Deadly Games is an American action science fiction television series that aired on UPN from September 5, 1995, to January 16, 1996. The basic plot of the show is about video game characters that come to life, re-enacting their deadly plans for wanton destruction and world domination in the real world. The series was produced by Viacom Productions.
The first episode introduces the protagonist, Dr. Gus Lloyd, an antimatter physicist, engineer and video game designer who has created a live-action game in his spare time to exert his indignant feelings about his recent divorce and all the people in his life who have all made his life hell on Earth (his father, his ex-wife's mother, his ex-wife's divorce lawyer, his ex-girlfriend, his former employer, a high school football quarterback and bully, his old camp counselor, the garbage man, a corrupt car mechanic); the villains of the game are modeled after all these people. The master villain is Jackal, who is a combination of the devil and Gus' father. The Jackal wears a vanilla white ice cream suit and drives a Chrysler convertible to match.
The hero is "The Cold-Steel Kid", a warrior trying to save the dying world, dons commando wear and is naturally modeled after Gus himself. "The Girl", a sometimes heroic damsel in distress that The Kid must frequently rescue is based on Lauren Ashborne, Gus' ex-wife.
In an accident involving an experimental laboratory project, the villains enter the real world to cause the chaos that they were intended to perpetrate in the game.
Each week, one of the villains tries to carry out an evil plot according to the rules of the video game, and Gus, Lauren, and Gus' friend Peter Rucker try to defeat and destroy the villain. Almost indestructible and superhumanly strong, each villain is programmed with specific weapons and weaknesses based on that villain's "theme": "Killshot" was vulnerable to water; âÂÂThe Bossâ attacked with exploding âÂÂpink slipsâ and was vulnerable to red ink; âÂÂThe Evil Shirleyâ was vulnerable to dirt and she would be killed by having a house fall on her; âÂÂThe Camp Counselorâ was vulnerable to fast-lighting charcoal, and would be killed by an arrow shot through the bulls-eye emblem on his T-shirt; âÂÂThe Practical Jokerâ could only be defeated by foiling his master prank; âÂÂThe Divorce Attorneyâ absorbed electricity and redistributed it as lightning bolts (her weakness was a foam-rubber arrow); âÂÂThe Motivational Speakerâ killed people with a gun that reduced people to his own audiotape, and he could only be destroyed by eating his own words (but he could be slowed down with shots from a paintball gun); a corrupted car mechanic who tasered people with a calculator would be destroyed by seeing his own reflection; âÂÂThe Garbage Manâ was damaged by cleaning products; and âÂÂThe Orthodontistâ and his assistant had an aversion to sugar; âÂÂThe Ex-Girlfriendâ was a misandrist whose weakness was gold. All the henchmen vaporized in blue smoke when the Jackal's weekly scheme was foiled. The Jackal's own vice was being hit with a specific baseballâÂÂone autographed by Bobby Mercer, a souvenir of the only baseball game Gus attended with his father. The Jackal is present in every episode, commanding the other villains and vexing the heroes, usually with a glass of champagne in hand.
The following characters appear in every episode:
Each of the following characters appears in only one episode:
On June 11, 2018, Visual Entertainment released the complete series on DVD in Region 1.