The pilot featured an entirely different format consisting of 24 players across three rows, 8 players per row. All three rows featured a different arcade game, in the case of the pilot the first row contained eight Defender cabinets, the second row had eight Centipede cabinets and the third row had eight Pac-Man cabinets. Each player would have 30 seconds to try and accumulate the highest score possible. The players with the highest score in each row would face off in a final round to play Berzerk for the grand prize, their own Asteroids Deluxe arcade cabinet and an Apple II computer.

The overall winner would then play a brand-new arcade game against a celebrity just for fun. The winner of the pilot David Dyche then had the opportunity to play the newly released Donkey Kong against Larry Wilcox, best known as the police officer Jon Baker on the television sitcom CHiPs. The pilot aired as a special on a handful of syndicated stations where it rated quite well.

Three more pilots were shot for NBC, featuring a retooled format which was similar in nature to the series that aired and was hosted by Alex Trebek. The pilot was picked up by Ted Turner in 1982 and the show began its life on TBS in December the same year. The first season consisted of 24 episodes and was hosted by Mark Richards. Richards appeared uncomfortable on camera and did not appear to be interested in video games. Richards was replaced after the first season by Geoff Edwards who hosted the show for the next two seasons for a total of 109 episodes.

Richards was a veteran game-show host but had no experience with video games. Before accepting the job, he had never played a video game, but he became a fan soon after receiving the job. Richards would study the games that were to be on the show before each airing and read gaming magazines to become familiar with popular games. Richards started to provide his own hints to contestants and coined his own catch phrase by closing the show with “See you on the next show and until then I hope all your troubles get zapped”. Richards featured in a Starcade Hotline segment playing and beating the notoriously difficult game Sinistar and remained a fan of gaming until his death in 2014.

The final show aired on February 24, 1984 with reruns airing in syndication until September 1984. Starcade was a pioneering game show centered on video games that inspired shows such as Video Power and Nick Arcade.