A game show is a genre of broadcast viewing entertainment where contestants compete for a reward. These programs can either be participatory or demonstrative and are typically directed by a host, sharing the rules of the program as well as commentating and narrating where necessary. The history of game shows dates back to the invention of television as a medium. On most game shows, contestants either have to answer questions or solve puzzles, typically to win either money or prizes. Game shows often reward players with prizes such as cash, trips and goods and services provided by the show's sponsor.
Trivial Pursuit is a board game in which winning is determined by a player's ability to answer trivia and popular culture questions. Players move their pieces around a board, the squares they land on determining the subject of a question they are asked from a card. Each correct answer allows the player's turn to continue; a correct answer on one of the six "category headquarters" spaces earns a plastic wedge which is slotted into the answerer's playing piece. The object of the game is to collect all six wedges from each "category headquarters" space, and then return to the center "hub" space to answer a question in a category selected by the other players.
Kenneth Wayne Jennings III is an American game show host, author, and former game show contestant. He is the highest-earning American game show contestant, having won money on five different game shows, including $4,522,700 on the U.S. game show Jeopardy!. Since 2021, Jennings and Mayim Bialik have alternated as hosts of that show. In 2023, Jennings received a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Host for a Game Show for hosting the show.
Charles John O'Donnell was an American radio and television announcer, primarily known for his work on game shows. Among them, he was best known for Wheel of Fortune, where he worked from 1975 to 1980, and again from 1989 until his death. O'Donnell was also known for announcing American Bandstand.
Merv Griffin Enterprises was an American television production company founded by Merv Griffin, in operation from March 7, 1963, to July 22, 1994. From 1994 to 2002, it was a name-only unit of Columbia TriStar Television, and then it currently is a name-only unit of Sony Pictures Television from 2002 onwards. It is also currently a name-only unit of Merv Griffin Entertainment, from 1996 onwards.
Wheel of Fortune is an American television game show created by Merv Griffin, premiering in 1975 with a syndicated version airing in 1983. Since 1986, the syndicated version has been adapted into various video games spanning numerous hardware generations. Most versions released in the 20th century were published by GameTek, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 1998.
There have been numerous Monopoly video games based on the core game mechanics of Parker Brothers and Hasbro's board game Monopoly. They have been developed by numerous teams and released on multiple platforms over 35+ years.
A game show is a type of radio, television, or internet program in which contestants, television personalities or celebrities, sometimes as part of a team, play a game which involves answering trivia questions or solving puzzles, usually for prizes. Game shows are usually distinguishable from reality television competition shows, in which the competition consumes an entire season of episodes; in a game show, prizes can typically be won in a single match. Beginning with the first five-figure and six-figure game show jackpots in the mid-1950s, a succession of contestants on various quiz shows of the era each set records. Teddy Nadler of The $64,000 Challenge, the highest-scoring contestant of the 1950s era, was not surpassed until 1980, when Thom McKee won $312,700 on Tic-Tac-Dough. Between 1999 and 2001, during a brief boom in high-stakes game shows, the record was broken six times. Both the 1955–1958 and 1999–2001 eras of rapidly set and broken records were driven primarily by one-upmanship between the networks each trying to secure bragging rights and ratings by inflating their prize offerings, rather than the merits of the contestants themselves. American daytime television has historically had smaller prize budgets for game shows that air in that daypart.
Friends: The One with All the Trivia is a 2005 video game developed by Artech Studios and published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment for the PlayStation 2 and Windows.
Jeopardy! is an American television game show created by Merv Griffin, in which contestants are presented with trivia clues in the form of answers and must phrase their responses in the form of a question. The show has experienced a long life in several incarnations over the course of nearly a half-century, spending more than 12 years as a daytime network program and having currently run in syndication for 39 seasons. It has also gained a worldwide following with a multitude of international adaptations.
The Best of TV Quiz & Game Show Themes was the 2000 follow-up to the bestselling Classic TV Game Show Themes CD, released by Varèse Sarabande. Like the original, the CD contained 20 tracks.
Javaground was an American provider of a suite of development and porting tools for the mobile games industry called the Xpress Suite. The company was also a developer of mobile games. Javaground's Xpress Suite was noted for its set of automated converters, which were used to create games for a range of platforms including the iPhone, Windows Mobile, Android, BREW, and Flash, from a single set of Java ME source code.
Pressman Toy Corporation is a toy manufacturer based in Richardson, Texas. Founded in 1922 by Jack Pressman, it currently focuses on family games and licensed products.
Richard Cooper is a Canadian musician and writer based in Ottawa, Ontario.
Trivial Pursuit: Unhinged is a video game developed by Artech Studios and published by Atari Interactive based on the trivia board game of the same name. It was released in 2004 for the PlayStation 2, Xbox and Microsoft Windows.
Atari Interactive, Inc. is an American subsidiary of Atari SA, formerly known as Infogrames Entertainment SA. The company was originally founded by toy company Hasbro in 1995 as Hasbro Interactive, and was sold to Infogrames at the beginning of 2001.
Jeffrey Steefel is a creator of video games and former actor. He earned a degree in drama from University of California, Davis. Steefel served as Executive Producer at Turbine, Inc. from 2004 to 2015, during which time he led the creation and launch of The Lord of the Rings Online. Since 2015, he has been building a game development studio at Wizards of the Coast, currently in Open Beta with Magic: The Gathering Arena, the studio's first game.
Wheel of Fortune is an American television game show created by Merv Griffin. The show has aired continuously since January 1975. It features a competition in which contestants solve word puzzles, similar to those in hangman, to win cash and prizes determined by spinning a giant carnival wheel. The current version of the series, which airs in nightly syndication, premiered on September 19, 1983. It stars Pat Sajak and Vanna White as hosts, who have hosted the nighttime version since its inception. The original version of Wheel was a network daytime series that ran on NBC from January 6, 1975, to June 30, 1989, and subsequently aired on CBS from July 17, 1989, to January 11, 1991; it returned to NBC on January 14, 1991, and was cancelled that year, ending on September 20, 1991.
Jeopardy! is an American game show created by Merv Griffin. The show is a quiz competition that reverses the traditional question-and-answer format of many quiz shows. Rather than being given questions, contestants are instead given general knowledge clues in the form of answers and they must identify the person, place, thing, or idea that the clue describes, phrasing each response in the form of a question.
