 Ever see the Arnold movie Running Man from the mid-80s? The arcade game Smash TV set out to make a video game aped off of the theme from the movie, which is to pit one or two players in an arena and send waves and waves of enemies at them as part of some kind of twisted game show, complete with a host, an audience, and everything. Clear the room, move on to the next, and collect all sorts of power-ups and money along the way. They even included a sleazy Richard Dawson-like host, you gotta love this guy. Smash TV was a huge hit in the arcades for its unique gameplay using two joysticks, one dedicated to moving and one dedicated to the direction of fire, shooting in eight directions from a top-down viewpoint. It's a continuation of the designer Eugene Jarvis's earlier work from the game Robotron 2084. The Super Nintendo port, Super Smash TV, arrived pretty early in the Super Nintendo lifespan, that's usually bad news for an arcade port, but this game is very good and does a nice job capturing the spirit of the original arcade game both in theme and gameplay. They did an admirable job keeping the twin stick shooter controls in place, they used the D-pad to move, and you essentially used the four right hand buttons as a makeshift D-pad to fire, that's pretty clever, and it works well. Anyway, if anything describes Super Smash TV, it's that it's enjoyable chaos at its best. There's just a ridiculous amount of stuff going on at all times, the amount of enemies on screen at once is just crazy, in fact I'm reminded of games like Lemmings when I see stuff like this, but you can't just mindlessly shoot at everything, you gotta keep one eye out for power-ups and money, which you'll need for extra points to get extra lives and continues, and you will need every single one of those because as you might expect, this game is just a tad on the difficult side, but just like Pocky and Rocky, which I talked about earlier this month, the difficulty is curbed a bit with a second player. However, there are no cool tool player combos or maneuvers in these games, sadly. Anyway, Smash TV also received ports on the Genesis Game Gear and Sega Master System, but what's strange is that those games are also titled Super Smash TV? I thought the Super in the title was a Super Nintendo thing, I don't get it. This game also landed on the NES as well as a bunch of home computer systems, but the consensus is that the Super Nintendo port is the best of the bunch because the SNES controller lends itself so well to the core gameplay. So yeah, Super Smash TV is as advertised exactly what you'd expect, no surprises, just pure chaos and adrenaline. It's almost like, did you think Pocky and Rocky was a little too cutesy for your taste? Well, this is just about as far from that universe as you could get with the same kind of gameplay, so here you go. If you can't get enough Smash TV, there's total carnage, and for all intents and purposes, it is a Smash TV sequel, but instead of going from room to room as part of a game show, it's a military motif where you're dropped off in the Middle East off to rescue hostages. The gameplay is almost exactly the same, though. Really, the only thing I noticed that was different was the ability to lay mines with the shoulder buttons. The weapons are a bit better and show a lot more range, but they kind of have to because there's a lot more real estate to work with in this game. There's also a lot of cheap deaths in this game. Like, right here, what the hell just killed me? In addition, total carnage was dialed way, way back from the original arcade version. The blood is green for some reason, and maybe it's my imagination, but you just don't move as quickly as you do in Smash TV. Maybe it's the slow scrolling that's playing tricks on me, but it sure seems like you don't move around as fast. I'm nitpicking, though. Total carnage is good for what it is, and its controls, range of weapons, and overall carnage are just as fun as Super Smash TV. But for my money, Super Smash TV takes the cake. I love the game show theme and the obnoxious game show host, and it just seems faster and more intense. I think keeping the action within closed quarters makes a difference, and it makes it harder to dodge and really amps up the intensity. So yeah, Super Smash TV, total carnage, can't go wrong with either, but I'd rather go with Super Smash TV. I'll buy that for a dollar.