Mario, Kirby, And Samus Aran Shine In The Nintendo Character Manual
Nintendo's Classic NES Game Boy Advance Series Goes Above And Beyond To Discourage Emulation

Sega's Absolutely Rose Street Infomercial Recovered

Absolutely Rose StreetBack in January 2011 I directed your attention to Sega of America's 1994 attempt to sell 32X expansions for its popular Genesis console through the use of a radical Wayne's World-style episode of a non-existent television series.  Entitled Absolutely Rose Street, the infomercial ran in the middle of the night on Viacom-owned cable channels such as Comedy Central, MTV, and other networks watched by the desired demographic.  At the time there weren't any clips of the program available online, but proving once again that the Internet never forgets anything forever, the full commercial/episode has turned up at last.  Courtesy of Video Game Ephemera, here's Absolutely Rose Street.

It’s not really a surprise how contrived and cheesy this show is. The production budget for Absolutely Rose Street could not have been much greater than that of the fictional Game Beat itself! What is a surprise, though, is the appearance of two real-life game creators: Sam Nicholson (producer of Sega’s Tomcat Alley, Midnight Raiders and Surgical Strike) and American McGee (Doom, American McGee’s Alice), playing themselves and patiently answering breathless questions from the Game Beat hosts.

Yes, it's about as terrible as it sounds and is clearly an idea and production rooted in its era.  This kind of thing could only comfortably exist as a legitimate promotional idea in the 1990s; the 1980s weren't ready for this kind of in-your-face attitude and the 2000s had moved past it.  If actual video games couldn't save the 32X, Absolutely Rose Street certainly wasn't up to the job.  Can't blame a company for trying though considering the challenges that Sega of America faced at the time from its Japanese parent company.  At least the American arm tried to make a go of it.  Say, you know what?  Maybe Absolutely Rose Street could work as a 3:00am series on Adult Swim.  They could run the existing infomercial each morning in that early time slot.  Put it on a double billing with Too Many Cooks.  It'd fit right into the whole "what the hell am I watching?" aspect of AS's original programming slate.

Comments