a parody of the game shows I grew up with in the 90s.

This is just the first episode of the planned mini-series so here’s hoping it gets better from here on out. There are still three more dimensions for them to play around with so the challenges could get more interesting.

As a final thought, some network should really bring back Nick Arcade or some kind of approximation. If that fails, I’d be willing to settle for a new season of Legends of the Hidden Temple. We can make this happen.