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Post by Flowgli on Sept 26, 2014 12:00:06 GMT -5
Hi, everybody! This is Flo. I'm doing a series here called Game Show Corner, where we take a look at the obscure side of the world of game shows. Now, everybody knows about game shows such as Wheel Of Fortune and Jeopardy!, both created by the late Merv Griffin and on television for decades. They are two of the most memorable game shows. But remember, I'll be talking about game shows that are short-lived or rare. So, why am I bringing up Wheel Of Fortune and Jeopardy!? Well, those two shows each have a short-lived children's spin-off. This week, I'll be talking about the children's version of Wheel Of Fortune called Wheel 2000. Wheel 2000 premiered in 1997 and aired on Saturday mornings on a former block called CBS Kids. The host was David Sidoni, who is known for being a cast member on a Nickelodeon show called Roundhouse. The co-host is Cyber Lucy, a virtual character whose voice and movements were done by Tanika Ray. The show was produced by Scott Sternberg, one of the cheapest producers in the history of game shows. Wheel Of Fortune is a simple game that anyone can play. And I'm not just talking about the contestants; I'm also talking about everyone who watches the show at home. The game is actually so simple that even kids can play along with the show. The show also has special episodes that have teenagers play the game. Not to mention, there are home games, video games, online games, and handheld games of the show. I mean, the show is based on a game called Hangman. So, a stand-alone show based on Wheel Of Fortune with kids as contestants sounded like a good idea--that is, if it had people working on the show who actually knew what to do to make it actually work. Well, if you have Scott Sternberg producing your game shows, then you are in some kind of trouble. Now, let's get to Wheel 2000 itself. Wheel 2000 is played much like Wheel Of Fortune, but with many differences. Each round starts off with the contestant going first picking one of three categories, and the puzzle under that category appears. Now, in Wheel Of Fortune, the game board originally had trilons, and starting in 1997, around the same time Wheel 2000 premiered, the trilons were replaced by monitors. But in Wheel 2000, the game board is just one big monitor that shows Lucy, the categories, and graphics of the necessary spaces in a puzzle. Lucy always stands on the left side of the puzzle from the perspective of everyone else, and the letters in the puzzle are revealed without her having to walk across the board just like Vanna White and every other hostess on every other version of Wheel Of Fortune would--except for the Turkish and Vietnamese versions of Wheel 2000, both of which also have virtual characters as hostesses. The category names are different, too. In Wheel Of Fortune, you get categories like Person, Place, Thing, Phrase, Fictional Character, Title--yeah, you get the idea. Sometimes, some of the category names would be pluralized, or some of them would be retired or go through name changes. In Wheel 2000, however, you get categories like Book Soup, VIPs, Space Case, Lab Test, Above And Below, Made In The USA, Just Stuff, Globetrotter, Bright Ideas, Word Rap, Every Body, It Adds Up, and Monumental. These categories were made for educational purposes, and every puzzle in this show is just as long as the puzzles you would see in the bonus round on Wheel Of Fortune. After a category is chosen and the puzzle is set up, the round begins. Just like in Wheel Of Fortune, contestants spin the wheel, pick letters, score for picking letters that are in the puzzle, buy vowels, solve the puzzle, and have their score in that round banked. The scoring here works exactly the same as it does in Wheel Of Fortune; contestants score the value landed on the wheel for each appearance of letter in the puzzle, a flat rate of 250 is deducted from a contestant's score each time they choose to buy a vowel, and only the contestant who solves the puzzle keeps what they scored in that round, and that score can't be spent on vowels or lost by landing on one of the two penalty spaces in a later round. The only difference in the scoring is that the values on the wheel in Wheel Of Fortune are cash, whereas the values on the wheel in Wheel 2000 are points. They could've at least lowered the dollar values just like they did on the daytime version of Wheel Of Fortune when it moved to CBS in 1989. I mean, I know Wheel 2000 is a children's game show, and thousands of dollars in cash seem too much for children to play for, but I have seen other children's game shows where contestants score money instead of points, and those game shows include Double Dare, Finders Keepers, Think Fast, and another game show created by Merv Griffin called Click. Oh, well, at least Wheel 2000 compensated for not giving away any money by awarding a contestant a prize for each puzzle they solved. Also, if a contestant solves a puzzle with 200 points or less in that round, then their score in that round is increased to 500 points. The values on the wheel being points instead of money is not the only thing on the wheel that's different from what was ever on the wheel in Wheel Of Fortune. There are three large spaces with a value of 250 points and the name of a physical game on each one of them. If a contestant lands on one of those spaces, which happened on almost every episode, that contestant will play a physical game where they must earn up to three consonants from a randomizer within a time limit. Some of these stunts have a time limit of one minute, while others have a lower time limit, and the contestant must answer questions to add more time to the clock, with each correct answer worth 15 seconds, bringing the total time to a maximum of one minute if all the questions are answered correctly. The physical games are as follows: Feed The Raptor - Use a net to get pieces of meat into a raptor's mouth. Call Waiting - Answer ringing phones and identify the historical person or fictional character on the line. Letter Launcher - Launch spaceships into rotating pods. Smell-O-Letter - Use a hose to smell an object and identify that object. Monster Heads - Put together pieces of the puzzle of a person's head and stick that puzzle on a headless monster. These are just some of the physical games that were featured on the show. Regardless of what the physical game is, the randomizer stops on a letter for each time the contestant makes success in that physical game, and that's the letter they earned. After time's up or three letters are earned, the contestant has the option to either put the earned letters in the puzzle or spin the wheel and pick a letter of their own. If they choose to put the earned letters in the puzzle and any of them are there, they scored 250 points for each appearance of those letters. But if they choose to put those letters in the puzzle and none of them are there, or if no letters are earned from that physical game, they lose their turn. After the physical game is played, the large physical game spaces become regular 250-point spaces for the rest of the game. Very rarely did a played physical game get replaced with another one at the start of the next round, and when time is running out in the game, that physical game is removed from the wheel. I think that the physical games on this show are all nothing but a big waste of time. Often, the letters earned from the randomizer are not the ones you'd often see in the puzzles. There's a Prize Box space worth 100 points. If a contestant lands on that space and picks a letter that's in the puzzle, not only do they score 100 points for each appearance of letter, but they also pick up the green box from the wheel and opens the box to see the prize inside it. Unlike Wheel Of Fortune, where a contestant wins a prize on the wheel by landing on that space, picking a letter that's in the puzzle, picking up the prize and putting it in front of them, avoiding landing on Bankrupt, and solving the puzzle in the same round they picked up the prize, a contestant wins a prize in the prize box by landing on it's space, picking a letter that's in the puzzle, and picking up the box and opening it. There's a Double Up space worth 500 points. If a contestant lands on that, they will be asked a question before they can pick a letter. If the contestant answers correctly, the point value doubles to 1,000. But if they fail to give the correct answer, the point value remains at 500. Either way, the contestant gets to pick a letter after the question. There's a website space, www.wheel2000.com, worth 750 points. If a contestant lands on that space and picks a letter that's in the puzzle, not only do they score 750 points for each appearance of letter, but they also win a Wheel 2000 hat and t-shirt for an e-mailer who already visited the show's website. There's a top point space that changes in every round. It's worth 1,000 points in round one, 2,000 points in round 2, and 5,000 in round three. There are two penalty spaces, but they're not named Bankrupt and Lose A Turn just like in Wheel Of Fortune. They do work the same way, though. The Lose A Turn in Wheel 2000 is the Loser space. As David explains the Loser space to the contestants, he and Lucy make loser signs. Even in a children's game show, having anything in the game called "Loser" sounds too childish. But anyway, a contestant simply loses their turn if they land on that space. The Bankrupt in this show is the Creature space. The reason why that space is called The Creature is that as the lights on the set blink, an evil laugh is heard, and the home viewers see a pair of eyes underneath the wheel and smoke being blown if a contestant lands on that space. A contestant loses all the points they scored in that round if they landed on that space, and David referred to this as the Creature "eating" the contestant's points. At the end of each round, either Lucy or a celebrity would provide information that pertains to that puzzle. For example, if a solved puzzle is SEMI-COLON, then Lucy will talk about the semi-colon. So, they have some educational information added to the game, which is nice to add to a children's game show, but this show is based on Wheel Of Fortune. When someone watches Wheel Of Fortune, no matter what version, they want to see people play the game and figure out the puzzles themselves as they watch the show, not be educated. A children's game show that's based on a long-running game show played by adults doesn't really need to have that added to it. Something like that should be added to a children's game show that is an original idea and not based on another game show. I also have to say that at the start of each new round, a new category replaces the one that was played in the previous round. Also, when time is running out in the middle of a round, the wheel is given one final spin, and each appearance of consonant is worth the amount spun up, while vowels can be picked at no cost. While the round is being played in a speed-up round, Lucy is sitting down next to the puzzle instead of standing, and the category is not shown. Up to three rounds are played in the main game, and there's one episode that has the game ended after only two rounds. After the game, the contestant with the most points wins the game and advances to the bonus round. In case any contestants are tied for the lead, which happened once, one more puzzle is played, and it's from one of the remaining categories in the main game, which is announced by Lucy rather than a contestant picking one. Just like in the speed-up round, the tied contestants take turns picking letters, with a contestant getting five seconds to solve the puzzle each time they pick a letter that's in the puzzle. The wheel is not spun at all, but for some strange reason, each appearance of letter is worth 5,000 points. That's really excessive, if you ask me. I mean, the winning scores on this show are more often less than 5,000. And why do points matter in the tiebreaker puzzle, anyway? All that needs to be done to break the tie is to be the first to solve that puzzle. That's it. But anyway, the contestant who solves the tiebreaker puzzle keeps the thousands of points and wins another prize. Now comes the bonus round. Just like in Wheel Of Fortune back then, the bonus round in here has envelopes with a prize inside each one, and the winning contestant just picks one of the envelopes from a stand. However, instead of picking out an envelope from one of the letters of the word "WHEEL", there are only two envelopes, one labeled "A" and the other labeled "B". Also, after an envelope is chosen, it's the contestant who holds on to it, not the host like in Wheel Of Fortune. There were a couple of episodes where winning contestants were going to hand their choice of envelope to David, but David told them to hold on to it, since whichever envelope they picked was their choice. So, a category is announced by Lucy, and the categories in this round are always either Person, Place, or Thing, and never any of the categories they used in the main game. Then, the puzzle is revealed, and all appearances of the letters, R, S, T, L, N, and E are revealed. The contestant then picks three consonants and one vowel, and after all appearances of those letters are revealed, they get 10 seconds to solve the puzzle. If they solve the puzzle, they win the prize inside the envelope. So, the bonus round here is played just like in Wheel Of Fortune, but with the differences I just mentioned. One more thing that's different in this round here from that in Wheel Of Fortune is that instead of the chosen envelope being opened whether or not the bonus puzzle is solved, the chosen envelope in here is opened only if the bonus puzzle is solved. So, that's Wheel 2000. Now, like I said, a stand-alone show based on Wheel Of Fortune with kids as contestants sounded like a good idea. The idea came through, but it was short-lived due to some problems it had that made it that way. I think this show would've worked better if it did away with the things that are nothing but a waste of time, like the physical games, the Double-Up, and the information that pertains to puzzles that were solved in the main game. The show didn't need those things. And the main game puzzles were too short, yet it took too much time for them to be figured out. I really don't mind the puzzle board being one big monitor, a virtual character as a hostess, and the puzzle graphics that much, though I prefer seeing a puzzle board with many monitors and a real live person walking across the board to reveal the letters in puzzles by touching them more. The name change in the categories in the main game is another one of the things I find unnecessary, but choosing a category at the beginning of a round is another one of the things I don't mind. I also think that the show was trying too hard to appeal to kids at the time with the set; the set itself was designed to look like a factory, the colors on the wheel are brighter, and there were monitors displaying the show's logo on the contestant backdrop. I also don't like the fact that a prize being played for in the bonus round remains unknown when it's not won. And I really hate Scott Sternberg for taking part in this show. I mean, he is the same person who produced and hosted Let's Go Back, a really cheap game show that lasted from 1991 to 1993. Not to mention, he produced a game show back in the 1980s called Everything Goes, which involves contestants removing each other's clothing. Wheel 2000 lasted 22 episodes, and it's run ended in 1998. Later in that same year, David Sidoni hosted another game show called Mad Libs, which aired on Disney Channel. Also, on that same year, Scott Sternberg produced a children's version of Jeopardy! called Jep!, which is the show that I will talk about next week. So, that does it for this week's edition of Game Show Corner. Thank you, everybody, and have a great day.
