Mark was a contestant on a special Cliff Hanger show. Cliff Hanger was a brand new laser disc game when this show was taped and when the show was over, Mark took home his very own Cliff Hanger game. We invited a previous STARCADE! contestant Marcelo Hassmer to come back and play the Cliff Hanger game during this special show ... so all the Starcaders could see the fair damsel rescued. When the show ended, Marcelo did just that - or at least, Cliff, the suave international hero, saved the princess with an assist from Marcelo.

Reason he wanted to be on STARCADE!: "I like to play video games and think it would be interesting to be on a television show". Mark also said he was designing video games ... "I am a computer game programmer & designer. I design and sell games on the Commodore 64 computer ... In 1982 (that would be when Mark was 14) a friend and I started a small company to market our games written for the Commodore 64."

He described his video game playing ability as "average" but he far exceeded that playing Cliff Hanger and pretty much won everything we had to offer.

In 2000 when Mark checked in, he wrote: "WHAT EXCITEMENT TO FIND THIS SITE!!! For years I've done sporadic Web searches for info on STARCADE! ... I participated in (and won!) the Cliff Hanger special. Great fun. By the way, as I am curious......am I still under any contractual obligations having been a contestant on the show? I recall something about having to notify the producers before running for public office ... but it was so long ago."

A silly rule we had to abide by ... and no, Mark, you can run for whatever office you like...whenever you like...and use your STARCADE! experience as a springboard.

In May 2021 I connected with Mark on Starcade on YouTube ... asked him what happened to all the prizes he won. Here's his reply:

I enjoyed Cliff Hanger for years, but eventually it was languishing in Mom's garage. It turns out that among hardcore video game collectors, there is a subset that focuses on laserdisc games. And among those collectors, one of the most sought after games is Cliff Hanger. And among the Cliff Hanger fans, they ALL first saw the game on Starcade. So among this very specialized group of collectors, the "Starcade Cliff Hanger" is a thing of legend. So back in 2001ish, during a period of underemployment, I sold it for $6K. Now I only have my memories...thankfully on YouTube.

The other prizes: the RB5X robot was kind of a bust; I didn't have a terminal with the right RS-232 interface to program it, so it just sat there. I ended up selling it in 1985 or so to a home robotics store (yes, that was once a thing!).

The Lasonic cassette player rocked my Beatles cassettes for a dozen years, until it found a new home at a garage sale.

The Miss USA Collection jeweled pendant from Gordon's Jewelers was given to my daughter, Miss USA.

Funny thing, about a year after doing the show I got a letter saying basically 'Greetings from Starcade prize redemption. We are sorry you have not received your RB5X robot. The company is no longer in business. As per your contract, we will be replacing it with a prize of equal or greater value.' I thought hmmm...I got the robot, but OK... Then like a year after that, out of the blue a truck showed up with a lot of VERY HEAVY boxes. It was hundreds of pounds of solid oak. The replacement prize was a large solid oak wall unit with roll-top desk. It was actually pretty nice. It just happened that my dad was moving into a new law office at the time, and this unit fairly suited his space. So the unexpected oak wall unit with roll-top desk ended up in Dad's office, for which he traded me a round trip plane ticket to London, where a friend and I spent New Years 1986-87 (my freshman year in college).

Some 20 years ago I wrote a bit about my Starcade experience for the Dragon's Lair Project website, that you can read here: http://www.dragons-lair-project.com/community/related/starcade/. A while back I was searching podcasts for anything about Starcade. Found one, where most of their info came from an old gaming magazine writeup about the show...which was pretty much word for word taken from my Dragon's Lair Project narrative. Meaning out of the blue I was listening to a podcast talking about me. Kinda strange.
Thank you Mavis for the wonderful programs you created. Being on Starcade is a fond memory from my youth, especially fun to relive from time to time here on YouTube. May all your troubles get zapped!

Thank you Mark for the update ... Starcade forever!!!