Remembering ReBoot: The Iconic Canadian CG Cartoon

When I was around ten years old, I turned on the TV one day and instead of the regular 2D cartoons I still love to this day, there was something else on my screen. These characters were in 3D, and they were moving around the inside of a virtual space in a computer. Both literally, and within the plot of the story. This was ReBoot, a groundbreaking show that just turned 30.

ReBoot Blew My Mind as a Kid

Before I say anything more, look at this remastered first episode of ReBoot.

Now, imagine it on a tiny 20-inch CRT television with a much fuzzier picture, and you have some idea of what I saw all those years ago. Even though ReBoot aired in my country a few years after it first aired in Canada, it was still mind-blowing. I had literally never seen anything like it. ReBoot predates Toy Story by more than a year and I too saw it before Woody and Buzz graced my eyeballs.

While the show looks pretty crude now, the most advanced computer graphics I'd ever seen at the time was on my uncle's PlayStation. The first one with the wobbly graphics. So, to my eyes, this was cutting-edge voodoo, and it literally was computer voodoo at that point in time.

The First TV CG Show

ReBoot is the first ever fully-CG TV show, and its creators, Mainframe Entertainment, would later follow it up with the equally-incredible Transformers: Beast Wars. The plot of the show is pretty bonkers, and wonderfully inventive. Clearly, the creators were geeks who both knew the cutting-edge of computer graphics, and the internal workings of computers as a whole, well.

The plot follows the adventures of Bob, a "Guardian" who protects their home "Mainframe" from harm. There's a great cast of villians villains, such as Megabyte and Hexadecimal, and, of course, friendly supporting characters like Dot Matrix, and Phong.

Mainframe Studios

Apart from dealing with malware, occasionally the mythical "User" will load a video game. This is a fun time for the user out in the real world, but a crisis for the denizens of Mainframe. Anyone caught in the game would become a character in it, as opposed to the User. If the User wins, then the trapped characters and everything else trapped in the game are wiped out.

Mainframe Studios

As the show went on over its seasons, things got really wild, and expanded beyond the mainframe itself, and onto the internet. Something I wouldn't even have access to in real life for years. For a long time, I found re-watching ReBoot a little hard because of how primitive the pioneering CG work looks, but now I've come full circle and just see it as charming and retro.

ReBoot Made Computer Concepts Mainstream

Apart from being a literal computing milestone, the show also did a lot for public awareness of computers as a whole. At least from my point of view. It was with ReBoot that terms like "phong," "hexadecimal," "sprite," and "ray tracing" entered my vocabulary. I had no idea what these were beyond the names of characters in a TV show, but there's no doubt it was part of the spark that made me interested in the inner workings of computers, not just using them from the outside as a user.

The ReBoot Reboot Is a Mess

Mainframe Studios

While I have no trouble recommending that anyone watch the original ReBoot series, in 2018 there was an attempt to revive the show with ReBoot: The Guardian Code. Unfortunately, this revival show has nothing to do with ReBoot other than the title. It's a partly live-action show about a group of school children that essentially enter VR. To be honest, it's a pretty poor show irrespective of its tentative connection to ReBoot.

I still hold some hope that we'll get a proper revival or even a, well, reboot of ReBoot using modern CG. However, I don't need that to happen at all, because no matter what the original series will never be tarnished.