Jarno Sarkula
Encyclopedia
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
musician and one-time TV-personality. In the music-business he is known as a member of the underground-band Alamaailman Vasarat
Alamaailman Vasarat
Alamaailman Vasarat is a cult avant-garde Finnish group. Their music covers a wide range of styles and influences and is therefore difficult to classify; on their official website they jokingly refer to their style as being "kebab-kosher-jazz-film-traffic-punk-music." Much of their music is...
, he also became known as a TV-persona on the free cable-channel MoonTV
MoonTV
MoonTV was a free Finnish cable network channel. It started off as a channel for programmes about computer and video games but later grew into a channel covering several areas of youth culture. In its prime it was the first interactive TV channel in the world. At its best MoonTV could reach 1.3...
. Sarkula started out as the host of PC game-oriented shows such as PC-Peliluola (PC "Game Cave", a name for an arcade
Video arcade
An amusement arcade or video arcade is a venue where people play arcade games such as video games, pinball machines, electro-mechanical games, redemption games, merchandisers , or coin-operated billiards or air hockey tables...
), his best known program, and the in-depth gaming show PC-Planeetta (PC-Planet) which was split from the show Game Planet, after it was divided in to two shows.
He also hosted the show Damage which dealt with DVD-releases and was one of the last 15-minute shows on the channel.
On screen Sarkula went by the name Kreivi Stakula (Count Stakula) which went hand-in-hand with the gothic look of the show. Despite his unshakable demeanor Sarkula entertained audiences with his verbal acrobatics which often had gothic undertones and even by doing skits relating to games he was reviewing (while reviewing Serious Sam
Serious Sam
Serious Sam is the first game in the Serious Sam series. It is a first-person shooter created by the Croatian development house Croteam...
he did an imitation of the Headless Screaming creatures in the game). Sarkula quickly became one of the channel's best liked hosts.
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
stage-manager who misspelled Sarkula's name when he was touring with Alamaailman Vasarat
Alamaailman Vasarat
Alamaailman Vasarat is a cult avant-garde Finnish group. Their music covers a wide range of styles and influences and is therefore difficult to classify; on their official website they jokingly refer to their style as being "kebab-kosher-jazz-film-traffic-punk-music." Much of their music is...
. The name stuck and Sarkula would often go by this alias in almost all of the shows he hosted. After the end of MoonTV however Sarkula did not follow his fellow hosts by going to work on other channels (like YLE, MTV3
MTV3
MTV3 is a Finnish commercial television station owned by Bonnier. It had the biggest audience share of all Finnish TV channels until Finnish Broadcasting Company’s YLE1 took the lead. The letters MTV stand for Mainos-TV , due to the channel getting its revenue from running commercials...
, Nelonen
Nelonen
Nelonen is a Finnish commercial TV channel. It started out as Helsinki's local television channel PTV in 1989 on the HTV cable network, which name was changed first to PTV4 and then to Nelonen. It started on June 1, 1997. Nelonen, in Finnish, means the glyph of the number four. The channel is...
or SubTV) but instead decided to concentrate on his musical career.
Stakula made several guest-appearances on the Game Review-show Play (sharing a title with a show which aired on MoonTV) on Nelonen which was hosted and maintained by his former MoonTV co-workers Thomas Puha, Miika Huttunen
Miika Huttunen
Miika Huttunen is a permanent staff-member and resident critic for the Finnish gaming magazine Pelaaja. Prior to this he was a host of certain game-related television-programmes primarily on the now defunct MoonTV cable-channel...
and Elias Poutanen
Elias Poutanen
Elias Poutanen was a host/computer-game critic who has worked for a magazine and for a number of related television programmes. Though officially a Finnish citizen he was born in Australia....
.
He owns Stakula OY Audio Visual productions.