- Adaptation Displacement: Not very many people are aware of the two shows that came before X-Play were GameSpot TV (1998-2001; ZDTV and TechTV) and Extended Play (2001-2003; TechTV), let alone the fact that X-Play started out as a TechTV show in San Francisco for over a year from 2003 to 2004. Thus, most people are only familiar with the G4 episodes in Los Angeles.
- Award Snub: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword in the "Deathmatch: Best of 2011" awards. Skyward Sword wasn't nominated for the show's Game of the Year award in 2011. This upset a lot of fans of the series, and they went on to make their voices heard in the "Video Game Deathmatch" which would be voted on by the fans. It went on to win the entire tournament, beating Assassin's Creed: Revelations in the final round. Adam Sessler and Blair Herter went on to say at the end of the video announcing the winner that Skyward Sword only won because of angry Nintendo fanboys who were upset that they didn't nominate it for a Game of the Year award.
- Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: 1000th episode surprise guest Rip Taylor.
- Condemned by History: Throughout the Turn of the Millennium, this show was a Cult Classic with a devoted fanbase who loved the combination of video game review show and Sketch Comedy that mixed insightful commentary on the latest games with snarky, nerdy humor. In The New '20s, more social media users and game journalists came to view the show as a symbol of how the "Political Correctness Is Evil" attitude was normalized among 2000's gaming culture. Between the try-hard edgy (or occasionally deliberately offensive) humor, the constant Fan Hater moments, and the bashing of Japanese media that crossed the line into straight-up racism (including Yellowface), it's now becoming harder and harder to admit to ever being a fan, with the few who are open about it finding the show to not even have the Nostalgia Filter on its side. The failed revival and the various controversies that spawned did not help matters.
- Ensemble Dark Horse: When the show used to have sketches, the breakout characters were Canadian Guy, Screaming Intern, Ratty, Johnny X-Treme, Roger The Stan Lee Experience, and Shirtless Intern.
- No love for the Drunk Link character? Not even for the other interns themselves?
- Or Crazy "I'm going to make me a woman suit!" Adam?
- Or the Merchant?
- Or Splinter Cell: Special Agent Bob and Secret Agent Steve.
- Fan Nickname: The first three G4 episodes have been referred to by some fans as The Transitional Trilogy due to the budget and the new set used for the rest of the episodes not being built yet.
- Fandom Rivalry: With Judgement Day, another review show that ran on G4. Both sides would argue which show is funnier or has a better review format and they can be pretty heated.
- Franchise Original Sin:
- A lot of what the short-lived revival has been criticized for doing was also present in the original series. Many who didn't like it back then would put up with it due to having next to no competition to turn to, while others actually found it pretty entertaining, but by the time of the revival the show was criticized, among other things, for being virtually indistinguishable from other gaming review shows outside of name recognition.
- Even within the original run, the show wasn't immune to this; the skits were seen as amusing and were helped by being at least somewhat relevant to the game being reviewed, or at least the general theme of the episode, but over time, the shift to other genres were being seen as increasingly distant from the subject of video games entirely.
- Harsher in Hindsight:
- The show did April Fools' episodes that involved format changes, and other things that fans in general would fear, like the time Adam and Morgan did the show from the Tech Live newsdesk, or the time Adam "left" to host a show called Meet the Sess, and Morgan tried to go through a few replacements. In 2008, the show did eventually change formats, much to the fandom's dismay, Adam would abruptly leave in 2012, and the show would die shortly afterward.
- The show's apparent dislike of the JRPG genre can be uncomfortable in retrospect due to many Japanese developers speaking up in later years about how prevalent this kind of negative stigma placed on the term JRPG became, and how that stigma played a role in many of the design choices made by Japanese developers in response to the negativity. The fact the show was one of the loudest sources of said opinion makes it worse.
- Adam Sessler's departure from the original show was seen as the moment where it completed its Seasonal Rot, and his return was being treated as a selling point for the revival. However, to say he's become a rather controversial figure, especially after the revival, would be putting it lightly, with many who used to be his fans admitting they've lost respect for the man.
- Hilarious in Hindsight:
- Early on, Adam and Morgan would bash the hell out of Los Angeles quite often, especially Morgan, who hated the city she grew up in so much, she was quite open about her resentment towards it on this show and her old show The Screen Savers. Fast forward to late 2004, and both Adam and Morgan eventually moved to Los Angeles to continue hosting the program. While Adam moved back to San Francisco in 2012, Morgan has since stayed in Los Angeles.
