Bad Influence! (working title- Deep Techies according to BUZZ!, a now defunct video games magazine on ORACLE) was a mid 1990s British factual television program shown on Children’s ITV that looked at video games and computer technology. It was shown on Thursdays at 4:45pm between 29 October 1992 and 2 January 1996 and had a run of four series of between 13 and 15 shows of twenty minutes. For at least two of the four series, it had the highest ratings of any CITV program.
Bad Influence! featured SNES/Genesis era game reviews, the latest hardware news and in-depth looks at gaming issues and new technology. The show was originally presented by Violet Berlin and Andy Crane in the studio and Z Wright in the US. They were also joined by a character called Nam Rood (Door Man backwards) , crazy cheat expert living in his shed outside the studio and then later in the basement who in giving viewers cheats for the video games featured on the show by sticking them to his head would refer to things as "slimy fertlers".
Cheats expert "Nam Rood"
By the fourth series, Violet presented the US reports and Andy was joined by Sonya Saul in the studio.
At the end of the program, viewers were encouraged to record the 'Data Blast,' a number of pages of game articles and information that were flashed rapidly onto the screen during the credits, using a Commodore Amiga. Viewers could then read the pages by replaying it in slow motion on their video player. During the first series a spin-off magazine was launched, although only two editions were produced.
The production company behind the program was Yorkshire Television in Leeds.
As part of a report for the program Berlin was included as a character in the Mega Drive game Micro Machines 2.
Genre: Children
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