The plot centers on a dystopian television game show in the then-future year of 1999, where one or two contestants shoot attackers in order to survive while collecting money, prizes, and temporary power-ups.

The play mechanic is similar to that of Eugene Jarvis' earlier Robotron: 2084, with twin-joystick controls and series of single-screen arenas.

The themes were borrowed from violent and dystopian sci-fi blockbuster films from 1987 such as RoboCop and The Running Man.

[2][3] The plot involves a wealthy celebrity named Master of Ceremonies (or MC for short) who is hosting and competing in his violent game show, in the not-too-distant future of 1999.

MC has the playable contestant(s) moving from one high-tech gauntlet to the next, each player has to shoot hordes of enemies who enter via passages on each side of the screen while also collecting weapons, power-up items, and gift-wrapped prizes.

Mark Turmell recounted: "When Hasbro pulled the plug on an interactive movie project I was working on, I went to Williams to design coin-op games.

Ocean published ports for the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, and Amiga, all released in early 1992.

[6] The dual control aspect of the game works particularly well on the SNES, as its four main buttons, A, B, X and Y, are laid out like a D-pad, enabling the player to shoot in one direction while running in another.

[27] The 1992 Williams arcade game Total Carnage shares many elements with Smash TV and was also programmed by Turmell, but is not a sequel.

[28] It is included in the Midway Arcade Treasures collection, which is available for Microsoft Windows, Nintendo GameCube, Xbox and PlayStation 2 and was released in 2003.