[1] Dominik Diamond was the host for six of the original seven series while astronomer Sir Patrick Moore featured as the GamesMaster.
Challenges form the biggest section of the show and generally consist of "average" players and celebrities, often competing against each other for the coveted Golden Joystick.
[6] Dominik Diamond usually presented the programme[4] with Sir Patrick Moore appearing in pre-recorded inserts as the 'Games Master'.
These included Derrick Lynch, Kirk Ewing, Julian Rignall, Rik Henderson, Dave Perry, Tim Boone and Neil West amongst others.
Fletcher was better known at the time for having played an American character called "Spike" in the ITV drama series Press Gang.
Series 6 also featured Rik, who was now joined by Ed Lomas, while series 7, due to time constraints and Dave Perry having resigned from the programme's cast (after complaining on-air about being "set up" during a Super Mario 64 challenge), employed two of its own research staff to present the slot, including Richard Pitt.
UK broadcasters had shown sporadic interest in the scene, normally confining coverage to segments within Saturday morning children's programming.
Because GamesMaster was largely a challenge-based programme, games studios could, for example, present a single level to be used for these competitive segments.
Though this worked out well for both game studio and the programme, the experience was somewhat soured when this code ended up being leaked on the Internet.
It led to a great deal of embarrassment and likely upset the trust that existed between the producer, Shiny Entertainment and their publisher, Virgin Interactive.
The production was also more oriented towards actual games players than the first few series, which had been decidedly light in feature content, and no longer poked fun at 'nerds' and 'geeks', as it was young adults and not children and teenagers who appeared on the programme; indeed, they and the publicity-seeking celebrities were now the subject of jokes.
No confirmation exists that any pilots of this concept were ever made; Channel 4 did not see the potential of a gaming programme for an older, adult audience.
The new head of Channel 4 was Michael Jackson who had worked at LWT at the same time as Jane Hewland; the two never saw eye-to-eye.
Due to this close relationship with BSkyB, Hewland International were even successful in convincing them to launch a whole new channel dedicated to gaming, computers, the internet and technology.
Prior to its broadcast, Dominik featured in a sizable Edge interview, with his longtime producer Johnny Finch.
Though it did also feature minor celebrity challenges (mainly football players and glamour models), there were never any head-to-head competitions.
In 1999, the BBC filmed two pilot episodes of a new TV show franchise dedicated to video games titled Bleeding Thumbs - with Gamesmaster's Rik Henderson as assistant producer and initial commentator.
[11] GamesMaster was also the first UK show to feature the sport of robot fighting in a news item, which at the time was on Local Public-access television in the US.
[12] According to the description of the format, celebrities will "undergo challenges, races and fights in virtual battle across all genres of gaming under the watchful eye of the all-knowing GamesMaster".