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Post by Flowgli on Oct 3, 2014 12:00:08 GMT -5
Hi, there, everybody! Flo here. Welcome to another edition of Game Show Corner, where we take a look at the obscure side of the world of game shows. Last week, I talked about Wheel 2000, a Scott Sternberg-produced children's version of Wheel Of Fortune. At the end of last week's edition, I mentioned that Scott Sternberg also produced a children's version of Jeopardy!, and that's what I'm going to talk about this week. This...is... Jep!Like Wheel 2000, Jep! was short-lived, and it had some unnecessary things added to it that slowed it down. The show premiered in 1998, and it aired on Game Show Network, or GSN. It was hosted by voice artist Bob Bergen. This show had no announcer like Jeopardy! does, so after the show's logo, Bob introduced the three contestants himself. He would introduce player three in the red position first, player two in the yellow position second, and player one in the blue position last. Afterwards, one of the contestants would introduce Bob. And then, the game begins. I have to take the time to talk about some things on the set before I talk about the game itself. The contestant podiums looked like those used on Jeopardy! when that show had its "sushi bar" set. In fact, the entire short-lived run of Jep! aired somewhere during the time that Jeopardy! used the "sushi bar" set. Jep! lasted from 1998 to 2000, while the "sushi bar" set on Jeopardy! was used from 1996 to 2002. There are some things that make the contestant area on Jep! different from the one on the "sushi bar" set of Jeopardy! One is that each podium is in a different color; like I said, player one is at the blue podium, player two is at the yellow podium, and player three is at the red podium. Another is that each podium, for some reason, has two red plungers instead of one signaling device. Now, the signaling devices, which are held in one hand and whose buttons are pressed by a thumb, is one of the things that are most well known on Jeopardy! and have been for years. Going from signaling devices to red plungers for a children's game show based on Jeopardy! is one thing, but why did each contestant have to have two of them? Well, there's a reason for that, but I'll get to that later. Another difference is that each contestant has a vat over their head, which I'll also get to later. And another is that each contestant is seated on and strapped to a chair during the first two rounds. One more difference is that each contestant has a wall that opens and closes vertically. At the start of each episode, the walls open one at a time, and the moment a contestant's wall is opened, that contestant takes a ride through that wall on their chair to their podium. And the moment the contestant reached their podium, their wall closes. This was all done as the host introduced the contestants. Now, the moving chairs and the opening and closing walls may not seem like a big deal, but they actually play a part in the game other than just the contestant introductions. So, that's it for the contestant area. Now, let's get to the game board. Now, in Jeopardy, the game board consists of 36 monitors; six of them are in one row, and they display the categories, while the other thirty are in six columns of five, and they display the dollar values and the clues. In Jep!, however, there were only eleven monitors. There were five monitors at the top that display the categories, with a row of four red circle lights above each one, and those red circle lights indicate how many clues there are left in a category. There were five more at the bottom that display the clues, and those monitors were not directly under their respective category monitors like in Jeopardy! So, each clue monitor was connected to its respective category monitor with a neon light, which lit up after its category was called by a contestant. One more monitor was on the center of the game board, and it's bigger than the other ten monitors. That monitor displays the clue values in the first two rounds and the category and clue in the final round. Just like in Wheel 2000, the values in Jep! are points instead of money. Okay, now, we can get to the gameplay. The first round is called the " Jep!" round, and the first choice of clue goes to the contestant in the blue position. After a category is chosen, the contestant must randomly select a point value using one of their two plungers. The point values in this round are 100, 200, 300, 400, and 500. So, now, we know why each contestant has two plungers instead of just one. One of the plungers is to be used for stopping a randomizer, while the other is used for signaling in to answer. But when I watched all the episodes of the show that I was able to find on the Internet, I saw the contestants use just one plunger to do both stop the randomizer and signal in to answer. So, what's the point of having two plungers when two different things can be done using the exact same one plunger? Anyway, after a point value is locked in, a clue is read in its entirety, and the contestants then get to signal in. Oh, and when a contestant hits one of their plungers to answer a clue, a cartoonish sound effect is heard. So, right there, Jep! was trying to be like Jeopardy! from the Art Fleming days by adding a sound effect to when a contestant signals in. The earlier episodes of the Alex Trebek-hosted Jeopardy! also had a sound effect that is heard when someone signals in, but somewhere in 1985, the signaling sound effect stopped being heard because it was a distraction to the viewers, and it was sometimes heard when a contestant signals in before a clue is read in its entirety. Jep also had a strict rule about phrasing responses in the form of a question. On every episode, as Bob explains the rules of the game, all responses must be in the form of a question, otherwise they cannot be accepted. In Jeopardy!, a contestant who forgets to give a response in the form of a question will not be penalized for doing so, but they will be reminded to watch their phrasing on future clues. That only happens in the Jeopardy! round, though, except for the "Daily Double" clue. Other than the values being points instead of money and being selected randomly instead of verbally, the scoring worked the same as it does in Jeopardy!; a correct response adds the value to a contestant's score, while an incorrect response deducts the value from a contestant's score. Speaking of penalty for an incorrect response to a clue, there is a penalty system to go with the point deductions. That penalty system involves a row of three red lights on each contestant's podium. Yeah, if you've watched Jeopardy! enough, then you would notice that each contestant there has a row of nine lights on their podiums, and they turn off, two at a time, with every second that passes after a contestant signals in to answer. The rows of lights on the contestants' podiums on Jep!, however, did not keep count on how much time a contestant who signaled in has left to give a response. These rows of lights are called "In Jeopardy!" lights. Each time a contestant gave an incorrect response or fail to give a response in time, one of their red lights would light up as a clue's point value gets deducted from their score. Each light caused a different action to happen. This is now the part where I finally get to explain the other parts of the contestant area featured here that were never featured on Jeopardy!If a contestant gets their first "In Jeopardy!" light, the vat above their head would "cook" up something. The stuff in the vat were actually styrofoam peanuts or other packaging material, not food. If that contestant gets their second "In Jeopardy!" light, the vat above their head would open, dumping everything in it on the contestant. And if that contestant gets their third "In Jeopardy!" light, the wall behind them would open, and that contestant would take a ride on their chair through that wall, which would close afterwards, and that contestant would be locked out for one clue. After sitting out one clue, that contestant would take a ride on their chair back to their podium, and their "In Jeopardy!" lights were reset. In case the contestant sitting out a clue was the one who had control of the board, the remaining contestant with the lower score picked the next clue. I really must say that this penalty system is really useless. I mean, it's enough that a contestant loses points for missing a clue. This penalty system is a waste of time, just like the physical games, the Double Up, and the educational information on Wheel 2000. They scaled down the amount of clues in each of the first two rounds from 30 to 20 just to fit in something unnecessary like that. And now, we get to the special clues. One of them is the "Daily Double", and it works almost the same way as it does in Jeopardy! A Daily Double clue in Jep! is hidden in one of the categories, and a contestant has to get through all the clues in that category until they got that Daily Double clue. Contestants on Jeopardy! can just pick any clue from a category to find a Daily Double clue. Also on Jeopardy, there's always one Daily Double clue in the first round called the " Jeopardy!" round and two Daily Double clues in the second round called the "Double Jeopardy!" round. For some strange reason, however, there were two Daily Double clues in the " Jep!" round. But whoever found the Daily Double clue is the only one who gets to answer it. Before the clue is given, the contestant must decide on how many points in their score they want to wager. If that contestant's score is less than the highest clue value in a round, they can wager up to that amount. A correct response adds the wager to their score, while an incorrect response deducts the wager from their score and lights up one of their "In Jeopardy!" lights. Another special clue is called the " Jep! Prize". This is revealed right after a point value is locked in. Whoever signaled in with the correct response not only score the points, but also win a prize, which was originally handed to them by the host and later lowered to them by a cord from the ceiling. On the episodes where a Jep! prize was lowered by a cord, the prize always gets lowered to the contestant in the yellow position, and that contestant has to detach the prize from the cord and hand it to one of their opponents who responded correctly on the Jep! Prize clue. One more special clue is called the " Jep! Squad". This, also, is revealed right after a point value is locked in. The clue is given by a kid from anywhere in America via prerecorded video. After that clue is played, another video of that same kid is shown, and in that video, that kid gives more information pertaining to the clue and it's correct response. You might say that the Jep! Squad is similar to the "Clue Crew" on Jeopardy!, but the Clue Crew was actually introduced on Jeopardy! in 2001, which was sometime after Jep! got cancelled. The " Jep!" round ends when all the clues are played or when time is up. Then, round two called "Hyper Jep!" would be played. The point values in the "Hyper Jep!" round are doubled to 200, 400, 600, 800, and 1,000. After the "Hyper Jep!" round, the final round called "Super Jep!" is played. Now, in the "Final Jeopardy!" round of Jeopardy!, contestants whose scores are zero or in the negatives are eliminated and cannot take part in that round. but in the "Super Jep!" round of Jep!, contestants whose scores are zero or in the negatives stay in the game and take part of that round, and here's how that works: The contestant in last place gets their score increased to 500 points, and the two higher scoring contestants each have their score increased so that the differences between all the scores remain the same. For example, in one episode I saw, the "Hyper Jep" round ended with one of the contestants with a score of -1,000 points, so the three contestants each have their score increased by 1,500 points. So, the category for the "Super Jep!" round is revealed, and the contestants make their wagers. When the show comes back from its final commercial break, it is seen that the contestants are standing behind their podiums rather than sitting behind them, because the chairs are behind the walls, which remain closed for this round. That's because the chairs and the walls are not used in this round. Neither are the vats and the "In Jeopardy!" lights. Speaking of the vats, there is at least one episode where the first two rounds were entirely played with each contestant giving no more than one incorrect response, and what happened there before going into the "Super Jep!" round was that the contestants' vats opened, so the contestants got dumped anyway. Just like in the "Final Jeopardy!" round, barriers were placed between the contestants to prevent cheating. The contestants are shown the clue, and they have 30 seconds to write down their responses. After the 30 seconds, the contestants' responses and wagers are revealed, one at a time, from the contestant with the lowest score to the contestant with the highest score. A correct response adds the wager to their score, while an incorrect response deducts the wager from their score. The contestant with the highest score wins the game. Now, just like in Wheel 2000, there was no money involved, both in scoring and prizes. So, each contestant is shown two prizes to choose from. The contestant in last place goes first, and they are shown two third place prizes to choose from. The contestant in second place goes next, and they are shown two second place prizes to choose from. And the winning contestant goes last, and they are shown two grand prizes to choose from. Each contestant wins a prize they've chosen, so everyone wins! And that's Jep! I have to say that I find this show more faithful to Jeopardy! than Wheel 2000 is to Wheel Of Fortune. The reason why I said that is that Wheel 2000 only has the same main gameplay as Wheel Of Fortune, while Jep! has the same main gameplay, graphics, sound effects, music cues, and crew as Jeopardy! Each monitor has a blue background with the categories and the clues in white capital letters in front of it. The sound effects heard when a Daily Double clue is found, when time to signal in is up, and time for a round is up stay the same; also, the Daily Double sound effect is heard when a Jep! Prize clue is found and when a Jep! Squad clue is found, and the sound effect heard when time for a round is up is also heard when the show goes into its first commercial break in the middle of the " Jep!" round. the Daily Double graphic is exactly the same one that was used in Jeopardy! at that time. The theme music and the "Think!" music cue are the same as those heard in Jeopardy!, but they were heard in the form of a a rock variant. The crew consisted of the same people that worked on Jeopardy! at that time. Bob Bergen and Scott Sternberg were the only people on Jep! who didn't work on Jeopardy! Even the host of Jeopardy!, Alex Trebek, was a consultant on Jep!, and there's at least two episides where he gave a clue via prerecorded video, just like a kid from anywhere in America on a Jep! Squad clue. And I already talked about the contestant podiums, so I am not going to repeat myself here. Despite all this, Scott Sternberg still went overboard in making changes for this show, just like he did for Wheel 2000. This show would've done much better without the moving chairs, the opening and closing walls, the vats above the contestants, the values of the clues being selected at random, the signaling devices being red plungers and each contestant having two of them instead of one, and any penalty system to go with the point deductions. But something good actually did come out of Jep! after its cancellation. What it is is the idea of having children play Jeopardy! as contestants on special episodes. If you've watched Jeopardy! often, you'll know about the special episodes it has. Some types of special episodes are tournaments, while others are just special events, and one of these types of special events is the "Kids Week" event. Every season, starting in 1999, five episodes in a week feature children ages 10, 11, and 12 playing the game, which is played the way it always has been played and should always be played. It doesn't have any of the unnecessary stuff that Jep! had, and the contestants play for money instead of points and prizes. The only things in the "Kids Week" episodes of Jeopardy! that are different from the regular episodes are that there are three new contestants on each episode, and that there is a minimum guarantee for a winning contestant. Well, I think I've talked enough about game shows produced by Scott Sternberg for now. Next week, I'll be talking about a game show played by adults and produced by someone else. So, that does it for this week's edition of Game Show Corner. Thank you, everybody, and have a great day.
