through another forum (believe it or not, there are others for some reason) I found out about Cybermaster:
a portuguese sega-sponsored show focusing mostly on the saturn toward the end. the premise of the show was that the world had been taken over and a leather-clad princess terra had people compete playing sega games in order to join her army to save the future. quite a thing they decided to do.
here’s a youtuberfella explaining it
I’m also surprised Starcade hasn’t come up!? It’s the first one I think (82-83), though it DID have reruns on G4.
it was the only thing I liked watching on G4 - it’s a quiz show and then a competition in which the host clearly didn’t care about the games, the kids had almost no experience with them, and overall it ruled