JM Production Company produced 127 episodes of Starcade! … the first one we taped looked nothing like the last one we taped … we kept working on the format. At the beginning, TV execs kept telling us, “the audience needs to participate … no one will watch a game show they cannot participate in”. We wanted to focus on the games … the execs said, “too much free publicity”.

When we taped the episodes for NBC with Alex Trebek as the Host (we taped 3 in April 1982, only 1 was edited for air - it never aired), the tv execs asked us to cover the game cabinets with drapes, so no one could see what was available for play. We could not talk about the games or mention a manufacturer or show a game marquee. As you can imagine, this did not work for anyone -- not the contestants, not the Producers, definitely not the manufacturers of the games who were providing us with the latest games -- to play AND to give away as our Grand Prize. We made the educated decision that it would not work for the audience as well. Sadly, that eliminated NBC from the picture … they ‘passed’ on Starcade.

Free of restrictions, we slowly created what you see today. Starcade Episode #1 does not look like Starcade Episode #133, similar but not the same. We kept tweaking, adding new pieces (like adding the Hotline segment) and refining the pieces that were already a part of the show (like removing the second Name-the-Game segment), adding set pieces (like adding a podium for the Grand Prize so it would be a part of the set) and we commissioned a game guy Ed Anderson (he had written loads of music for the games) to write the Starcade music - you hear it today.

All in all we think we created a pretty good show! After all, Starcade! has survived for over 40 years and continues to attract new fans every day from all over the world! That's magic!!

So you can see how the show changed over the taping sessions from the Episode #1 to Episode #133, here are: Episode #59 and Episode #1, in that order because we think #59 is a better show ... we hope you agree.