Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Genre Character of the Week: Captain S


I can still remember playing old NES games like Mega Man and Legend of Zelda and wondering - what would I do if I could get into the game? Would I be as cool as Mega Man or Link? Television shows like Reboot (yay Canada!) and Captain N the Game Master look at this concept as well, but my personal favourite example of this idea comes from the web series The New Adventures of Captain S, from PBC Productions. This week we'll take a look at Chad Belmont, aka Captain S, Video-Land defender (pictured above).

Chad is a pretty simple guy, he's good matured, loves milk shakes, is a Junior in High School and a huge SEGA fan. He's got two best friends, Lunk and Becky, and a major crush on a girl named Stacey. Everything changes for him one day when he receives a magic SEGA game cartridge and is called to be the prophesied Video-Land defender, Captain S.

As super powered Captain S, Chad needs to balance his day to day life with his adventures in video land, which is under attack by a villain named the Game Genie and Chad's nemesis at School - Nigel Edmond Silverman, aka NES. Chad stands out as a genre character of the week due to his ability to learn valuable sitcom-style lessons each week, defeating the bad guy, helping his friends, and going out for delicious milk shakes afterwards - the stories are simple but very effective.

The show is incredibly clever in its references to '80s era sitcoms, and the catalogue of SEGA Genesis games, which I played a lot of when I was in elementary, but not so much since then. If you haven't seen it yet, go and check it out, the webisodes tend to run about 5 minutes and the entire series is only 10 episodes. I love that they have a lot of behind the scenes videos on the website as well.


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