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Post by Flowgli on Oct 10, 2014 12:00:11 GMT -5
Hello, everybody! This is Flo. Welcome to this week's edition of Game Show Corner, where we take a look at the obscure side of the world of game shows. Now, let me ask you this. If you hear the name "Peter Tomarken", what is the first show that would come to your mind? Well, the first show that would come to a game show fan's mind when they hear that name is Press Your Luck. You know, the game with the big bucks and the red animated creatures called the "Whammies". It is the game show that Peter Tomarken was most known for. Let it be said, though, that Press Your Luck was the second game show that he hosted. The first game show he hosted is the one that I'll be talking about this week, and that game show is called Hit Man. Hit Man is one of those game shows that lasted only one season consisting of 65 episodes. It ran from January 3, 1983 to April 1 on the same year on NBC. The announcer on the show was Rod Roddy, who was also the announcer on Press Your Luck, and the producer was Jay Wolpert, who hosted a pilot in 1982 but was replaced by Tomarken after refusing to lose 20 pounds and wear a toupee at NBC president Brandon Tartikoff's request. Each episode of Hit Man deals with two subjects, both of which were in the form of short films narrated by Tomarken himself. The subjects were all about how certain people became celebrities like Marlon Brando and Gene Kelly, the makings of certain movies like The Wizard Of Oz, Presidents and Vice Presidents of the United States, and historical events like Custer's Last Stand, just to name a few. And it's important that the contestants pay attention to the films, because after one is over, the contestants will be asked questions about what they heard in it. The first round was played by three challengers. There was also a returning champion or a designate who watched the film off stage in that round but did not play in that round. That contestant still had to pay attention to the film, as this would come in handy should they advance to the bonus round. The three challengers are each given one hit man to start off with, and they are asked questions about the film they just saw. On each question, only the first person who buzzed in gets to answer. If they answer correctly, their hit man is moved one space closer to the finish line. But if they answer incorrectly, they are locked out for the next question. A contestant reached their hit man to the finish line by answering five of the questions correctly. The first two challengers to reach their hit men to the finish line advanced to the second round to play against the returning champion. The remaining challenger is eliminated from the game. The first place finisher received $300, and the second place finisher received $200. The champion then came on stage for round two. After another film was shown, the game board revolved and displayed a set number of hit men for each contestant. The challenger who reached their hit man to the finish line first in round one is started off with four hit men, the challenger who did the same thing second is started off with three hit men, and the champion is started off with seven hit men. The champion plays against one challenger at a time, with the first place finishing contestant from round one choosing who will play against the champion first. Just like in the previous round, only the first person to buzz in on a question gets to answer it. If that contestant answers correctly, the other contestant loses one of their hit men. But if that contestant answers incorrectly, they lose one of their own hit men. If a challenger loses a hit man, they lose control to the other challenger. The challengers must eliminate the champion's hit men, while the champion must eliminate the challengers' hit men. The first challenger to eliminate the champion's last remaining hit man wins the game and becomes the new champion. If one of the challengers lost all their hit men before the round is over, then the champion and the remaining challenger play on without any control passing. If the champion eliminated all of both challengers' hit men, they retain the championship. The winner of the game plays the bonus round called the Triple Crown round. On the game board, there are eight columns, each one with an amount of circles in it. One of the columns has one circle in it, two of them each have two, two of them each have three, two of them each have four, and one of them has five. The winning contestant has their back facing the board for the entire round, so they won't see how many circles there are in each column. One minute is then put up on the clock, which starts after the contestant picks a column by number. After a column is chosen, the contestant will be asked questions about the two films they saw in that episode. Each time a correct answer is given, a circle in that column gets filled with a "money man". The circles in a column get filled with money men, starting from the bottom and going up. If all the circles in the chosen column are filled with money men, a crown is placed at the top of the column, which means that the column is completed, and the contestant wins cash. However, if the contestant gets one question wrong or pass on a question, that column is out of play, and the contestant must pick another column. Completing one column is worth $1,000, and completing two columns doubles the money to $2,000. Now, this round is called the Triple Crown round, so the contestant needed to complete three columns before time runs out in order to win. If three columns are completed before time runs out, the contestant's bonus winnings go up to $10,000. I find the gameplay in this show very good. It is a memory-based game with contestant racing against each other for a chance to win big money and films that many people watching would easily learn from due to Tomarken's narration that made them entertaining. Not to mention, the bonus round had to be one of the most challenging ones I've ever seen in a game show. I like the idea that they keep the amount of circles to fill in each column within one minute a mystery to the winning contestant until that round is over, because if the contestant sees the board during that round, they would probably just choose the column with one circle in it first and leave the column with five circles in it until last. I don't think it would help if the contestant picks the columns at random while looking at the board, either. I find the cash prizes won in the Triple Crown round for not completing three columns in one minute kind of flat, though. For not winning the Triple Crown round, a contestant wins only either $1,000 for completing one column or $2,000 for completing two columns. There would've been more variety in the cash prizes if $100 was awarded for every circle filled with a money man, as well; that would've been good if a contestant playing that round hasn't completed a single column during it, especially if that contestant is a designate. There was no mention on the show or anywhere of how long a contestant could stay on it as a champion, but seeing that this is a game show that aired on NBC in the 1980s, I would like to think that a contestant could stay on the show for up to five days. Here's something interesting. It's the final episode of the show. Randy West appeared on the show as a contestant. Many game show fans would know that Randy West is known for being an announcer on game shows such as Supermarket Sweep, Trivial Pursuit, Hollywood Showdown, and The Newlywed Game with Carnie Wilson. On this one episode of Hit Man, Randy was the second challenger to reach his hit man to the finish line in round one, he won the game by defeating Sheila, who was a returning champion on that episode, and he completed only one column in the Triple Crown round. He won $1,200 on that show. He also appeared as a contestant on other game shows, and one of them was Press Your Luck! Man, do Press Your Luck and Hit Man have a lot in common. Both of those shows were hosted by Peter Tomarken, Rod Roddy was the announcer in both shows, Randy West appeared on both shows as a contestant, They are both game shows from the 1980s, and they both premiered in 1983. Okay, maybe the shows do not have so much in common. For one thing, Hit Man aired on NBC, and Press Your Luck aired on CBS. But anyway, on Press Your Luck, Randy West was on that show for three episodes, and he retired undefeated after exceeding the $25,000 winnings limit that CBS had at that time. Not only that, but he was also the first contestant on that show to win a car. Getting back to Hit Man, the final episode has Rod Roddy announce this phrase: "If you would like to be a contestant on Hit Man, forget it!" This was heard after the show came back from its commercial break one last time. Tomarken then explained exactly what Roddy meant by that. He thanked everyone who made the show possible before he went off stage and the set darkened. Peter Tomarken and Rod Roddy became a host/announcer team again on Press Your Luck five months after the cancellation of Hit Man. Now, there's one more thing I have to mention about this show before I close. This show has never been shown in reruns after its cancellation, which is the case for other game shows that I may cover here. A reason that some game shows were never shown in reruns is that there was a practice called wiping, which was done to save money on tapes. Another reason is that the host of said show didn't like their job on that show and they requested to not have the show they hosted be shown in reruns. Another is due to split ownership between two companies. Not a single one of these reasons is the case for Hit Man. The reason that Hit Man has never been shown in reruns is that the films shown in the two rounds of the main game on each episode were only licensed for one television appearance. Luckily, there are people on YouTube who uploaded some of the episodes of the show, so they can be seen not only whenever people want, but also as many times as people want. So, that does it for this week's edition of Game Show Corner. Thank you, everybody, and have a great day.
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Post by Flowgli on Oct 17, 2014 12:00:04 GMT -5
Hello, again, everybody! Flo here, welcoming you to this week's edition of Game Show Corner, where we take a look at the obscure side of the world of game shows. There are many different kinds of games that families can get together and play. And I'm talking about board games and any other kinds of games made by Hasbro. Some of these games have game shows based on them. Today, we have a show on Hub Network--now known as Discovery Family--called Family Game Night, which feature families playing a variety of games based on those that were made by Hasbro. This week, I'll be talking about the game show version of one of these games, which would make you want to just stick to the original game rather than be a contestant on that show based on that game. The game I'm about to talk about is a dice game called Yahtzee. Yahtzee has been around for many years, and it's a fun game to play with family and friends. Everyone who played Yahtzee knows that each person has up to three rolls on their turn to get the best combination possible, and the best combination to get is a Yahtzee, or five of a kind. There are other combinations to score in the game, like a three of a kind, a four of a kind, a full house, a large straight, and a small straight, and chance. Those are actually just the combinations of the lower section of the scorecard. And this is all I'm going to say about the dice game itself. It's now time to get into the game show based on it, which is called... Yahtzee. Yahtzee lasted from January 1988 to September on the same year. It was taped at two locations in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Its original location was Trump's Castle, and its later location was Showboat Hotel & Casino. It was one of the final shows produced by Ralph Andrews. It was hosted by the original host of Hollywood Squares, Peter Marshall, and it was announced by Larry Hovis, who was also a panelist on the show. Yes, this show based on the dice game we all know and love is a panel game. The show also had a hostess called a "dice girl", and there was a different dice girl every week. These dice girls include Kelly Grant, Denise DiRenzo, and Teresa Ganzel. The game is played by two teams of three, which is something I have a problem with, because in game shows where cash is played for, the cash winnings are less often equally divisible of three. Anyway, each team has a name based on what all the members in that team have in common, whether it be careers or hobbies, like "Fishermen" and "Sales Gals", for example. The two teams play up to three rounds with a panel of five celebrities. In each round, the teams have to earn the right to roll the dice by playing a question portion of the round. The way the questions are played out in this game is similar to that of Match Game, except the questions themselves on this show are the type found on Family Feud and a game that is now produced by Mattel called Outburst instead of fill-in-the-blank questions. There are six questions in the main game, and in each round, each team gets a question of their choice. In round one, the team of challengers plays a question first, and in rounds two and three, the team that did not win the right to roll the dice in the previous round plays a question first. After a question is asked, the panel wrote down their answers, and they locked those answers in when they are finished. Each member of the team that was playing the question will give an answer of their own. After a team member gave an answer, Marshall would ask if any of the panelists had that answer written down. If any of them do, they would reveal their answers at the same time. But if none of them do, a sad, pathetic sounding sound effect would play. After a team played a question, the other team played one of the remaining questions. After each team played a question, the team that matched the most celebrities won the round, and the captain of that team would go down to the dice table to roll the dice. If there is a tie for most matches, then the team captains play a tiebreaker question. Before the question is asked, it is shown to the panelists on each of their secret screens. The question is read aloud after the panelists wrote down their answers and locked them in, and the team captains then had to buzz in and give an answer. If their answer matches at least one panelist, they won the right to roll the dice; but if their answer matches none of the panelists, the captain of the other team gets to answer. At the dice table, there are five giant dice and a giant plastic cup used to roll those dice. Each die has a number replaced with the word "WILD" on one of the sides. The team captain who won the right to roll the dice gets one dice roll, and after the the dice is rolled, that team captain gets to choose which dice they want to use to get a Yahtzee, which is the only combination that matters in this show. If any wilds come up, then the team captain can use them to match any of the numbers that were rolled naturally. If a Yahtzee is rolled, that team captain won that team the game. If not, another round is played, with four questions remaining at the start of it. If the team that won the question portion of round two is the same team that won round one, then that team will build on the combination they started in the previous round, but using all five dice instead of just the remaining dice. I have to mention that each team has a row of five displays on the front of their podium to show the combination they're building. The third and final round of the main game is played if a Yahtzee is not made in the second round. In the third round, the team that won the question portion of it has the option to take control of the dice or pass it to the other team. Whichever team has control of the dice gets two dice rolls. If there is no Yahtzee after the third round, then the team that is closer to getting one wins the game; but if both teams have the same number of dice used towards a Yahtzee at that point, a tiebreaker question will be played in the way I just described it. The bonus round begins with the winning team picking one of the letters in the word "YAHTZEE". Each letter has a cash prize under it. Four of them each have $5,000, two of them each have $10,000, and one of them has $25,000. The cash prize under the letter chosen by the team is revealed, and that team has to get a Yahtzee to win it. Then, a question is read, the panelists wrote down and lock in their answers, and the members of the winning team give answers that hopefully will match the panelists. The team gets a roll of the dice for each panelist they matched, with a minimum guarantee of one dice roll if they matched none of the panelists. If the team got a Yahtzee within the dice rolls earned, they won the pre-selected cash prize. If they don't, they won $500 for each die used towards a Yahtzee. However, if they got a Yahtzee on the first dice roll only, they won $100,000. Later in the show's run, the bonus round was changed a bit, and the change happened sometime after the $100,000 cash prize was won twice. For this change, getting a Yahtzee on the first roll is worth double the pre-selected cash prize, meaning that it's worth either $10,000, $20,000, or $50,000. To win the $100,000 cash prize this time, a team has to roll all five wilds on the first roll, which was actually how that cash prize was won the first time on this show. After the bonus round, the team plays another game against a new team, unless the previous game was won by a Yahtzee rolled in the first round, so they'll have to play against the same team they won against in the previous game. A team can play up to three games, and if that team wins three consecutive games, they win a vacation for each themselves and their companions. I have to admit that coming up with a game show based on Yahtzee seemed like a good idea, and having contestants answer questions to earn the right to roll the dice seems to be the only way to do it right. This game show based on Yahtzee that lasted for nine months in 1988, however, was not done well. It ripped off two game shows, Match Game and Family Feud, both productions of Mark Goodson and Bill Todman, and this show called Yahtzee is a production of Ralph Andrews. There are a couple of good things I find in the show other than the fact that's based on the dice game that just about everybody knows about, this show had a host with many years of experience from hosting not only Hollywood Squares, but also Fantasy and All-Star Blitz, and the cash prizes are good. $100,000 is a great cash prize for a game show in the 1980s, and it's still a great cash prize to play for on a game show today. I must reiterate, though, that I don't like the fact that the game was played by teams of three who are playing for cash prizes that don't often add up to amounts that are equally divisible of three. Yes, a team on that show could win up to three games, but what are the chances that a team could win the exact same amount of cash three times? Anyway, let's say that a team won $1,000 after one game. If that amount was to be split equally by three people, then the best way to split it would be $333.33 for each team member, sure. But if you triple the $333.33, that would make $999.99, not $1,000. So, what happened to the other one cent? Did the people who worked on the show settle this by having the team play a quick game that would decide which team member would get the penny so that the team members won't waste any time fighting over it, or did they just hold on to it and save it for the next cash prize won? And why did this show have to be a panel game, anyway? During any episode of the show, there would be more time spent on the question portions of the game and less time spent on rolling the dice. That's what Yahtzee is all about; it's about rolling the dice. It's always been that way. Making a good game show based on Yahtzee without a panel of celebrities is doable. And if it had to be played by teams, then they should also have each team member compete for a chance to roll the dice, not just the team captains. And no, the show didn't have the team members switch places so that there would be a new team captain at the start of each round like in Bruce Forsyth's Hot Streak. I've found two episodes of Yahtzee on YouTube, watched them both from start to finish, and that never happened. Yahtzee was cancelled after nine months due to financial problems, and most of the contestants were not paid their winnings, which is why the bonus round was changed a bit somewhere in the show's run. It was one of the last shows that Ralph Andrews produced before his production company, Ralph Andrews Productions, went bankrupt. Another one of the last shows that Ralph Andrews produced was Lingo. Years later, the dice game of Yahtzee returned to game shows in the form of a game played on Family Game Night. In the first three seasons of Family Game Night, Yahtzee was played in the form of a bowling game, with each die being a six-sided bowling pin. In season four, the dice are in the form of spinning graphics, and they are stopped one at a time by pushing down on a plunger. But before getting to the dice, the family has to pick three out of six answers to a question, with each correct answer picked replacing a number with the word "WILD" on each die. The ways that Yahtzee is being played on Family Game Night are a lot better than the way it was being played on the 1980s game show based on it. So, that does it for this week's edition of Game Show Corner. Thank you, everybody, and have a great day.
