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List Price: $19.97 | | Label: Starz / Anchor Bay
Salesrank: 88850
Released: June 28, 2005 |
| Our Price: $6.26 |
| Used Price: $4.68 |
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MPAA Rating: Unrated
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
Ever wonder what happens to your favorite video game characters after the game ends? The far-from-ordinary suburban Smashenburn family lives in an alternate video-game universe comprised of off-beat characters. Within this world of action heroes, monsters, and cartoon characters inspired by popular video games, the Smashenburns find unconventional ways to survive everyday issues.
Description of Game Over - The Complete Collection:
The CGI animated series Game Over is built around an inventive premise--how do video game characters live when they're not in the middle of the action? Viewers that missed its original broadcasts during its 2004 network run can now enjoy the entire series in this double-disc set. Game Over invites you into the hectic lives of the Smashenburn family: accident-prone racecar driver dad Rip (Patrick Warburton, Puddy from Seinfeld); wife and secret agent Raquel (Lucy Liu, who replaced Marisa Tomei), feisty daughter Alice (Saturday Night Live's Rachel Dratch), and youngest son Billy (E.G. Daily from Rugrats), who suffers under his unrequited crush for an exchange student (who, being from Japan, is an anime character, natch). The five episodes find the family adopting a monstrous, cigar-smoking pet (voiced by comic Artie Lange, who first appears in "Meet the Smashenburns"), experiencing popularity at school ("Basic Win-Stincts"), and attempting to bond ("Into the Woods"), each with disastrous results. It's amusing stuff, especially if you're a fan of other brash, pop culture-driven programs like Family Guy, and video game fans will get a kick from seeing characters from several popular games pop up in cameos throughout the series.
The Complete Collection offers a surprisingly solid sampling of extras for a largely unknown series; chief among these is the sixth episode, "Monkey Dearest," which went unaired in America. A trivia game, character bios, and short featurettes on production round out the supplemental features. --Paul Gaita
Game Over - The Complete Collection Reviews:
Complete, but not a whole lot here... 
2009-03-09 - I like this show. I watched it when it first aired, and caught it whenever I could, which UPN made difficult as they kept moving it. I like all the characters, though Billy (the Son) and Turbo (the 'Pet') could be somewhat grating.
Patrick Warburton, Lucy Liu, Rachel Dratch, Artie Lange and Marie Matiko do great jobs, but all the voices are fairly strong. Jennifer Coolidge's character, well, that depends on if you like her style or not.
Essentially a sitcom, Game Over used many stereotypes of that genre, and used a couple too many throwaway jokes, but it's place in gamer culture offered it something unique, and it's a shame it didn't get the chance to do more. I wish it lasted longer so the world could've been fleshed out.
My favorite episode is the second, with Billy going out with a Japanese Anime(?) girl, and Alice taking the C.A.T.S., a test to see what she can do in their world. This leads to what's probably my favorite line in the series:
"I'm sorry kiddo. You'll meet other girls."
"Will they shoot rainbows out of their butts?"
"...You'll meet other girls."
Now as for the DVD, it says it's complete, but it's pretty bare. It has all aired episodes as well as the unaired sixth, but it's missing the unaired pilot, where Marisa Tomei voiced Raquel.
For special features, only "Watch Closely" is worth checking out, to see where the crew slipped in their names and various other tidbits. The character bios don't tell you anything you won't know if you watch the series, and the "Trivia Game" is a series of easy questions about things in the show, and winning lets you see a trailer, one I remember seeing on tv before. The Progression Reel is a kind of neat, but is only a minute or two long and really nothing special.
Game Over was a nice little show and ended before it could do much, and while this dvd is lacking, it's likely all us fans are going to get. At least we can now add it to our collections.
Good comedy
2008-07-02 - If you were heavy into video games in the late '80s and early '90s, then you'll understand and enjoy this series. I liked it when it was first on and never understood why it didn't last. Unlike many shows, it was funny without becoming vulgar, cute without becoming sickening.
Just Say No to Bad Ripoffs 
2008-04-16 - I haven't seen a ripoff of an amazing show THIS BAD since "Ace Lightning"!
It seems to me after viewing it that this program tried to be like the now-returning show ReBoot, which had characters in your computer reacting to games being played and viruses being downloaded. In that was also a man (Guardian Bob), woman (Dot Matrix), boy (Enzo Matrix), his eventual crush AndrAIa, and a very willful dog named Frisket. The show was also littered with references to pop culture (Elvira, Aliens, Are You Being Served?, Looney Tunes, Evil Dead, to name only a handful) as well as computer terms...and about ten years ahead of this show in airing (1994).
That one is famous, lasted over a decade to recently be revived by the new company with yet more episodes in the making, and to this day has a very dedicated fan base. This one for -some- odd reason, only lasted a few episodes. Ripoffs of cult classics never do too well.
See ReBoot instead. That one is well worth your money, has richly designed character personalities, thick plot development, and it's safe for the kids while being incredibly entertaining and time-transcending for adults, as well as the children they used to be when it first aired.
Support the original, first ever, all CGI-animated television show to hit the airwaves!
At home with the video game characters
2007-03-19 - At the end of a long day of video gaming, all those characters have to go somewhere, right? This set of eight shorts, each the length of a TV slot, follows them home.
If "The Incredibles" hadn't already done something similar, only more clever, this would have looked a bit stronger. Still, it stands on its own well enough, and the child characters (teenage Alice and tweenage Billy) are are given better roles. Alice's attitude, in particular, has a lot going for it.
It has its clever moments, though. The CGI polygons are visible fairly often, reminding the viewer of the limits of 2004-era gaming hardware for PCs. The super-powered anime exchange student is good, too, as Billy's first crush. He's overawed when she flies him around, leaving a multi-colored trail behind her. When she has to go back to Japan (the country), he's heart-broken.
Dad: You'll meet other girls.
Billy, inconsolable: Will they shoot rainbows out of their butts?
It's funny, entertaining, and thoroughly forgettable. So, if you have an evening you don't plan to remember, give it a shot.
//wiredweird
Defeated By Bad Writing 
2006-10-02 - This premise could have been good, but it was brought down by lousy scripting. The animation was of a high level, like "Reboot," & the voice work was stellar. Patty Jausoro was a producer on this and is great with animation... as well as other things.
