Gamer Girls' Garage

Dubbed "Television's First Gaming Magazine" ("...Only Gaming Magazine" prior to the debut of G4), Gamer Girls' Garage is a video game review show that, as the title might imply, is hosted entirely by women.
The show was created by , two daughters of immigrants who fled North Korea, and debuted in 1991. Amanda initially hosted the show by herself; Anna would not appear until partway through Season 2, on her 18th birthday.
St. Clair Publications has been involved with the show since 1995. For 25 years, "The Pubs" merely only funded the show; however, following Amanda Kim's death in November 2020, Anna sold the show's rights to the Pubs, and they've been an active show producer ever since. Currently, the show is hosted by Anna and Stephanie Sheh, the latter of whom is occasionally in-character as or .
==Premise==
The show provides reviews of video games. It's unique in the fact that the reviewers buy the games with their own money and are not furnished with the games by the company like with most other review publications. It's also unique for airing 46 episodes per season and lasting over a month longer than most other St. Clair Publications shows.
There are three reviews done per episode. The first and last reviews are generally ordinary game reviews, with Anna doing the first review and Stephanie doing the last. The middle review is usually one of the following:
*Remake or Rebreak?: Done by and active since the beginning, this segment looks at video game remakes and assesses how much better or worse they are than the originals.
*Five Years Later: Initially done by until a week into Season 31 (after she was fired due to scandal) and now done by long-time fan , and active since the beginning, this segment takes a look at a video game from five years ago and sees if it still holds up.
*What's Hot in Japan?: Done by and active since the beginning, this looks at video games that were released in Japan only, or that have not yet been released outside of Japan.
*This Month in Sports: Done by and active since Season 10 (except for a break between Seasons 13 and 16), this is a collection of "bloopers" and misplays from sports games that the other Gamer Girls did, as well as reviews of the various editions of sports games such as the Madden NFL line.
*Indie Street Cred: Done by and active since Season 10 (again, except for Seasons 13 to 16), this looks at "indie" games, natch.
*Retro Rewind: Done by and active from Season 17 to 29, this reviewed a game from before the show's debut. Was retired after Julia felt that she was running out of games to review. She didn't even TRY to hide that she wanted to retire the segment during an obviously-trash "parody" review of Pong in Season 28.
*MMO Madness: Done by and active from Seasons 17 to 29, this segment reviewed updates from multiple MMO games. Was retired after Lori felt that MMO's were "dying".
*What Could Have Been: Done by and active since Season 23, this looks at cancelled games and sees if they should have been released or not. Was the rarest middle segment for what should have been obvious reasons, and has ultimately been reduced to an in-between segment since Season 29.
*On rare occasions, the third review may be a normal review just like the other two.
*Also, on some episodes, the middle segment (or sometimes all three) may be a "special" that looks back at something. For example, one Season 3 episode was a retrospective on the Great Crash of 1983, while another reviewed the Super Mario Bros. movie.
All games reviewed are graded on a scale of 1-10 in six key areas (five prior to Season 11): gameplay, graphics, sound, music (lumped in with sound before Season 11), "lasting appeal" (replay value, how much you'd want to replay the game), and "intangibles" (generally any miscellaneous stuff the reviewer liked or hated). The game is then assigned a final score, along with a recommendation to "", "", or "".
On PBS and online airings of the show, the following segments occur in between the reviews:
*Altered Reality: Done primarily by Anushka under the Remake or Rebreak banner, this segment looked at games that were changed in their rereleases to Nintendo's Virtual Console, Xbox Live Arcade, or similar services.
*Anna Goes Bananas: Rants on questionable industry and fandom practices. The U.S. Congress's attack on Mortal Kombat 1 is a famous example of what might be discussed in this segment.
**Idiot Alert: A more specific, rarely-seen subset of this segment that calls out specific video game fans/fandoms dubbed problematic by the Gamer Girls and suggests what you should do to deal with them.
*Fandom Spotlight: Highlights positive things done in video game fandom.
*Gamer News: What it says on the tin. Various gaming news headlines that don't really fit in anywhere else.
*I Spy: Leak analysis.
*Quickies: "Quick" reviews of games that the Gamer Girls feel don't merit a full review. These reviews only show the final rating and not the ratings in the individual key areas.
*What Could Have Been: Already mentioned above.
Oddly enough for a show that was essentially founded by feminism and is done entirely by women, gender politics is usually downplayed, except on one of the recurring specials listed below. Another obvious exception was the Season 24 premiere, which happened just after the Gamergate scandal, and a few episodes in the prior two seasons focusing on Anita Sarkeesian.
===Recurring specials===
*State of the Gamers' Union Address: Done once a year since the beginning, traditionally in November, the best and worst games of last year and other major events are highlighted.
*Game of the Future: Active since the beginning, the Gamer Girls will focus on a video game that's in development. Has been on hiatus since Season 28 for unknown reasons, although the fact that one season focused on Yandere Simulator probably didn't help...
*GGG's Top 10: Also active since the beginning, this episode is just one big top 10 list around a specific theme, usually around something that's "hot" for that season. For Season 25, this was changed to "The 25 Worst Games of the Past 25 Years" for obvious reasons.
*GGG at E3: Active since Season 20, this is what it says on the tin: the Gamer Girls go to an E3 convention and show the highlights. The Gamer Girls have also irregularly gone to other conventions since Season 2.
*Gaming in the Real World: Only done up to Season 5, this special was about how skills learned in video games allegedly could be applied to the real world. Cancelled after nearly every doctor in Roanoke, Virginia, as well as the FCC and FTC, complained.
*Young Gamer Girls Contest: Was done almost every season from Seasons 9 to 24 in conjunction with Girl Scouts of the U.S.A.. The Kim Sisters would solicit gaming ideas from girls ages 5 to 14. The five entries the Kims liked the best would be shown on the episode, and at the end, whoever won would be given a college scholarship, typically $30,000 (the first contest gave a $25,000 scholarship while the final one gave out $50,000). It was ultimately retired due to the Girl Scouts having "gone woke" in the wake of the Gamergate scandal; also, 2013's contest featured a scandal.
==Production history==
The show originally aired in syndication. It moved to PBS in 1993 when the Kim Sisters felt that the syndicated production model would be unsustainable. Despite this, a syndicated version of the show continued to air until 2001, which often edited out the segments in between the three reviews.
At some point in Season 3, the show began to produce game footage at , a relationship that the Kim Sisters ended in 2015 over what they felt was "the increasing intrusion of certain politics we don't like" into the campus. The show has used a literal garage at the St. Clair Publications studios ever since.
==Final notes==
The Gamer Girls like to talk about how they never review games by St. Clair Publications, apparently due to conflict-of-interest issues. Also, this show only reviews canon video games, so if Alex ever reviews any games on Fantendo à la FGN or the League of Fantendo Critics, he will not do it under the banner of this show.
Category:Live Action Series
Category:1991
Category:Reviews