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Post by Flowgli on Oct 24, 2014 12:00:09 GMT -5
Hello, boys and girls! Or men and women. This is Flo, and welcome to this week's edition of Game Show Corner, where we take a look at the obscure side of the world of game shows. Out of all the game shows that have two teams playing against each other in a battle of the sexes, how many of them are good game shows in any way? I've found some game shows like that on the Internet, read the info about them, and watched episodes of them on YouTube. I've found only very little of them good. Most of them, I just found them not so good. This week, we will be looking into one of the "battle of the sexes" game shows that I found not so good. It's time for Sex Wars! Sex Wars premiered in October 2, 2000 and ended in February 27, 2001. It was produced by Lighthearted Entertainment and distributed by MGM Television. There were two people who co-hosted this show, with one being a man and the other being a woman to fit the "battle of the sexes" theme. The male host was JD Roth, who is known for hosting children's game shows like Fun House, the first season of Masters Of The Maze, and Animal Planet Zooventure. The female host was Jennifer Cole, who was a Hawaiian Tropic model and the card dealer on Strip Poker, another "battle of the sexes" game show. This game is played by two teams of three. Yes, there's money won on this show, and the cash prizes are more often not equally divisible of three. I already went into full detail about this last week when I talked about the game show version of Yahtzee. Anyway, the two teams play four rounds of answering questions. In the first round, each team is asked two questions, and each question has four answers to choose from. Three of the answers are correct, while the other one answer is the wrong one called the "Land Mine". Each team member must pick a correct answer. If a correct answer is picked, the team scores 5 points, and the next team member gets to pick an answer. If all three correct answers are picked, the team scores a bonus 5 points. So, up to 20 points can be scored on each question in this round. But if a team member picks the Land Mine, play of the question immediately ends, and the other team scores 5 points for each remaining correct answer. I think that this is a bad round, because it's a rip-off of the first round of Trivia Trap in its original format. In the second round, two survey questions are asked, and the answers to the questions were given by the people who visited the show's website prior to the show. Each question is started off with the two teams going back and forth making bids on how many answers to a question they can give. The teams keep bidding until one of them bids the maximum of ten answers, or until they challenge the other team to give the bidded amount of answers. Yeah, this part of the round is similar to the Bid-A-Note round in Name That Tune, the Challenge Round in Wipeout, and the Gambling Debt round in Debt. Now, with a question in play, the members of the team in control will take turns giving answers. If a team member gave an answer that made the survey, it's worth 10 points. But if a team member gave an answer that didn't make the survey, they are locked out for the rest of the question. If the team in control gave the bidded amount of answers that made the survey, they score the points in that question. But if all three members are locked out, the other team gets a chance to steal the points. The team that has a chance to steal the points just has to give one of the remaining answers that made the survey. If that team is successful, they stole the points. If not, the team that had control of the question got the points. Gee, they really have the nerve to rip off not only Trivia Trap, but also Family Feud. Team members taking turns giving answers to add to the points up for grabs on "The List"--which is the name of this round, by the way--on Sex Wars is the same as family members doing exactly just that on Family Feud. Locking out a team member for giving an answer that didn't make the survey or not giving an answer in time is the equivalent of a family member getting a strike, and since there are three members on a team on this show, a team losing control of a question by having all three members locked out is the same as a family losing control of a question by getting three strikes. Finally, there's that part of the round where an opposing team given a chance to steal the points by giving one answer that made the survey, and they get the points if the steal was successful, but the team that had control earlier get the points if the steal was not successful. That's the same way it's done on Family Feud. What this show didn't rip off from Family Feud is the face-off podium, where one member from each team has to buzz in and give an answer that not only made the survey, but is also popular enough to win control of a question. Instead, they just used the bidding mechanic that was used on the three game shows I just mentioned, all of which came before Sex Wars. A year after Sex Wars ended its run, the bidding mechanic would be used in one of the rounds of the PAX version of Beat The Clock. I found this round to be worse than the last round. In the third round, each team has a buzzer for each member. However, instead of actual buzzers that are either in the form of buttons or plungers mounted on podiums or signaling devices, the teams use buzzers that look like pink blow dryers for the women's team and blue power drills for the men's team. Each team's set of buzzers has a different sound. The women's team's buzzers make cat screeching sounds, while the men's team's buzzers make dog barking sounds. I've heard that there are some episodes in which the sound effects for the buzzers are different. Anyway, what happens in this round is that the two hosts alternate asking questions based on scientific data regarding men and women. All the questions are in the form of "Who are more likely to do so-and-so?", and what the teams have to do is buzz in and guess if the correct answer to a question is men or women. Buzzing in with the right answer scores a team points, while buzzing in with the wrong answer scores the other team points. Each question except for the last one is worth 10 points. That last question is worth 25 points. So, this is just a round of "this or that" questions. There are many other game shows before this one that each feature a round of "this or that" questions, and they were all done better than the one here on Sex Wars. Some game shows before it that feature that kind of round have a different pair of answers to choose from on each question. Other game shows before this one that feature that kind of round have a set of questions with the same two answers to choose from, but there was always a different pair of answers every episode. But in here, it's always the same two answers to choose from on not just every question in this round, but on every episode when this round is played. The answers there are always men or women. I know this is a "battle of the sexes" game show, but still, it wouldn't hurt to have some variety in the answers. Also, the scoring in this round is the same as the second round of The Newlywed Game, where there are questions worth 10 points each and the final question worth 25 points. Now comes the fourth and final round. Each team is asked a question from one of three categories chosen by the other team, just like in Nick Arcade when a goal is reached before time for a round runs out. During the final commercial break, each team had to make a wager. Each team's wager must be at least half their score. If a team gets their question right, they get the wager added to their score. But if they get their question wrong, they get their wager deducted from their score. The team with the most points at the end of this round wins the game and ten times their winning score in cash. So, this show has a wagering round, just like several other game shows that came before it. This round is actually played like the "Big Bet" part of the Money Cards round on Card Sharks. This is unbelievable. This show had nothing original to offer in terms of gameplay. Each and every round on this show is nothing more than a take on other game shows before it that did better. This show also had the most ridiculous buzzers I've ever seen, and those buzzers had the most ridiculous sounds that buzzers on any game show could ever make. There are also superimposed graphics that show the questions, answers, and how much money the winning team won, while at the same time, there is a big monitor in the center of the set that could easily display those things to not only the home viewers, but also everyone in the studio, but the only thing that the monitor displayed was the name of the show. And in some of the episodes that were once on YouTube but have later been removed, the superimposed graphics were not shown at all, but their accompanying sound effects are still there. One more problem I have with this show is the total cash prize won by the winning team on each episode. Not only are the total cash prizes often not equally divisible of three for the three team members to equally split among themselves, but they are really low. There are episodes where winning teams ended up winning less than $1,000. There are even some episodes where winning teams ended up winning just $100. Why couldn't there have been a minimum guarantee, and why couldn't the team members each get the full amount of the cash won instead of just splitting it? Really, who wants to watch a show like this, where a winning team could end up winning only $50 and had to end up leaving with $16.66, leaving out two cents of the cash prize? Or better yet, who wants to watch a show like this at all? You know what? I'm done. I've said everything that there is to say about this show. I find it not a good one, so I'll go find another good one to talk about for next week. So, that does it for this week's edition of Game Show Corner. Thank you, everybody, and have a great day.
