A game show is a genre of broadcast viewing entertainment where contestants compete in a game for rewards. The shows are typically directed by a host, who explains the rules of the program as well as commentating and narrating where necessary. The history of the game shows dates back to the late 1930s when both radio and television game shows were broadcast. The genre became popular in the United States in the 1950s, becoming a regular feature of daytime television.
Hollywood Squares is an American game show in which two contestants compete in a game of tic-tac-toe to win cash and prizes. The show piloted on NBC in 1965 and the regular series debuted in 1966 on the same network. The board for the game is a 3 × 3 vertical stack of open-faced cubes, each occupied by a celebrity seated at a desk and facing the contestants. The stars are asked questions by the host and the contestants judge the truth of their answers to gain squares in the right pattern to win the game.
Scrabble is an American television game show based upon the board game Scrabble. Contestants competed in a series of rounds to fill in words within a crossword puzzle for cash. Muriel Green of Exposure Unlimited developed the idea for a television game show based upon the board game concept. During 1983, Green convinced Selchow and Righter, who at that time owned the Scrabble board game, to license Exposure Unlimited to produce the game show. Exposure Unlimited co-produced the show with Hasbro Studios, Reg Grundy Productions, and licensed the show to NBC. Scrabble aired on NBC from July 2, 1984, to March 23, 1990, and again from January 18 to June 11, 1993. Chuck Woolery hosted the program. Jay Stewart was the announcer for the first year. Charlie Tuna replaced him in mid-1985 and remained through the original run and the entirety of the 1993 revival.
The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, or simply Tower of Terror, is a series of similar accelerated drop tower dark rides located at Disney's Hollywood Studios, Tokyo DisneySea, Walt Disney Studios Park, and formerly located at Disney California Adventure. The attraction is inspired by Rod Serling's anthology television series, The Twilight Zone, and takes place in the fictional Hollywood Tower Hotel in Hollywood, California. The Tokyo version features an original storyline not related to The Twilight Zone and takes place in the fictional Hotel Hightower. All versions of the attraction place riders in a seemingly ordinary hotel elevator, and present a fictional backstory in which people have mysteriously disappeared from the elevator under the influence of a supernatural element many years previously.
Concentration is an American television game show based on the children's memory game of the same name. It was created by Jack Barry and Dan Enright. Contestants matched prizes hidden behind spaces on a game board, which would then reveal portions of a rebus puzzle underneath for the contestants to solve.
The Joker's Wild is an American television game show that aired at different times between 1972 and 2019. Contestants answer trivia questions based on categories determined randomly by a mechanism resembling a slot machine. The show's title refers to the game's slot-machine mechanism also having jokers, which may be used to represent any category.
Legends of the Hidden Temple is an American action-adventure television game show that broadcast from 1993 to 1995 on Nickelodeon. Created by David G. Stanley, Scott A. Stone, and Stephen Brown, the program features a fictitious temple, "filled with lost treasures protected by mysterious Mayan temple guards." Kirk Fogg is the show's host, while Dee Baker is both announcer and voice of a stone head named Olmec who "knows the secrets behind each of the treasures in his temple." Six teams of two children compete to retrieve one of the historical artifacts in the temple by performing physical stunts and answering questions based on history, mythology, and geography. Contestants trying out had to compete in several physical tasks, including rope climbing and running, as well as a written test. The majority of the contestants were picked from the surrounding Orlando, Florida, area.
Winning Streak is an Irish television game show that was produced for the National Lottery, and broadcast from 21 September 1990 to 21 March 2020 on RTÉ One. Produced in RTE's Studio 1 at their Television Centre in Dublin, the series featured contestants qualified via National Lottery scratchcards, who received the chance to win cash and other prizes. The climax of each episode featured one of the contestants receiving a chance to spin a wheel for a chance to win the programme's grand prize, which had escalated to one million Euro by the end of the series.
Think Fast is an American children's game show which aired on Nickelodeon from May 1, 1989, to March 30, 1990, with reruns airing weekly until June 29, 1991.
Make the Grade is a children's game show that aired from October 2, 1989, to September 14, 1990, on Nickelodeon.
