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Remembering Portal

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In a previous Age, Comcast launched a TV channel for Gamers. It was a lot of talk shows and PR-parroting, but it had a gem that seems to be forgotten: Portal.

Portal was a show about the MMOs of the era. It had a live-action host in a "hub" for virtual worlds, and most of the segments were early-00s machima. This was really novel and cool at the time: real gameplay footage from buy-and-subscribe MMOs, on TV. This was years before YouTube and broadband was still rolling out -- so no YouTube. Seeing inside EverQuest or Asheron's Call would require you to look at screenshots or go buy the game, subscribe, and download a ton of patches.

A split-screen talk-show style frame from a TV show. On the left is a man in a jump suit, with several screens showing 00s-era MMOs behind him. On the right is a low-poly poorly-textured 3D badger. The chyron says the badget is Berney, Dave's Best Friend.

I was interested in virtual worlds already, but Portal gave me a front-row seat to see what made the different MMOs cool. I don't think I'd have turned out to be a Hardcore MMO Gamer if not for the show.

Everquest, Asheron's Call, Anarchy Online, and Dark Age of Camelot were featured commonly. There were odd little plots and recurring characters1 to make this more than just parroting PR for MMO publishers.

The Drifter was one of the most important characters. Real deep voice, high-level in every game, and always ready to kick some ass. He was a Gamer's Gamer.

Screenshot of an MMO from the early 00s, with low-poly graphics. A knight in steel armour with a shield is fighting large green frog-people.

A bunch of these episodes are on YouTube and I'm planning to rewatch the show in the near future -- or as much of it still exists. Sadly, most of season one and a few episodes of season two are lost to time. Portal did not survive G4's reboot, and I don't think there were re-runs past that point. They certainly never released Portal on DVD or anything like that. I imagine all the surviving episodes were recovered from random folks' VHS copies.

I learned about EVE from Portal. Dave played a trailer and said Portal would cover the game further2. But the trailed was life-changing: EVE, even with the original graphics engine, was gorgeous. And it had space ships. A spaceship MMO was exactly what I wanted3; I signed up for their forums and the closed beta as soon as Portal's credits rolled.

I'd love to go back and re-watch that episode, since it's personally significant. But I'm pretty sure it's S01 E08 "E3", which has not yet been recovered. 😔

There was some talk of bringing Portal back as a web series, but nothing ever happened. The creator & host, Dave Meinstein, disappeared from public life not too long after mentioning the reboot. I pinged Peter Lurie, voice of The Drifter, on Twitter a couple years ago and he said Dave was doing fine.

I'll end the post with an era-appropriate link: the Un-Official Dave Meinstein Fanclub, set up by some fans on Tripod. This site has outlived several iterations of G4 and will probably outlive all of us 🫡

And if you've got any old VHS that you taped G4 on in 2002 or 2003 ... check 'em some time. Maybe you can give the community another episode or two.

  1. Dave's friends, or guildies, or whatever. It wasn't portrayed quite like that, but that's essentially what was happening. ↩

  2. I don't think Portal ever followed up on EVE. I don't know their filming schedule, but EVE would have released in the middle of the second season airing. ↩

  3. Earth and Beyond existed at this point in time, but I don't think I knew about it. I would eventually learn about its existence -- and impending death -- from the EVE community. ↩