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Post by Flowgli on Oct 31, 2014 12:00:06 GMT -5
Hello, America! I'm Flo, and welcome to this week's edition of Game Show Corner, where we take a look at the obscure side of the world of game shows. Well, the country's in debt, you're probably in debt, but most importantly, the contestants on the game show that I will be talking about this week are in debt, and the contestants there will be competing for a chance to get out of debt. Yes, the name of the show is Debt. Debt ran for two seasons from June 3, 1996 to August 14, 1998 on Lifetime Television, and it was hosted by Wink Martindale, who hosted other game shows before it like Tic Tac Dough, Gambit, Headline Chasers, The Last Word, Trivial Pursuit, The Great Getaway Game, and the 1987 revival of High Rollers. The show begins with a woman with many bills on her desk, and she ends up in the clouds with Wink Martindale, who told the viewers that the show is about three debt-laden Americans compete to have all their bills paid off. Then, we meet the contestants...or contesti, as Wink sometimes referred to them as. So, each contestant states their name, how much in debt they are in, and why they are that much in debt. The announcer was Julie Claire, who referred to Wink as the crown prince of credit and the duke of debt. The game starts with three contestants playing a round called General Debt. On the game board, there are five categories with five questions in each one. Each question in a category has a negative dollar value, and the negative dollar values are -$50, -$100, -$150, -$200, and -$250. Before the round is played, the contestants' debts are averaged to make things fair. This round is played the same way as Jeopardy! A contestant picks a category and an amount, and a question is revealed and read in its entirety. If a contestant rings in with the right answer, they get credit for it, and they get to make the next selection. But if they ring in with the wrong answer, they get penalized, and the other contestants get a chance to ring in to answer. Yes, it's played a lot like Jeopardy!, but with some differences. The first question of the round is picked by the contestant with the lowest debt before the debts were averaged. All the questions in this game are in the form of "Who am I?", and the contestants have to begin their answers with the phrase "You are..." A right answer deducts the amount from a contestant's debt, while a wrong answer adds the amount to their debt, which is why the dollar values are negative. And instead of a "Daily Double", one of the questions is dubbed the "Debt-onator". Finding the Debt-onator causes an explosion sound effect to sound and the camera to shake, making it appear to the viewers as if something near the studio actually exploded. The Debt-onator is the most difficult question in the round in the opinions of the show's producers, and it's worth -$500 instead of its face value. All three contestants are allowed to ring in and answer that question, just like with all the other questions in this round. The round is played until all the questions are asked, or until the "Ta-Da!" music is heard, meaning that time for the round is up. At the end of this round, the contestant with the highest debt is eliminated, and they receive a Debt piggy bank and a $200 savings bond. In season two, changes were made to this round. On the game board, the five rows of six trilons were replaced by a monitor split in a 3x3 grid. Before the round is played, not only were the debts averaged, but a toss-up question with the value of -$1 is asked. Whoever rings in with the correct answer to the toss-up question gets the dollar knocked off their debt and picks the first category to be played. After a category is picked, all five questions in that category are asked, with the aformentioned face values played in order from lowest to highest. After all five questions in a category are played, the contestant who last answered correctly in that category picks the next one. Also, instead of one question, the Debt-onator is an entire category, and all the negative dollar values are doubled to -$100, -$200, -$300, -$400, and -$500, in that order. One more difference, which is actually the difference made for the entire game in this season, is that the contestants are not required to begin their answers with the phrase "You are..." The two remaining contestants play the second round called Gambling Debt. There are five categories with five questions in each one like before, but the contestants do not pick the categories--or values, as well, in the case of season one--and they do not ring in to answer the questions. Each category has a negative dollar value, with the first category worth -$300, the second one worth -$400, the third one worth -$500, the fourth one worth -$750, and the fifth and final one worth -$1,500. This round uses the bidding mechanic, which I talked about when explaining the second round of Sex Wars called "The List" on last week's edition. In the Gambling Debt round of Debt, the two remaining contestants go back and forth making bids on how many questions in a category they can answer correctly, starting with the contestant with the lower debt on the first category and the contestant who won the previous category on each category thereafter. The contestants keep bidding until one of them bids the maximum of five questions, or until they challenge the other contestant to fulfill the contract by saying "Prove it!" If the contestant playing the category fulfilled the contract, they get the amount deducted from their debt. But if they fail, the other contestant gets the amount deducted from their debt. After the five categories, the contestant with the higher debt is eliminated and receives a Debt piggy bank and a $500 savings bond. If the round is brought to the point where it becomes mathematically impossible for the trailing contestant to catch up with the leading contestant with the remaining categories, then the round is automatically over, and the trailing contestant is eliminated. The last remaining contestant plays the final round, which is played in two parts. The first part of the round is called "Get Out Of Debt", and a category for that part of the round is given. The contestant is asked questions in that category, and they must answer ten of them correctly within the time limit--or "expiration date"--of 60 seconds. If the contestant is successful, the entire debt they came on the show with before the debt averaging is paid off. If not, they receive all the money knocked off their debt in the first two rounds in cash. The second part of the round is called "Bet Your Debt", where the contestant has the option to answer a double-or-nothing question in a category that they chose on a particular favorite subject of theirs in the world of pop culture before the show. After the category for this part of the round is given, the contestant thinks about their decision during the final commercial break. If they decided to go for the final question and answered correctly, they either win a cash prize equal to their debt or doubled the money they knocked off their debt in the first two rounds, depending on the outcome of the "Get Out Of Debt" portion of the round. Either way, if the contestant decided to go for the final question and answered incorrectly, they are all the way back to being in debt, losing everything they won up to that point, but receiving a $1,500 savings bond if they won the "Get Out Of Debt" portion of the round or a $1,000 savings bond if they lost the "Get Out Of Debt" portion of the round. While this show has a Jeopardy-style round and a bidding round like a couple of other shows before it, I would still say that it's an original show. I mean, what other game shows feature contestants competing against each other to have all their bills paid off? None, as far as I know. Also, this show has a scoring format that isn't seen on any other game shows, which is getting your score as low as possible, with a correct answer deducting from your score and an incorrect answer adding to your score. There's another game show that's all about contestants playing to have their bills paid off, and that show is called Pay It Off, a show that aired on BET and was hosted by Kim Coles. That show is played differently from Debt. One more thing about Debt is that even though it did well in the ratings, it was cancelled after two seasons, because a majority of the show's viewers were men. Now, keep in mind that this show aired on Lifetime Television, whose slogan at the time was "Television for women", so the show was meant for women. I don't mind the show being watched by more people than just women, though. It's all about contestants answering "Who am I?" questions to get all their bills paid off, after all. So, that does it for this week's edition of Game Show Corner. Thank you, everybody, and have a great day.
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Post by Flowgli on Nov 7, 2014 13:00:13 GMT -5
Hello, everybody! I'm Flo. Welcome to this week's edition of Game Show Corner, where we take a look at the obscure side of the world of game shows. Stone Stanley Productions has been known for producing game shows like Shop 'Til You Drop, Fun House, and Legends Of The Hidden Temple, where teams play physical games and buzz in to answer questions to win trips and other merchandise prizes. But there's one game show from that company that features individual contestants only buzzing in and answering questions to win cash. That game show is called Mall Masters. Mall Masters is a GSN original that aired from April 1, 2001 to August 31 on that same year. The show was hosted by television personality Chris Harrison, who introduced himself during the intro on each episode of the show. This show was taped at the Camp Snoopy Theater inside the Mall of America in Minneapolis, Minnesota; not only that, but the game is all about the Mall of America. The game is played by three contestants. In this game, they are asked questions that test their knowledge on pop culture. They play three rounds, where they try to score points, with the contestant in the lead at the end of the game being the winner and advancing to the bonus round. In the first two rounds, the contestants are asked toss-up survey questions that were answered by a group of 100 shoppers at the Mall of America. Each toss-up survey question has three answers to choose from. On each survey toss-up question, only the contestant who buzzes in first gets to answer. If the answer they pick is the one that was made the most popular one, they get control of the game board. But if the answer they pick is one of the less popular ones, they are locked out, the most popular answer to that question is revealed, and another toss-up question is asked to the remaining two contestants. If one of the remaining two contestants buzzes in and gets the next toss-up question wrong, they are locked out, and the last remaining contestant gets to answer the next toss-up question. The contestant who got control of the game board is shown four of the stores in the Mall of America to choose from. After a store is picked, a person at the store who either was shopping or working there at the time is asked a trivia question that is related to that store in some way. The question has four answers to choose from. After the person at the store answers the question, the contestant in control has the option to agree with the person at the store or disagree with them and pick one of the remaining three answers. The correct answer to the question is revealed afterwards. If the person at the store answered the question correctly, they receive a $50 gift certificate. If the contestant in control answered the question correctly, they score points. After a question from the chosen store is played, that store is replaced with another one, and another survey toss-up question is asked to the three contestants. Each of the first two rounds ends after questions from three or four stores are played. Each question from a store is worth 100 points in round one and 200 points in round two. No points are scored for correctly guessing the most popular answers to survey toss-up questions in either round, though. Round three is a speed round called the Lightning Round. The way this round is played is similar to the Shopper's Challenge round on Shop 'Til You Drop. This round lasts for one minute and thirty seconds. In this round, the contestants are asked multiple-choice trivia questions, and they have to buzz in to answer a question. Each correct answer in this round is worth 100 points. Also, each question in this round has only three answers to choose from, so because of that, and because the game is played by three contestants, only the first two contestants to buzz in gets to answer a question. And if the first two contestants to buzz in both got the question wrong, the question is thrown out, and no points are scored from that question. After time runs out, the game is over, and the contestant in the lead at that point wins the game and advances to the bonus round. In the bonus round, one store in the Mall of America is shown on the game board, and the winning contestant is asked up to nine questions from that store. Each question in this round has two answers to choose from. The contestant must answer seven of the questions correctly in order to win. Each time the contestant gets a question wrong, they get a strike. If they get seven questions right, they win $5,000. But if they get three strikes, they get $100 for every correct answer given in this round. Winning the bonus round also has the game board displaying a flashing $5,000 graphic and a group of shoppers at the Mall of America waving and applauding. And that's Mall Masters. There really isn't much I can say about this show. There are just a couple of things that I can say about it. The gameplay is simple, but I don't find it that interesting. Many people who watched this show also might not have found this show that interesting. Because of this, the ratings were excessively low, and Rich Cronin, the president of GSN, decided for the plug to be pulled on the show. After the show got cancelled, it was shown in reruns until December 1, 2001. Like I just said, the gameplay is simple, but uninteresting. The set doesn't look interesting, either. And the consolation money won for not winning the bonus round is low. A contestant can win up to $600 without winning the bonus round. The point values in the main game are all in increments of 100, so I felt that if the winning contestant loses the bonus round, they should've received their winning score in cash and have their consolation winnings from the bonus round added to that. Also, why are the survey toss-up questions in rounds one and two not worth any points? Not to mention, I don't like how those questions were played. I always thought that they should've been played just like the trivia questions in the Lightning Round, except that a contestant should win a survey toss-up question by default if the other two contestants buzzed in first and both got it wrong. Well, it seems to me that Stone Stanley Productions wanted to do something a bit different from what they usually did in the game shows they produced before this one, and I really don't blame them for that. But in the end, it turned out to be a move that just didn't work out. It really didn't. That's all I have to say about this show. So, that does it for this week's edition of Game Show Corner. Thank you, everybody, and have a great day.