Dark Castle is a 1986 platform game for Macintosh, originally published by Silicon Beach Software. The game was designed and animated by Mark Pierce and programmed by Jonathan Gay, with Real Sound provided by Eric Zocher. In Dark Castle, a young hero named Duncan attempts to reach the evil Black Knight while dodging various objects and solving occasional puzzles.
Fort Boyard, a French game show developed by Jacques Antoine, was first broadcast on 7 July 1990. Many foreign versions of the show, totalling over 1,800 episodes, have aired around the world since 1990.
Dream House is an American game show that saw contestants competing to win, as the title of the show indicates, a new house. The show originally premiered in primetime on ABC on March 27, 1968, with a daytime edition premiering on April 1, 1968. The primetime series aired weekly until September 19, 1968, and the daytime series aired daily until January 2, 1970, when it was replaced with All My Children. The daytime series was revived for NBC's daytime schedule and premiered on April 4, 1983, running until June 29, 1984.
Skatoony is a children's live action/animated game show, pitting live-action kids against cartoon characters. The series was co-produced by Talent TV and FremantleMedia Animation, Blink Studios, and Marblemedia with Smiley Guy Studios. The series used to air on Cartoon Network in the UK until 2017, with new episodes airing every Friday until the series cancellation in 2008. Skatoony has also aired as re-runs in the UK on Boomerang and Cartoon Network Too until the channel itself closed down in 2014. The show aired on Starz Kids & Family in the US until 2019. Reruns were occasionally shown on Teletoon in Canada until August 5, 2017. It also aired on Boomerang in Australia and New Zealand.
Eliminator is a children's quiz show in which a group of three children have to answer questions in order to get to the next level of the game, while being chased by a demon named the "Eliminator" who would try to reach them. The show produced two series between 6 January 2003 and 29 April 2004, and was presented by Michael Underwood.
Batman: The Dark Knight was a cancelled action-stealth game for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 developed by Pandemic Studios from September 2006 until its cancellation in October 2008. It would have been the first open world video game to feature the DC Comics superhero Batman and was based on Christopher Nolan's film The Dark Knight. In Batman: The Dark Knight, the player controlled Batman, who could freely explore Gotham City, drive vehicles, and perform missions. Pandemic was given access to the film's script and other materials, and the film's cast would have reprised their roles for the game.
Nick Arcade is an American children's game show created by James Bethea and Karim Miteff and hosted by Phil Moore, with Andrea Lively announcing, that aired on Nickelodeon in 1992. It aired originally during weekend afternoons, with reruns airing until September 28, 1997. In the first season, the shows were taped in December 1991 and aired in early 1992. It was taped at Nickelodeon Studios at Universal Studios Florida in Orlando, Florida. In Nick Arcade, two teams of contestants played two initial trivia rounds, with the winning team advancing to the "Video Zone" to play against the virtual "Video Game Wizard" of the day.
Estate of Panic is an American reality competition show in which seven strangers compete to find cash in a large estate. The show is hosted by Steve Valentine, and produced by Endemol USA.
A first-person shooter (FPS) is a video game centered on gun fighting and other weapon-based combat seen from a first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action directly through the eyes of the main character. This genre shares multiple common traits with other shooter games, and in turn falls under the action games category. Since the genre's inception, advanced 3D and pseudo-3D graphics have proven fundamental to allow a reasonable level of immersion in the game world, and this type of game helped pushing technology progressively further, challenging hardware developers worldwide to introduce numerous innovations in the field of graphics processing units. Multiplayer gaming has been an integral part of the experience, and became even more prominent with the diffusion of internet connectivity in recent years.
The Circle, sometimes called The Circle UK, is a British reality television game show and the original version of The Circle franchise. Produced by Studio Lambert and Motion Content Group and airing on Channel 4, the show bills itself as a game based around social media, with the concept that "anyone can be anyone in The Circle". Throughout the show, contestants live in the same apartment building but are never allowed to meet. The show is narrated by Sophie Willan, whilst the first and last episode of the first series were hosted by Maya Jama and Alice Levine. The show has been compared to Big Brother and Catfish in format, as well as Black Mirror episode "Nosedive" with the concept of having to rate other people.
