Arena

Arena was a G4/G4techTV TV show about competitive gaming that aired from 2002 to 2004. The program's format featured teams competing against each other in the multiplayer video games of the time in a LAN party setting. Many episodes of the series revolved around an ongoing tournament format. Some video games overlapped between episodes, such as Unreal Tournament 2004 and Call of Duty. Teams were also given the opportunity to talk about themselves and explain the origin of their team name. Team ZoMBiE won the Tournament of Champions in 2004, becoming the Ultimate Arena Champions. Team Kaizen won the Tournament of Champions in 2005, also becoming the Ultimate Arena Champions. The show was originally hosted by Wil Wheaton and Travis Oates, but both left due to conflicts with the program's producer, Jim Downs, many of which Wheaton made public in a Slashdot posting. They were replaced by Lee Reherman and Michael Louden. The final hosts were Reherman and Kevin Pereira. The first two seasons were filmed in studio 2. In 2004, for the show's third and final season, filming moved to studio 3, the largest studio in G4's old headquarters. When news of the TechTV buyout became public, and the show was set to be canceled as a result, the series banked several episodes and then dismantled the set in July 2004 to make way for X-Play, The Screen Savers, and Unscrewed with Martin Sargent, three former TechTV properties.