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Post by Flowgli on Nov 14, 2014 13:00:18 GMT -5
Hey, there, everybody! I'm Flo. Welcome to this week's edition of Game Show Corner, where we take a look at the obscure side of the world of game shows. Some game shows focus on relationships. There's one such game show in particular that has been around and known by many people for decades, and that show is The Newlywed Game. That show is all about married couples answering questions that test how well both halves of each couple know each other, and their answers have to match in order to score. If the answers don't match, the couple would often get into an argument. There are other game shows that have gameplay that is similar to that of The Newlywed Game. Each of these shows have teams that are different from married couples so that those shows wouldn't be too similar to The Newlywed Game. I'll be talking about one of those shows this week. That game show is called Three's A Crowd. Three's A Crowd had two runs. The original run aired in syndication from September 17, 1979 to February 1, 1980. The revival aired on GSN in 2000. Just like The Newlywed Game, this show was created by Chuck Barris. The original run was packaged by Chuck Barris Productions, while the revival was packaged by The Gurin Company, GSN, and Columbia TriStar Television Distribution. The syndicated version was hosted by Jim Peck, who hosted another game show before this one called The Big Showdown. This version featured three men, each one having his secretary and his wife with him. Each episode of this version began with the three men introduced by the show's announcer, Johnny Jacobs. In this version, the three men were asked four questions regarding their secretaries and their wives. After the men's answers were recorded, their secretaries appeared on stage, were introduced, and were asked the same questions. What the secretaries had to do was give answers that would match the men's answers. The wives would later appear on stage, be introduced, be asked the same questions, and try to match the men's answers. The secretaries had to work together as a team, and the wives had to work together as a team. The men are not the contestants; only the women are. After the secretaries and the wives tried matching the men's answers, the group of women that made the most correct matches won the game and split a cash prize of $1,000. But if both groups of women ended up with the same amount of correct matches, then all six women split the money. Okay, I'm just going to give my thoughts on this version of the show before I start talking about the revival. It just wasn't that good. For one thing, it's the $1,000 cash prize. Three women play as a team, and after an episode is over, the winning team might have turned against each other and fought over one cent after receiving $333.33 apiece. What even made it worse is that when the two teams of women ended the game with a tie, the six women would receive $166.66 apiece, making it a total of $999.96 won in the game. The six women might have ended up fighting each other for the remaining four cents. I've explained the problem with cash prizes often not equally divisible of three won by teams of three people when I talked about the game show version of Yahtzee, and I mentioned it again when I talked about Sex Wars. They could've made the cash prize on this show $3,000 so that each member of the winning team receives $1,000, and also so that all six women receive $500 apiece in case the game ends in a tie. For another thing, I just don't see the idea of "secretaries vs. wives" working out in a game show. In one episode, which happens to be the pilot episode, one of the wives got into a physical fight with her husband's secretary over how the latter woman answered this question: What is the strangest or most unusual thing that the wife personally ever did at home that became the talk of her husband's office the next day? After the wife gave her answer and her husband revealed his answer on the card, the secretary revealed her own answer to that question on her card, and her answer was "the one time the wife made edible spaghetti". I'll tell you, the questions on the show could cause a lot of fights between participants, and the answers given by them could do the same. Not only could the questions and answers have caused fights to be broken out, but they also could have caused marriages to either be jeopardized or end. This show is just not a fun one to watch. Also, while this show was around on television, four other shows from Chuck Barris were around, as well. Those shows were The Gong Show, that show's spin-off called The $1.98 Beauty Show, and the revivals of The Newlywed Game and The Dating Game. Ratings for those shows plummeted because of all the backlash from Three's A Crowd, and those shows were removed from the air when the next television season started. Three's A Crowd was the last show with an original format from Chuck Barris. The rest of the shows that came from him were revivals of shows that came before this one, with some of those shows having been created by this man himself and others having been created by other people. This show was so heavily criticized by feminists and conservative religious activists due to it exploiting adultery and sexual innuendo that on February 4, 1980, it was gone, and Chuck Barris's revival of Camouflage replaced it. Okay, now that the original version of the show is done being talked about, I'm now getting to the revival of the show, known as All New Three's A Crowd. This revival from GSN was hosted by Alan Thicke, who hosted other game shows such as Animal Crack-Ups and the 1997 game show version of Pictionary. But what this man is best known for is his role of Jason Seaver on a sitcom called Growing Pains. The announcer on this version of Three's A Crowd was Randy West. I already talked about what he's known for in the game show world when I talked about Hit Man. I'm not going to bother repeating what I said about him here. The central people in this version are not always men, and the two people accompanying each central person are never a secretary and a wife. This version features a variety in the people accompanying the central people. Those accompanying people are boyfriends and ex-boyfriends, girlfriends and ex-girlfriends, best friends and boyfriends, best friends and girlfriends, and so on. The central people in this version are often female. Three rounds are played, and each one is played a bit differently. In round one, the central people are asked three questions about the people accompanying them. Unlike the original version where a man's secretary and wife appear on stage one at a time, a central person's accompanying people both return on stage at the same time. On each question in this round, both people accompanying the central person each gave an answer of their own before the central person himself or herself reveals their answer on their card. Each accompanying person scores 5 points for each correct match they make. Round two is the other way around. The central people are off stage, while the people accompanying them are asked three questions about them. The central people then return on stage and give one answer to each question that would match either one or both of the people accompanying them. Each accompanying person scores 10 points for each time the central person matches them. Round three is called the Fast Match Round. In this round, the accompanying people each has a set of three answers in front of them. The three answers are always "yes", "no", and "maybe", but those answers are phrased differently on each episode. Each central person is given a set of four words or phrases that may or may not relate to them. The accompanying people each secretly lock in an answer, and the central person gives their own answer afterwards. Each accompanying person scores 10 points for each time the central person matches them, just like in the previous round. All six accompanying people play individually; the three people in a particular relationship with the central person do not play as a team. The accompanying person with the most points after three rounds wins the game and $1,000. Before I give my thoughts on this version of the show, I have to say that I tried to find a full episode of this version of the show on the Internet so I can easily get all the right information for this edition, but I couldn't find one. All I could find was an edited episode that focuses on one of the central people and her boyfriend and her ex. So, I resorted to using that video and a couple of articles about the show on the Internet to get all the facts I can get about it in order to make this edition possible. There are some full episodes of the original version, though, and I managed to get all the information I needed on how that version of the show was played from those videos. Now, about my thoughts on the revival, from what I saw from it and read about it, I will say that it's better than the original version. It's better for good reasons. There are no secretaries and wives playing the game, so there are no questions or answers to those questions that caused any heavy criticism from any viewers, and there are no physical fights between people accompanying a central person broken out. I also like the fact that the game is played in three different rounds, with each correct match scoring points. Another thing I like about this version is that the accompanying people play as individuals and not teams, so the $1,000 cash prize always goes to only one accompanying person. There is no explanation of what happens in this version if a game ends in a tie. Maybe a tie never happened in this version. So, the revival of Three's A Crowd is much tamer than the original version of the show. Now, there are other game shows with gameplay similar to that of The Newlywed Game that I will cover here later. There's one other such game show in particular that I really want to talk about here, but I'll save it for a much later edition. So, that does it for this week's edition of Game Show Corner. Thank you, everybody, and have a great day.
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Post by Flowgli on Nov 21, 2014 13:00:28 GMT -5
Hey, guys. What's up? This is Flo, welcoming you to this week's edition of Game Show Corner, where we take a look at the obscure side of the world of game shows. Here's a question I've been wanting to ask: Why does Pat Bullard suck at hosting game shows? Well, I think I have an answer to my own question. When he hosts a game show, he sounds a lot like a sleaze who doesn't care about the show he hosted or the contestants playing in said show. It sounds as if all he likes to do on a game show as the host is tell bad jokes and get paid for it. He hosted four game shows, all of which were inducted on a site called Game Show Garbage by its founder, Robert Q. Seidelman. The number one reason I think those shows were inducted on that site is because of Pat Bullard hosting them. One of the shows that Pat hosted was in Canada, and it was called Baloney. The other three that he hosted were in the United States. They were the revival of Love Connection from 1998, the revival of Card Sharks from 2001, and a hidden camera show from 1990, which is the subject of this week, called Hold Everything!Hold Everything! is a production of Jack Barry and Dan Enright, even though Jack Barry died in 1984, six years before this show came about. This show was billed as "thirty minutes of surprise and hilarity" by its announcer, Larry Van Nuys, who was also the announcer of another Barry-Enright production from 1990, which is the revival of Tic Tac Dough with Patrick Wayne as host. This show aired weekly during the summer of 1990. This show features three celebrities playing the game for charity. There are four videos, each one worth a different amount of points. The first video is worth one point, the second one is worth two points, the third one is worth three points, and the fourth one is worth four points. Each video shows a person put into a situation that was put together by the actors for this show. The video then pauses somewhere in the middle, and the show's logo pops up and the name of the show is said as that happens. The three celebrities then discuss the situation, and each one will verbally decide whether or not the person put into said situation would go along with it. The rest of the video is then played, revealing the outcome of the situation that the person was put into. Each celebrity who predicted correctly scores the points, but each celebrity who predicted incorrectly loses the points. However, the scores will never go below zero. After the four videos, the celebrity with the most points wins the game and receives $1,000 to donate to their charity. If the game ends in a tie, the tied celebrities split the money. And that's it. No, really, that's all there is to the game. The gameplay is just about the same as nearly every other hidden camera game show, watch videos of people getting put into situations that are intended to be hilarious but really aren't, predict what would happen at the end after a video pauses, and watch the rest of the video to find out if your prediction was right or wrong. What I actually found wrong other than the fact that this show was hosted by Pat Bullard is that the show is really cheap. The set looks too cheap to be seen as an actual game show set, and the cash prize awarded on this show is not good enough. This is a game show from 1990. By that time, game shows were giving away more money in cash and prizes than how much this show gave away. I mean, this show had celebrities playing the game for charity, and I feel that each celebrity should have been awarded a cash prize that's determined by how well they did in the game. $1,000 is not good enough for a top cash prize for a game show that features celebrities playing for charity. They could've made the top cash prize $5,000 and have $1,000 as a consolation cash prize awarded to each losing celebrity. Also, the scoring is flawed. The scoring was done the same way it was done on the original version of Twenty-One, another Barry-Enright production. The scoring may have worked well on that show, but it didn't work well on this one. On an episode that can be found on YouTube, which is said to be the premiere episode, one celebrity played a perfect game up until the fourth video, where he made an incorrect prediction and therefore going down from six points to two points, while his two opponents, who each had zero right before that video, won the game with four points each and therefore splitting the $1,000 cash prize to donate to their charities. In one article on the Internet, it has been said that the flaw in the scoring was pointed out by Bruce Jenner, so the scoring was changed later in the show's run so that $100 is earned for the celebrities' charities for every point scored. In conclusion, Hold Everything! is not one of the shows that I would have the patience to sit through. The host is one of the worst ever, the set looks nothing like a game show set, the cash prize is low, the situations shown in the videos on that show are not the least bit funny, and the gameplay is just not that interesting. End of story. So, that does it for this week's edition of Game Show Corner. Thank you, everybody, and have a great day.
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Post by Belchic on Nov 24, 2014 17:42:17 GMT -5
I am enjoying these, Flo. I still have yet to see you do one on a game show I recognize, but keep it up. I'm sure I'll eventually see one pop up.
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Post by Flowgli on Nov 28, 2014 13:00:26 GMT -5
Hey, y'all. How's it going? This is Flo, and welcome to this week's edition of Game Show Corner, where we take a look at the obscure side of the world of game shows. At one point, I talked about Peter Tomarken and one of the game shows he hosted aside from Press Your Luck called Hit Man. This week, I'm going to be talking about another game show that he hosted. That show is called Wipeout. No, I don't mean the show on ABC that's been around since 2008 and is still around today. I mean the syndicated game show from the 1980s. So, let's get to it. Wipeout. Wipeout ran from September 12, 1988 to June 9, 1989. It premiered two years after Press Your Luck got cancelled. It was produced by Dames-Fraser Productions and distributed by Paramount Domestic Television. There were three announcers throughout the whole of this show's existence, and they were Jim Hackett, Bob Ridgely, and John Harlan. The game starts off with three contestants. In round one, the three contestants are shown a 4x4 grid consisting of sixteen answers. The contestants are given a category, and eleven of the answers on the grid are correct to that category, while the other five are incorrect. The incorrect answers are called "Wipeouts". The contestant in control of the round must pick an answer that is correct to that category. Each time a contestant picks a correct answer, they get money added to their score, and they have the option to pick another answer or pass control to the next contestant in line. When a contestant's turn begins, they must pick at least one correct answer before they can pass. The first correct answer picked is worth $25, and every correct answer picked thereafter is worth $25 more than the previous answer picked, meaning that the eleventh and final correct answer picked is worth $275. However, if the contestant in control picks a Wipeout, they lose all the money they accumulated up to that point, and control passes over to the next contestant in line. Also, one of the correct answers has something behind it called the "Hot Spot". If a contestant picks the answer with the Hot Spot behind it, Peter brings a token over to that contestant. If the contestant can hold on to the token for the remainder of the round and end up either in first or second place, they win a prize. But if a contestant picks a Wipeout while holding on to the token, not only do they lose all their money and their turn, but the token is also taken away, and the Hot Spot goes back on the board behind one of the remaining correct answers. The round ends when either all of the correct answers or all of the Wipeouts are picked. The contestant with the lowest score at the end of this round is eliminated, while the other two contestants keep their money and advance to round two. If this round ends in a tie for last place, a board consisting of twelve answers is shown to them. Peter flips a coin to determine which tied contestant starts the tiebreaker. The tied contestants then take turns picking answers to a new category. The tiebreaker board consists of eight correct answers and four Wipeouts. One of the tied contestants wins the tiebreaker by either picking the last correct answer or the other tied contestant picking a Wipeout. Round two is called the Challenge Round. This round uses the bidding mechanic, which I already talked about when explaining a round of Sex Wars called "The List" and a round of Debt called Gambling Debt. After a category is given, the two remaining contestants go back and forth making bids on how many correct answers they can pick without picking a Wipeout. Just like in the tiebreaker, a category in this round has twelve answers, with eight of them being the correct answers, and the other four being Wipeouts. The contestants keep bidding until one of them bids the maximum of eight answers, or until they challenge the other contestant to fulfill their bid. If the contestant playing the category fulfilled their bid, they won that category. But if they picked a Wipeout, the other contestant got a chance to win that category by picking one of the remaining correct answers; if the answer that the other contestant picked is a Wipeout, the contestant in control of the category got to continue to fulfill their bid. After a category is finished, another one is played. The round is over when one of the contestants won two categories. That contestant wins the game and a prize, and they advance to the bonus round. In the bonus round, a different grid is set. The grid set for this round has three rows of four monitors each instead of four rows of four monitors each like in the main game, and the borders around the monitors are lit up by the winning contestant touching them. The contestant is given a category and shown twelve answers, with six of them being correct and the other six being Wipeouts. The contestant has 60 seconds to find the six correct answers. The way they must do it is that they must select an answer by touching its monitor border, and when they have selected the six answers they think are correct to the given category, they run to a red button and press it to find out how many of the selected answers are correct. No more than six answers can be selected at the same time. If all of the six selected answers are correct, the contestant wins the bonus round. But if less than six of those answers are correct, the contestant must make some changes on the grid. The contestant must touch one of the selected answers to have it unlit, or deselected. The contestant can use as many chances as they need to within the time limit. I also have to add that before this round can be played, Peter is given a category of his own to show the winning contestant how this round works. The prize awarded for winning the bonus round is a car. If the contestant wins the bonus round, not only do they win the car, but they also retire from the show undefeated, and three new contestants appear on the next episode. If the contestant doesn't win the bonus round, they get to come back on the next episode as a returning champion and play against two new challengers. In earlier episodes of the show, there were no returning champions. Three new contestants appeared on each episode until the show introduced returning champions a few weeks later. So, that's Wipeout. Before I give my thoughts on this show, I'm gonna talk about the pilot. The pilot has many differences from the series. Those differences are the set, the logo, the theme music, the game board having trilons instead of monitors, the addition of a hostess named Anna Rapagna, and some parts of the gameplay. The three contestants play two categories instead of just one, with each correct answer worth $100 in the first category and $200 in the second category. The dollar values do not increase for each correct answer chosen like in the series; the amounts are all flat. There is no Hot Spot on either category, but there is a "Free Pass", which is awarded to the contestant in the lead at the end of the first category. In the second category, the contestant with the Free Pass can use it to pass control to the next contestant in line without having to pick an answer first. The Free Pass can only be used once. The Challenge Round is played the same as it is in the series, except that instead of the round being played for a prize, each category is worth $1,000. The bonus round has some differences, as well. There are ten answers on the board instead of twelve, with five of the answers being correct and the other five being Wipeouts. And to have an answer selected, the winning contestant must hang a hoop over it. Also, the winning contestant gets to return on the next episode, even if they did win the car. Now, for my thoughts on this game. It's just as good as the other two game shows that Peter Tomarken hosted before it. Actually, I find myself enjoying this one more than I enjoy Hit Man and Press Your Luck. However, I find it bad that this show was short-lived. It's not as short-lived as Hit Man, but the gameplay looks so good to me that I thought it should've had a longer run. Despite the short run it had, though, it had some international versions. There were versions of this show in the UK, Australia, Spain, the Netherlands, and Germany, all of which premiered sometime after the original American version's cancellation. After finding out about the international versions of this show, I couldn't help but think that the American version should have a revival, with higher amounts of cash, two categories played by three contestants just like in the pilot and many of the international versions instead of just one category, and the contestants in the Challenge Round each locking in one bid, with the contestant who locked in with the higher bid in the faster time taking control of a category just like in the Australian version. All right. I've covered two game shows that Peter Tomarken hosted. There are three more he hosted that I haven't even mentioned here yet. I'll mention them, right now, before I close. Bargain Hunters, Prime Games, and Paranoia. I'll be covering those shows much later, and maybe, I'll be talking in greater length about Press Your Luck, too. So, that does it for this week's edition of Game Show Corner. Thank you, everybody, and have a great day.
