June 1986 - July 1986
Reviewed by VegaNova
Segment 1
"Announcement Skit"
"America"
"American Made"
"Battle of New Orleans"
"Living In America"
"America Is"
"American Trilogy / Unveiling of Liberty Skit"
Segment 2
"The Liberty Show" (America Is, America, Calling America, Born In the USA, Rockin in the USA, Back in the USA,
In America, For America)
"God Bless the USA"
"The Unveiling of Liberty Skit"
This special tape was designed for a special Statue of Liberty character that was introduced onstage as part of Lady Liberty's 100th anniversary. The show consisted of patriotic songs and the appearance of the Statue of Liberty in place of Rolfe and Earl.
Throughout the mid-1980s ShowBiz was producing and programming their own Rock-afire Explosion skits using their own hired voice actors (which sounded as close to the original Creative Engineering voice actors as possible). This is one of the few showtapes where both ShowBiz and Creative voices were mixed together. Two seperate versions of the Libery show are presented - ShowBiz Pizza's version and Creative Engineering's version. The two shows are each around 15 minutes long.
ShowBiz Version - The first segment of this tape is ShowBiz's take on the Liberty show. It has a more light-hearted feel to it with lots of talking between songs by the characters. The songs are more upbeat and, unfortunately, this show has a very Chuck E. Cheese feel to it (overly campy, super positive, lacking in refinement). This entire show was only presented on this tape and not reused in future editions of the Liberty showtape.
Creative Version - The second segment of this tape is Creative's take on the Liberty show. It is far more serious and the production value is noticeably higher. CEI's version was the only Rock-afire show that was entirely serious - not a single joke is cracked throughout the 15 minute show. At one point Billy Bob even asks for a moment of silence for everyone to reflect upon how lucky they are to be living in America.
Liberty Character - The Liberty mech was actually Rolfe and Earl retrofitted with new cosmetics. An article regarding the Liberty showtape can be found here.
The Liberty Show - A later version exists with a slight difference that includes Billy Bob introducing the Rock-afire at the begining of the "Liberty Show". This updated show only includes the begining medley of songs, and was featured on one of the Gold Collection reels from the mid-1990s.
Programming Error - One of the worst parts of ShowBiz having control over the programming of shows was the occasional error they made. Unfortunately one of those errors occurs in the Creative version of the "Liberty Show" - they program Dook to sing one of Beach Bear's lines where they're trading lines in "America".
-4 out of 5 Tokens-
Happy B-day Liberty was not only very theatrical due to factors such as the new stage with it's own miniature Statue of Liberty and special lighting effects; the Creative Engineering "Liberty Show" is one of the most polished, mastered, and brilliantly executed shows ever to come out of Creative. In my opinion the "Liberty Show" dwarfs all other Rock-afire performances when compared head to head with any of their previous shows. Despite the inclusion of an audience applause and a polished performance devoid of random banter and spontaneous dialogue, the "Liberty Show" sounds genuine and misses that scripted (canned) sound that many Chuck E. Cheese shows suffer from - which brings us to ShowBiz version...
Unfortunately what you have here is an embarassment. The ShowBiz "fake voice" shows aren't all that terrible, not all of them anyway, and when shown on their own are quite tolerable. However when you take their version of Liberty and play it back to back with Creative's, the ShowBiz version falls horribly flat. I'm still waiting to get some sort of solid confirmation on this, but judging by what I have to go on, there was a bit of a battle going down between Creative and ShowBiz for control of show production. My guess is that this show by Creative was strong enough to eventually win them back control over recording (which can be seen in the later Cyberstar-era shows, and by the fact that the SPP version of Liberty wasn't included on any subsequent re-releases of this showtape). ShowBiz did retain the programming rights however, straight through to the end of Creative's involvement with ShowBiz in the early 1990s.
"Announcement Skit"
"America"
"American Made"
"Battle of New Orleans"
"Living In America"
"America Is"
"American Trilogy / Unveiling of Liberty Skit"
Segment 2
"The Liberty Show" (America Is, America, Calling America, Born In the USA, Rockin in the USA, Back in the USA,
In America, For America)
"God Bless the USA"
"The Unveiling of Liberty Skit"
This special tape was designed for a special Statue of Liberty character that was introduced onstage as part of Lady Liberty's 100th anniversary. The show consisted of patriotic songs and the appearance of the Statue of Liberty in place of Rolfe and Earl.
Throughout the mid-1980s ShowBiz was producing and programming their own Rock-afire Explosion skits using their own hired voice actors (which sounded as close to the original Creative Engineering voice actors as possible). This is one of the few showtapes where both ShowBiz and Creative voices were mixed together. Two seperate versions of the Libery show are presented - ShowBiz Pizza's version and Creative Engineering's version. The two shows are each around 15 minutes long.
ShowBiz Version - The first segment of this tape is ShowBiz's take on the Liberty show. It has a more light-hearted feel to it with lots of talking between songs by the characters. The songs are more upbeat and, unfortunately, this show has a very Chuck E. Cheese feel to it (overly campy, super positive, lacking in refinement). This entire show was only presented on this tape and not reused in future editions of the Liberty showtape.
Creative Version - The second segment of this tape is Creative's take on the Liberty show. It is far more serious and the production value is noticeably higher. CEI's version was the only Rock-afire show that was entirely serious - not a single joke is cracked throughout the 15 minute show. At one point Billy Bob even asks for a moment of silence for everyone to reflect upon how lucky they are to be living in America.
Liberty Character - The Liberty mech was actually Rolfe and Earl retrofitted with new cosmetics. An article regarding the Liberty showtape can be found here.
The Liberty Show - A later version exists with a slight difference that includes Billy Bob introducing the Rock-afire at the begining of the "Liberty Show". This updated show only includes the begining medley of songs, and was featured on one of the Gold Collection reels from the mid-1990s.
Programming Error - One of the worst parts of ShowBiz having control over the programming of shows was the occasional error they made. Unfortunately one of those errors occurs in the Creative version of the "Liberty Show" - they program Dook to sing one of Beach Bear's lines where they're trading lines in "America".
-4 out of 5 Tokens-
Happy B-day Liberty was not only very theatrical due to factors such as the new stage with it's own miniature Statue of Liberty and special lighting effects; the Creative Engineering "Liberty Show" is one of the most polished, mastered, and brilliantly executed shows ever to come out of Creative. In my opinion the "Liberty Show" dwarfs all other Rock-afire performances when compared head to head with any of their previous shows. Despite the inclusion of an audience applause and a polished performance devoid of random banter and spontaneous dialogue, the "Liberty Show" sounds genuine and misses that scripted (canned) sound that many Chuck E. Cheese shows suffer from - which brings us to ShowBiz version...
Unfortunately what you have here is an embarassment. The ShowBiz "fake voice" shows aren't all that terrible, not all of them anyway, and when shown on their own are quite tolerable. However when you take their version of Liberty and play it back to back with Creative's, the ShowBiz version falls horribly flat. I'm still waiting to get some sort of solid confirmation on this, but judging by what I have to go on, there was a bit of a battle going down between Creative and ShowBiz for control of show production. My guess is that this show by Creative was strong enough to eventually win them back control over recording (which can be seen in the later Cyberstar-era shows, and by the fact that the SPP version of Liberty wasn't included on any subsequent re-releases of this showtape). ShowBiz did retain the programming rights however, straight through to the end of Creative's involvement with ShowBiz in the early 1990s.