Friday, February 10, 2012

All About Game Shows

When I was a kid, I went through a lot of different phases. The Asperger's symptom of "special interests" applies to me in that I would get really into something for a while, then grow bored and try something else. While in the throes of an interest, I'd read about it, or watch it, or collect it, depending on what it was. Some interests I came back to over and over every so often, while others I've dropped. I've had many special interests over the years, from dinosaurs to politics. One of my shorter-lived interests was the game show. When I was around ten years old, I took a liking to watching game shows, trying to answer the questions, and hoping people could win big. Here are my thoughts and memories on some of the most memorable game shows of my childhood.

Legends of the Hidden Temple
I should clarify that my ten-year-old game show watching was not the first time I watched game shows. The difference was that the first game shows I watched were specifically targeted at kids - Nickelodeon used to show lots of game shows, and I followed most of them. Legends of the Hidden Temple was my favorite of the group. This game show had an awesome setting that looked like ancient ruins in the jungle. The two competing teams of kids were chosen from a pool of possible team names, so there were recurring teams, but you didn't see the same teams every time. I think there was a Purple Monkey team, a Silver Spider team, and a Green Parrot team, among others (all animals you'd find in jungle ruins, of course). Adding to the spectacle was the character Olmec, a giant talking tiki head who explained the rules of each game.

After one team got enough points to beat the other team, the main event happened - a kid from the winning team was sent into the "hidden temple" itself - an obstacle course with different paths every episode. Temple Guards (hired staff) lurked in the temple, and would try to catch the kid before they could reach the goal. Winning the earlier games gave the team medallions they could use as "extra lives" to hold off a guard attack. The whole thing was extremely reminiscent of a real-life video game, and that's why I was so interested in it. It was a hard game, too - kids escaped the temple rarely enough that it was really thrilling when they managed to win!

Jeopardy
This was probably the first "adult" game show I ever watched. I remember thinking the "phrase your answer in the form of a question" rule was weird, and chalked it up to being Jeopardy's attempt to stand out from the pack. I generally wasn't very good at playing along on Jeopardy, so I got really excited when I knew the answer to a question. Or is that the question to an answer? Silly Jeopardy.

Wheel of Fortune
I liked Wheel of Fortune because the puzzles, being word-based and gradually revealed, were fun to try and solve. I always got upset when someone hit Bankrupt, though. I felt so bad for them.

The other thing I remember from Wheel of Fortune is the constant applauding. Everybody would clap every time the wheel was spun. And the wheel spun a lot. I recall making fun of the overeager applause more than once. 

Who Wants to be a Millionaire
This was the game show that got me into watching game shows in the first place. I heard a lot of excitement over it when it premiered around the turn of the millennium, and I followed it fairly regularly for a while. Although I didn't enjoy how drawn out the show sometimes got (especially when they had to end the show on a tough question because they were out of time), I loved the fun questions at the beginning, the excitement of watching people win big sums of money, and especially the atmosphere.

Out of all the "adult" game shows, Millionaire had bar none the best presentation. Jeopardy was studious and techy with its wall of screens. Wheel of Fortune was glitzy and fun. But Millionaire was serious business. The enormous stadium, the dramatic lighting, and the music. Goodness gracious, the music. It made you feel like the world was at stake. I got the idea to look for Millionaire's music on YouTube this morning, and I found it. It inspired me to write this post.

Here's a few tracks from Who Wants to be a Millionaire.
The 100- to 1000-dollar questions
The 2000-dollar question
The 64,000 dollar question (they actually use slightly different songs for these high-level questions, slowly increasing the pitch to make it more dramatic)
The million-dollar question
Contestant gets the million-dollar question correct
Contestant gets the million-dollar question wrong (it's suitably tragic)

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