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Post by Flowgli on Dec 5, 2014 13:00:08 GMT -5
Hey, guys! I'm Flo. Welcome to this week's edition of Game Show Corner, where we take a look at the obscure side of the world of game shows. Okay, I've talked about Hit Man some time ago, and I brought it up again when I talked about Wipeout last week. So, why am I bringing up Hit Man yet again? Because the game show I'll be talking about this week is as equally short-lived as Hit Man, it premiered and got cancelled on the same dates as Hit Man, and it aired on the same network as Hit Man. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Just Men!Like Hit Man, Just Men! is one of the game shows that lasted only one season consisting of 65 episodes, and it ran from January 3, 1983 to April 1 on the same year on NBC. It was created and produced by Rick Rosner, who later produced the John Davidson-hosted revival of Hollywood Squares and created and produced the most recent daytime game show on NBC called Caesars Challenge. This show was hosted by the widow of Allen Ludden and Rose Nylund from The Golden Girls herself, Betty White, who won an Emmy award for her hosting on this show. The announcer of this show was Steve Day, who later was the announcer on Caesars Challenge. The game is played by two women, who face a panel of seven male celebrities. Before the show, the panelists were asked yes-or-no questions about themselves, and those questions became the subjects of the game on the show itself. Also, each celebrity is given a key, one of which starts a car, which is the grand prize on the show. The key that starts the car is shown by Betty to the audience, and Betty would mix the key with the other six before giving the keys to the panel. What the contestants have to do is earn keys from the panel by figuring out which panelists answered either "yes" or "no" to questions that were asked to the panel before the show. In round one, a yes-or-no question is revealed along with a prop pertaining to it. That question was answered "yes" by at least two of the male celebrities, and the female contestants have to figure out which two of those male celebrities answered "yes" to that question. Each contestant has 60 seconds to ask the panel questions that not only pertain to the subject of the round, but also were prepared for them in advance. After a contestant's time of interrogating the panel is up, she gets to choose which celebrity she thinks answered "yes". If she makes a correct choice, she receives the key from the celebrity she chose. If two celebrities who answered "yes" are not chosen after the contestants each got one turn, then they take additional turns until a total of two keys are earned. On each additional turn, a contestant asks one question and makes her choice of celebrity. After two keys are earned, the round is over. Round two is played with another yes-or-no question, which was answered "no" by at least two of the remaining five celebrities. The contestants have to figure out which two of the remaining five celebrities answered "no" to that question. This time, each contestant gets only one turn, and making an incorrect choice of celebrity automatically gives that celebrity's key to the other contestant. Round three has one more yes-or-no question played, and only three celebrities remain. This time, no turns lasted 60 seconds. On each turn, a contestant asks one question and must decide if the interrogated celebrity answered "yes" or "no" to the yes-or-no question. If the contestant in turn predicted that celebrity's answer correctly, she gets that celebrity's key, and she gets to choose a key to steal from the other contestant. But if the contestant in turn predicted incorrectly, the key from that celebrity and the choice of key to steal goes to the other contestant. So, two keys are moved after each turn in this round. The round is over when all seven keys are earned by the two contestants. The contestant with the most keys at the end of this round wins the game and gets a shot at winning a car, while the other contestant receives a consolation prize for each key she has in her possession at the end of the game, with a minimum guarantee of one consolation prize if she ends up with no keys. In the bonus round, the winning contestant chooses a key for each appearance she made on the show and uses those keys to start the car. The first choice of key has to be one of the keys she ended up with at the end of the main game, and the remaining choices of keys can be any keys she wants. If that contestant won the game with all seven keys ended up in her possession, she gets a bonus choice of key. When a contestant has more than one key to use to start the car, they are used in alphabetical order according to the names of the celebrities that held on to those keys earlier in the game. The celebrities who had their keys chosen by the contestant join her for luck. If one of the keys that the contestant has chosen starts the car, then the contestant wins the car and retires from the show undefeated, and two new challengers compete on the next episode. If none of the keys that the contestant has chosen start the car, then the celebrity who held on to the key that does start the car will be revealed, and Betty uses the key that does start the car to open the trunk, revealing a prop that indicates a consolation prize, and the contestant receives the consolation prize and appears on the next episode to play against a new challenger. If a contestant fails to win the car on her first six appearances on the show, she automatically wins the car by just winning the main game on her seventh and final appearance on the show. And that's Just Men! The gameplay on the show is good in my opinion. What I don't like is that a losing contestant could receive more prizes than the winning contestant, even if three is the maximum of consolation prizes that a losing contestant can receive, because a contestant can win the game by ending up with at least four keys. But on each episode, a winning contestant can only win one prize, and it's either a car or a consolation prize indicated by a prop in the trunk. Another thing I don't like is that the winning contestant can only choose one of the keys in her possession at the end of the main game when making her first choice of key. I actually found this to be a problem when a contestant makes her first trip to the bonus round and didn't have all seven keys in her possession at the end of the game. What if the key that starts the car is in the possession of the losing contestant at the end of the main game that day? Other than those things. It's a nice show that I can tolerate watching. Betty White did very well in hosting the show, and I think she did deserve that Emmy award for that. And some of the male celebrities that appeared on the show as panelists were hosts of other game shows. A couple of examples are Pat Sajak from Wheel Of Fortune and Peter Tomarken, who was the host of Hit Man at the time, of course. The idea of having female contestants figuring out how men answered questions was used again on Mind Of A Man, a GSN original that came and went this year. Speaking of GSN originals, I have covered two of them here, and they were Mall Masters and the revival of Three's A Crowd. I'll be talking about two more GSN originals on the next two editions of Game Show Corner. Keep an eye out for those. So, that does it for this week's edition of Game Show Corner. Thank you, everybody, and have a great day.
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Post by Flowgli on Dec 12, 2014 13:00:05 GMT -5
Hello, friends...or foes. I'm Flo, your host. Welcome to this week's edition of Game Show Corner, where we take a look at the obscure side of the world of game shows. Okay, let me start off by saying that suppose you've met someone who found a wallet you lost, and that person went through a lot of trouble to get to you so they could return the wallet, but you had a feeling that they looked into your wallet and took some cash or any of your cards out of it before they returned it to you. Would you consider that person to be a friend or a foe? You would get the answer for sure if you were teamed up with that person on a GSN original called Friend Or Foe?Friend Or Foe? is one of the game shows that uses a variation of the prisoner's dilemma. It ran for two seasons from June 3, 2002 to April 1, 2003 on GSN. The show was hosted by Lisa Kennedy Montgomery, also known as simply Kennedy. She did not host on the final episode, though; at that time, all the hosts of the GSN originals that were current back then each hosted another host's show just for April Fools Day. In the case of Friend Or Foe?, Mark L. Wahlberg, who was the host of Russian Roulette at that time, hosted on the final episode, while Kennedy hosted on the final episode of WinTuition, which was hosted by Marc Summers. Each episode of Friend Or Foe starts off with six strangers, who each told the home viewers about themselves, and Kennedy would reveal something scandalous about the strangers after each one is introduced. The six strangers then get paired up into three teams for this game, which test their knowledge, trust, and betrayal. In season one, three of the strangers each stood behind a podium and used it to secretly choose which of the other three strangers--their potential partners--they wanted to team up with. If more than one person chose the same potential partner, then that potential partner got to choose which of the people who chose them they wanted to team up with. Once the three teams were formed, they each went into a station that is wired so that they could only hear Kennedy's voice. In season two, the teams were formed at random. Either way, the two strangers in each team had to work together and build a "trust fund" by answering questions. Each team started off with $200 in their trust fund in season one, and nothing in it in season two. The only way for a team to have $200 in their trust fund in season two is if they got eliminated from the game with nothing. In round one, the three teams were asked four multiple-choice questions, with each question having four answers to choose from. After a question and the four choices were read, the two members on each team had 15 seconds to come to an agreement on one of the answers and lock it in. If both members of a team lock in with the same answer, and that answer is correct, they get $500 added to their trust fund. After the four questions, the team with the lowest score is eliminated, and they exit their station and go to the "trust box", where they decide on what to do with the money in their trust fund. I'll explain how the trust box portion of the game works later, but right now, I'm going to explain the last two rounds of this game. Round two is played the same way as round one was played, but there are a couple of differences here. This round is played by two teams remaining, and each question in this round is worth $1,000. I also have to mention that if there's a tie for last place in rounds one and two, the team that took more time to answer the questions is eliminated. The third and final round is called "Right Or Wrong?" In this round, the last team remaining is given 60 seconds to answer ten questions. This time, each question has only two answers to choose from. A correct answer adds $500 to the team's trust fund, while an incorrect answer gets the team a strike. If the team runs out of time or gets three strikes, the round is over, and no more of the questions in that round, if any did remain, were asked. But if all ten questions were answered correctly, the team's entire trust fund is doubled. So, a possible $22,400 could be won in season one, and a possible $22,000 could be won in season two. Now comes where I talk about the trust box. At the end of each round, one team will be at the trust box, where each member of that team will secretly make one of the two following decisions: "friend" or "foe". In rounds one and two, an eliminated team goes to the trust box. In the third and final round, the remaining team goes to the trust box. Inside each end of the trust box is a button, which a team member could press if they want to choose "foe". But if they leave the button alone for the entire ten seconds of making their decision, that means they want to choose "friend". Before making their decisions, the two team members would would each tell their teammate why they should split the money with them. Then, they slip their hands into the trust box and make their decisions within ten seconds. After both team members made their decisions, they get their hands out of the trust box and put them on top of it. Their decisions are then revealed. With each eliminated team, both team members' decisions are revealed at the same time. But with the last team remaining, each team member's decision is revealed one at a time. Both team members' decisions decide how much money each team member goes home with. If both team members choose "friend", they split the money in their trust fund, with each team member receiving half the money. If one team member chooses "friend" and the other chooses "foe", the team member who chooses "foe" receives all the money in the team's trust fund, while the team member who chooses "friend" receives nothing. If both team members choose "foe", they both receive nothing. Okay, I just have this to say about the show before I close. There are some people who like the prisoner's dilemma variation seen in game shows like this one, and there are others who don't. I have no problem with that mechanic as long as it's done once for an entire game and it's the final part of that game. However, this is the only game show with this mechanic that was used more than once for an entire game. This mechanic on this show was used three times for an entire game, once after every single round. What's wrong with it done this way? Well, the problem is that there were times when an eliminated team receives money for either team member or both team members, while a team that went further along in the game receives nothing. What sense does that make? It makes none to me. It really wouldn't make any sense for an eliminated team to win money for one or both team members and the last team remaining to win nothing for both team members. It's kind of like the game show from the UK called Full Swing, where it was possible for a contestant who is further along in the game to end up with less money than how much money was won by a contestant who was eliminated before that. Speaking of game shows from the UK, there were two game shows there that used the prisoner's dilemma variation, and the very first game show to use that mechanic was from there. That game show is called Shafted. That show and Golden Balls were game shows in the UK that used that mechanic, while there were two game shows in the US that used that mechanic, and those game shows were Take It All and this one called Friend Or Foe? And while the gameplay is not all that good in Shafted, Golden Balls, and Take It All, they all used that mechanic better than Friend Or Foe? did. So, that does it for this week's edition of Game Show Corner. Thank you, everybody, and have a great day.
