Well, that didn't work. Of the 168 shows on the air in the 2003-04 TV season, "Game Over" was 168th in the ratings. Game over, indeed.

Looking at the cast list, one wonders how it went that badly. Lucy Liu and Patrick Warburton provide the voices of Raquel and Rip Smashenburn, the parents of the family. Liu was a great choice to play an adventurer based on "Tomb Raider"'s Lara Croft, and Warburton's voice was made to speak as a race-car driving video game character. As their kids, E.G. Dailey ("Powerpuff Girls") and "SNL"'s Rachel Dratch are both quite good, while Artie Lang ("The Howard Stern Show") is brutal enough to be Turbo, the Smashenburn's mutant pet. Even the guest voices, including Christopher Guest alums Jennifer Coolidge and John Michael Higgins and comics Tom Kenny and Jan Hooks, are better than you find on most sitcoms.

Unfortunately, the writing staff couldn't keep up with the acting talent, cranking out stories that were done many times before, and placing them in the video game world. Even the characters had some problems inside of the concept. What video game character is Dratch's Alice suppose to represent? Why was interaction with the world of video games limited to throwaway jokes and the Smashenburn's little world? It's that half-hearted attempt at courting the video game audience that probably doomed the series. Instead of new, video-game based episodes, the entire series could be described in six TV Guide episode descriptions:
The fix the family episode
The kids want to be popular episode
The mom works too much episode
The father/son bonding episode
The school test episode
The in-law episode

Though the plots lacked originality, and the laughs were few and far between, there are a couple of moments that show there was promise in this premise. "Alice and the C.A.T.'s" features an anime exchange student who pokes fun at all the conventions of the genre, generating some real laughs. The same could be said for the neighbors, a clan of kung-fu monks. And if Coolidge's Ramona character could have been in every episode, it would have made the series twice as good. If only the rest of the series treated the subject matter the same way, this really could have worked. As it stands now, it's a tremendous failure that now gets a second chance to find an audience.

The DVD
Anchor Bay presents the complete run of "Game Over," which is all of six episodes, on two DVDs. The discs come in a single-width keepcase , with a tray, and an 8-page insert written by series developer Dave Goetsch. The discs feature animated full-frame menus based around video games (natch) with animated transitions between screens. Choices include a play-all option, episode selections, and special features. There are no language options, no subtitles and no closed captioning.

The Quality
If there's one area where these DVDs shine, it's the video quality. The CGI animation is spotless, though far from cutting-edge. I'm willing to give the show the benefit of the doubt, as they may have been shooting for a style that matched the quality of video-game animation at the time better than the textured Pixar style. There's nothing noticeable wrong with the transfer, as one would expect with this type of show.

The audio tracks are standard television 2.0, with a decent level of definition among the voices and nicely produced special effects. Nothing about the sound here stands out, but it won't disappoint either.

The Extras
The extras are spread across the two DVDs, but don't expect anything to blow you away. Very, very slim character bios include a sentence on the character and a short loop of animation, The primary characters are profiled on the first disc, and the supporting cast is on the second.

Much more interesting is the progression reel, which allows you to view a scene in four different stages of production by using the angle button on your remote. It's been done on other DVDs, but is still interesting. What's nice about this feature is a fifth angle that allows you to watch all four stages at once.

Much less interesting are the crew photos, an extensive collection of pictures of the computer animators. Unless you are related to one of these people, this is unlikely to interest you.

The best extra in the set is "Watch Closely," a featurette that points out tons of hidden or subtle jokes and references throughout the series. It seems like the crew should have spent less time on the in-jokes and more time on the real jokes, but this is at least something different.

Wrapping things up is a 10-question trivia quiz. Answer eight correctly, and the DVD promises "never-released footage." Do not lose sleep studying. The reward does not even come close to equaling the effort, though there's one minutely interesting aspect of this footage.

The Bottom Line
The show doesn't embrace the video game world enough to draw interest from that sector, and the jokes are hardly funny enough to interest traditional sitcom viewers. What you have left is a middling series with an unbelievable cast. But even with the voice firepower this show has at its disposal, it simply couldn't make the interesting concept work. The DVD set seems a bit more like a gift to the show's crew than a collection for fans, with very in-joke focused extras, but considering it was the lowest-rated show on the air, the fan base can't be much larger than the staff.

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*The Reviewer's Bias section is an attempt to help readers use the review to its best effect. By knowing where the reviewer's biases lie on the film's subject matter, one can read the review with the right mindset.