- One of Adam's characters was a Rip Taylor look-a-like named Shad Grimgravy. On the 1000th episode in 2010, Rip Taylor actually made an appearance.
- The first episode produced after moving to Los Angeles was shot in Adam's Apartment in around August 2004. In December 2020, Adam came back to reviewing with a review of the glitch-fest Cyberpunk 2077 in his home.
- Improved Second Attempt: Despite its short lifespan, the revival series was much less racist towards Japanese games and were much more even handed as a result, such as giving positive coverage of several JRPGs like Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VIII -REUNION- and speaking very fondly of the tropes and characters present within, or a glowing retrospective of Dragon Ball video games by The Black Hokage. As such, many PlayStation fans as well as fans of Japanese games in general are far more receptive towards the show.
- Mis-blamed: Many have blamed Frosk's “The Reason You Suck” Speech for being primarily, if not solely, responsible for the revived G4 being cancelled after less than a year. Heavy debates on the matter aside, there have been reports that the revived G4 wasn't exactly doing well in numbers even before she made her speech, making it unlikely she was the primary or sole cause of the shutdown.
- Overshadowed by Controversy:
- Frosk's “The Reason You Suck” Speech given to certain members of the audience (namely, the ones sending her and other female staff sexist harassment) would come to overshadow the relaunch of X-Play, and, by extension, the G4 revival itself. Many took issue with her comments, and a months-long online harassment campaign against her ensued that got so bad that even searching for either X-Play or G4 would pull up numerous complaints against Frosk, which ruined G4's search engine optimization. This eventually led to Frosk departing from the network several weeks before the whole channel folded, as well as her leaving the gaming industry for good.
- Clips from older episodes of X-Play began to circulate across social media early in 2023 showing some very racist language used against Japanese games reviewed on the show, including jaw-dropping bits with Morgan Webb claiming Japan only became civilized after being nuked and later saying "I fear for the day that zany bean-curd-loving race finally rules over us". Adam Sessler defended these bits on social media, making wild claims that overly-defensive consumers,
the alt-right and gamer culture
were why he was being attacked, earning widespread condemnation including from Kotaku's Luke Plunkett
and Gamespot's Jessica Howards
while tarnishing the show's legacy along with Sessler himself.
- Reviews Are the Gospel: Some people took the show's reviews far too seriously, despite the fact that everyone knew their hatred of certain genres and even certain series of games, their tendency to give most games a 2/5, or on the flipside, their strange ability to read far too much into their scores.
- Seasonal Rot:
- Around 2006, give-or-take, many have complained that the show dropped in quality when they became over-reliant on sketches, became more-and-more of fan haters, and started having a bias against Sony and to a lesser extent Nintendo games while praising anything made by Microsoft. This led some to believe that the writers were on Microsoft's payroll.
- The rot became more evident once G4 got rid of almost all of its original video game and tech based programing save for X-Play and Attack of the Show!. Stuff like Cheat!, which was originally its own show, became a segment on X-Play and the show itself became less focused on reviews and comedy and more on sneak peeks, interviews, E3 buzz, and various other things. It all felt like everything video gaming was cramped into this one show, making it feel cluttered. Once Adam was fired, it completed the rot and practically signaled the show's imminent demise.
- "Seinfeld" Is Unfunny: When Extended Play first aired, there was little to nothing like it, and this carried on when the show became X-Play. But with the advent of YouTube and many reviewers coming in its wake, many have come to feel that the show has aged poorly. It's at best seen as a relic of a bygone age, with many reviewers not only having filled the void, but arguably surpassing X-Play in quality.
- They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The fandom reaction to the 2008 retool. Of course, making a video game review show into something else entirely would naturally tend to ruffle up some feathers here and there.
- Values Dissonance: For viewers in The New '20s, X-Play can come across as a pretty jarring example of the 2000s-era Political Correctness Is Evil attitude, particularly regarding gamer culture. In addition to racist comments made about Japanese-developed games or the Japanese in general, there's also oversexualization and inappropriate comments directed at female characters (both regarding the games and actual members of the staff) that included rape/sexual assault jokes, mockery of the disabled, varying degrees of disrespect for LGBT affairs (such as referring to to the eponymous character of Zatch Bell! as a "transvestite" and making various comments about Birdo's gender identity), and the flippant attitude towards bullying and violence. While these were seen as irreverent ribbing at the time and some fans argue should be viewed in the greater context of 2000s pop culture, other contemporary viewers are not nearly so charitable.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Ymmv/XPlay
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