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Post by Flowgli on Dec 19, 2014 13:00:17 GMT -5
Hello. I'm Flo. Welcome to this week's edition of Game Show Corner, where we take a look at the obscure side of the world of game shows. Now, as we all know, game shows are made to be entertaining. Each game show has its own way of keeping the viewers entertained, and there are things in game shows that have people enjoy them. Those things can be sets that look great, prizes that are worth playing for, hosts who know what they're doing and care about the contestants, music cues and sound effects that sound great, beautiful models who know how to do their jobs well, hilarious celebrities as part of a panel who can help out contestants and add some humor with their jokes, and most importantly, gameplay that is great. But there are game shows that lack everything that makes a game show good enough to entertain people. There are game shows that are just plain boring for people to watch. One of those game shows is what I'll be talking about this week. The show is Inquizition. Inquizition is a GSN original that ran from October 5, 1998 to October 19, 2001. All the game shows I talked about here so far each lasted either only one or two seasons, but this one lasted three seasons. Seriously? Inquizition lasted three seasons? From how boring the show is, I'm surprised that this show even lasted one whole season, let alone three. I instantly got bored by this show the first time I ever watched it. It was produced by Sande Stewart, son of Bob Stewart, and it was hosted by someone whose identity was never revealed; the host was just known as the "Inquizitor". Not only was the Inquizitor's identity never revealed on the show, but it's never revealed anywhere on the Internet. There's more about the Inquizitor that I have to talk about, but I'll get to that later, as well as the set. The game started off with four contestants. The contestants were asked multiple-choice questions, with each question having three answers to choose from. Each contestant must lock in an answer by pressing A, B, or C on their podium, and each contestant who locked in with the correct answer scored one point. For some reason, answer C was almost always "none of the above". But the contestants shouldn't take too long to lock in an answer, because they only had three seconds to lock in an answer after the Inquizitor finished reading the question and the three answers, and the Inquizitor would scold a contestant for not pressing their button in time. The four contestants were asked twenty to twenty-five questions, but there was an hourglass that kept count of how much time there was left in that round. When time was up, the contestant with the lowest score was eliminated. Round two was played by the three remaining contestants, and the scores from the previous round were reset to zero before this round. This round was played the same as the previous round. Round three was the third and final round in the entire show, and it was played by the two remaining contestants. Just like in round two, the scores were reset to zero before this round. This round was played the same as the previous two rounds. Whichever remaining contestant had the highest score at the end of this round won the game. The winner received a cash prize and collected some papers. In season one, the cash prize was $250. In seasons two and three, the cash prize was $500. That's it. That's the game. Yeah, what did I tell you? It's boring. But there's another thing to this show. During the game, there were four more contestants who played along at home against each other in a telephone game. The telephone contestants played for the same prizes as the studio contestants played for, as well as online gift certificates in some cases. I can now get to the Inquizitor. Like I said earlier, his identity was never revealed, and it's still not revealed today. There were some suggestions made by other people on who the Inquizitor was, though. Some of those people think that the Inquizitor was Bob Stewart. Others think that the Inquizitor was William Bassett. Also, he is strict and does not tolerate any mistakes made by the contestants. He would scold contestants for getting questions wrong or not locking in an answer, while he would occasionally praise a contestant for getting questions right. He also referred to the contestants by either Mr., Mrs., or Ms. insert-last-name-here, like a gentleman. He didn't sound like a gentleman, though, when he rudely demanded an eliminated contestant to leave. And at the end of the show, he would leave the set, letting out a menacing cackle. Speaking of leaving the set, the way a contestant did it was that they turned around, having their back facing the camera, and the screen faded to white. Now comes the part where I talk about the set. The set looked like an airplane hangar. The set, though, wasn't even real. It was just a blue screen effect. How cheap. I now have two words to describe this show. One of them is "boring". The other is "cheap". This show had so many problems with it. The gameplay is repetitive, the host is too strict to be a game show host and has a hidden identity, the set is not a real game show set in any way, and the cash prizes are low. And about those "papers" that the winner had to collect, it's all just a prop that was just for brief display on camera, and it's not often that those "papers" were seen. Also, this show is similar to a game show from the UK called 100%, which had a very short-lived American version that went by the same name. I've watched an episode of the UK version of 100% on YouTube, and it's just as boring as Inquizition. So, I'm not going to bore myself anymore with this show or other shows similar to it. I'm also done talking about it. So, that does it for this week's edition of Game Show Corner. Thank you, everybody, and have a great day.
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Post by Flowgli on Dec 26, 2014 13:00:24 GMT -5
Hello to all of you out there! I'm Flo, your host, and welcome to this week's edition of Game Show Corner, where we take a look at the obscure side of the world of game shows. $1,000,000. One...million...dollars. Now, who wouldn't want to win that amount of money? There are game shows where that amount of money is the top cash prize for contestants to play for. Those game shows are Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, Million Dollar Password, the primetime version of Deal Or No Deal, the NBC version of 1 Vs. 100, the Fox version of Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader? the NBC version of The Weakest Link, the NBC version of Minute To Win It, and the game show that I'll be talking about this week called $1,000,000 Chance Of A Lifetime. $1,000,000 Chance Of A Lifetime is the first game show to ever have $1,000,000 to be played for, and it aired in syndication from January 6, 1986 to September 11, 1987, lasting two seasons. It was hosted by Jim Lange, who was most known for hosting The Dating Game. He also hosted other game shows like The $100,000 Name That Tune, Hollywood Connection, Bullseye, a week's worth of special episodes of The New Newlywed Game on ABC, Give-N-Take, Spin-Off, and Triple Threat. The first few weeks of $1,000,000 Chance Of A Lifetime were announced by Marc Summers. And no, it's not the same Marc Summers who hosted Double Dare and WinTuition. Anyway, after the first few weeks of $1,000,000 Chance Of A Lifetime, Marc Summers was replaced by Johnny Gilbert. And yes, it's the same Johnny Gilbert who is the announcer on Jeopardy! Also, the show was produced by XPTLA Company and distributed by Lorimar-Telepictures. This show is a word game, and the gameplay has similarities to Wheel Of Fortune and the game show version of Scrabble. However, despite this, it was actually based on an unsold pilot from the 1970s called The Letter Machine. Now, it's time to get to how this game is played. The game is played by two married couples. The main game consists of three rounds, and in each one, only one half of each couple plays, while the other half of each couple sits behind their partner, allowed to cheer them on but not allowed to help them out. The contestants playing are shown toss-up word puzzles. On each toss-up puzzle, letters in it appear at random one at a time, just like Speedword in Scrabble and the toss-up puzzles in Wheel Of Fortune, but the toss-up puzzles weren't introduced in Wheel Of Fortune until years after the cancellation of $1,000,000 Chance Of A Lifetime. Anyway, a contestant who buzzes in gets to solve the toss-up puzzle. If they are right, they score cash. But if they are wrong, the rest of the letters except for the last one are revealed to the other contestant, who must buzz in to answer, as well. Whoever correctly solves the toss-up puzzle not only scores cash, but also gets to go to an oversized keyboard, where they get to pick letters for a word puzzle that's in the form of one played on Wheel Of Fortune. I must also state that every toss-up puzzle in this game is a clue to a Wheel Of Fortune-type puzzle. At the start of a puzzle in each round, all of the letters in that puzzle and one additional letter that is not in the puzzle are all lit up on the keyboard. The contestant at the keyboard presses two of the keys that are lit up, and after a key is pressed, all appearances of the letter on that key are shown in the puzzle, and money is added to the bank for each appearance of that letter. After pressing two keys, the contestant gets to solve the puzzle. If they are unable to solve the puzzle, they go back to their podium, and another toss-up puzzle is played. Now, about the additional letter that's not in the puzzle, that letter is called the "Stinger", and it's shown to only the home viewers at the start of the puzzle. If the contestant at the keyboard presses the Stinger key, they immediately lose control of the puzzle, and another toss-up puzzle is played. Along with the letters, there's an additional key with a star on it. In each round where the star key is one of the keys lit up, there are punctuation marks in the puzzle in play. So, each time the star key is pressed in a round it's lit up in, all appearances of all the punctuation marks in the puzzle are shown, and each appearance of each punctuation mark adds money to the bank. Also, the star key is never a Stinger. The contestant who solves the puzzle wins the round and scores all the money in the bank. The dollar values in this game are $25 for each toss-up puzzle and appearance of letter or punctuation mark in a puzzle in round one, $50 apiece in round two, and $100 apiece in round three. Sometimes, when there's plenty of time after three rounds, a fourth round is played, with the dollar values in that round the same as the dollar values in round three. Also, if time runs out while a puzzle is in play, the remaining letters appear at random one at a time, just like the toss-up puzzles, and whoever buzzes in and solves the puzzle wins the round. The couple with the most money at the end of the game keeps it, become the champions, and advances to the bonus round. The other couple receives parting gifts, including the board game of the show, and their main game winnings from their previous appearances if they are outgoing champions. In the bonus round, the winning couple is shown three categories to choose from. After choosing a category, the couple goes into a booth that is wired so that they can only hear the host and not the audience. What the couple has to do is solve six word puzzles in the chosen category within 60 seconds. The word puzzles in this round are played like the toss-ups in the main game; letters appear at random one at a time. But since this is the bonus round, meaning that the couple is playing on their own and not against another couple, there is no buzzing in to solve the puzzles. But the couple can make as many guesses as they need to on each puzzle, and after the couple correctly solves a puzzle, they are shown the next puzzle to solve. If the couple wins the bonus round, they are offered a cash prize and have the option to take that money and retire from the show undefeated or refuse to take the money and return to the show and play against another couple on the next episode. If the couple fails to win the bonus round, they are forced to retire from the show undefeated with only their main game winnings. The cash prize offered after winning the bonus round the first time is $5,000, and the cash prize offered after winning the bonus round the second time is $10,000. Couples can stay on the show for up to three days, and if a couple wins the bonus round on their third and final appearance on the show, they win $1,000,000. Now, the $1,000,000 prize is in the form of a 25-year annuity. During the show's run, the $1,000,000 was won by nine couples. In season one, $1,000,000 winners receive $40,000 a year. In season two, $900,000 of the $1,000,000 prize was in cash, while the other $100,000 was in prizes, including two new Mazda automobiles, round-trip tickets to anywhere in the US on Delta Air Lines, an outdoor spa, and furniture for rooms such as the living room, the dining room, the kitchen, and the bedroom. $1,000,000 winners on that season receive $36,000 a year. The show started in 1986 and ended in 1987, so all the annuity payouts ended in 2011 and 2012. When season two premiered, not only did the annuity payouts change, but the graphics changed, the set changed a bit, the theme music sounded livelier, and a co-host was added to the show, too. The co-host was Karen Thomas, and what she did on the show was introduce the couples, explain the prizes, hand the winning couples their main game winnings in cash, and hand the $1,000,000 winning couples the keys to the Mazda automobiles. This is one of the greatest big money game shows I've ever come across. There really isn't much I found wrong with this show. I think the game would've been more challenging if there was more than one Stinger on each puzzle in the main game. Also, I find the cash payouts for winning the bonus round the first and second times not high enough for a show like this. The top prize of $1,000,000 is won by a couple winning the bonus round three times. The two cash prizes offered after the bonus round was won the first two times, $5,000 and $10,000, respectively, are very low compared to the $1,000,000 prize. Going from $10,000 to $1,000,000 is far too big of a leap. With $1,000,000 as the top prize, there should've been a six-figure prize like $100,000 offered after the bonus round was won on a couple's second appearance on the show. And when a couple wins the $1,000,000 prize, a $1,000,000 graphic keeps appearing multiple times in multiple ways. They didn't need to make the graphic do that. But other than that, there really isn't much in the show that I found wrong with it. I wonder how the show would be like if it was on today? Would it have done as well as it did back in the 1980s? Maybe better? Well, I hope that there would be a revival of this show so we can see what would happen then. Today, a prize like $1,000,000 can be won on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? and Wheel Of Fortune. And not too many years ago, we had shows like Deal Or No Deal, Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?, and--I can't believe I didn't mention this show earlier-- Who's Still Standing?, where $1,000,000 was the top cash prize. So, I don't see why $1,000,000 Chance Of A Lifetime can't get a 21st century revival. This is a great show with a prize that was great to play for back in the 1980s and is still great to play for today. So, that does it for this week's edition of Game Show Corner. Thank you, everybody, and have a great day.
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