Is "Captain Power" Considered a video game?

[jb143]

Does anyone else here remember the "Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future" show from the late 80's? It was "interactive" where you can shoot lightgun equipped toy jets at the screen to score points.

Action Max is in the rarity guide and this is similar (It's more like a cross between Action Max and Lasertag)

It's like lasertag in that you can also fire at other toy ships. Hitting them will make their cockpits eject. I also seem to remember bases for the figures to stand on that would explode when you shoot them.

Does anyone here collect these toys and videos...or even remember it. Would this be consider a video game in the same vein as Action Max?

Me and my brothers had the ships growing up...but being stupid kids we eventually took them apart, broke, and/or lost them

[Phosphor Dot Fossils]

I remember the show well, but for an entirely different reason - the people who made it later went on to make Babylon 5. In fact, the first time the words "Babylon 5" were ever spoken on television was on Captain Power - one of the characters said it was his birthplace (!).

I've actually read an interview or three about CPATSOTF and from what I gleaned from those, I'm not sure you could even charitably call that show a video game. For one thing, for the vast majority of "players", the light gun ship gadgets never even worked. The producers would call Mattel's people in to show them how it seldom worked, and the Mattel people would show them that it worked just fine - if you maxed out the brightness, contrast and color on the TV you were using to play it.

And unless you were playing ship-against-ship instead of shooting at stuff on the TV, there really was very little in the way of actual interaction with the video. So I'd really hesitate to call that a video game. In a similar vein, I've got a couple of remote-control Daleks that can fire infrared beams at each other, trying to hit a specific target, all while screeching "exterminate". While that's great for scaring the bejeezus out of my cats, it's no video game.

[jb143]

Here's a video of the shows intro...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M678PVOf5F0

Yeah...I do remember it not working that great. Shooting at each others ships could be fun though. The main reason I asked was becasue Action Max is in the rarity guide and it's just barely a video game as well. With it, you have to make sure your TV's brightness and contrast is set just right too. But both are "games" involving "video" so I guess it depends on how liberal you are with the definition.

I don't remember the adult story lines and innuendo it mentions here...but I was just a kid and was more interested in the ships and all that.

[Kitsune Sniper]

In my opinion, Captain Power isn't a videogame. It's a toy. You don't really have any choice in what happens, the toy simply reacts to what's happening on the screen.

[RadiantSvgun]

If its the VHS thing, I consider it to be plug and play.

[diskoboy]

I had one of the captain power toys, and one of the VHS tapes. But where I lived, the show never aired. So I got burnt out on it really quick. It's probably sitting in my parents attic, somewhere...

I do remember that if you aimed he sensor at a regular lamp, it would count as a hit, and you could just sit there and rack up points.

And no, I wouldn't count it as a video game.....

[outofkeyslightly]

I remember captain power somewhat fondly, but even as a child I don't remember it being very engaging. Less so than say Duck Hunt anyway. I still have one of the vhs tapes of this, but I sadly don't have either of the ships anymore. It was pretty funny to watch the little gi-joe guys fly out of the cockpit every once in a while, but that was about the extent of the interactivity. There was also some means of telling you how much health you had before the inevitable ejection, but I don't remember it working very well. The ships were pretty neat, but if Captain Power is a video game, then Furby's an rpg...