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.
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.
The Crystal Maze is a British game show devised by Jacques Antoine, based upon his format for the French game show Fort Boyard, and produced for Channel 4. The programme focuses on teams of contestants, a mixed group of men and women, attempting a range of challenges to earn time required to help them complete one final challenge, which if completed successfully earns them a prize. The premise of the show is themed around challenges set to different periods of human history within a fictional labyrinth of time and space, and is notable for the use of golf ball-sized Swarovski glass crystals as a reward for each challenge successfully completed by contestants, and lock-in conditions for contestants that ran out of time or broke a three-strikes rule on a challenge.
Scrabble is an American television game show based upon the Scrabble board game. 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 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 the summer of 1985 and remained through the original run and the entirety of the 1993 revival.
HeroQuest, is an adventure board game created by Milton Bradley in conjunction with the British company Games Workshop in 1989, and re-released in 2021. The game is loosely based around archetypes of fantasy role-playing games: the game itself was actually a game system, allowing the gamemaster to create dungeons of their own design using the provided game board, tiles, furnishings and figures. The game manual describes Morcar/Zargon as a former apprentice of Mentor, and the parchment text is read aloud from Mentor's perspective. Several expansions have been released, each adding new tiles, traps, artifacts, and monsters to the core system.
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. The show featured contestants matching prizes represented by 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. In the show, contestants answer 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.
Legends of the Hidden Temple is an American action-adventure TV 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. The show was broadcast weekly in Ireland between 1990 and 2020 on RTÉ One. Typical episodes of the show would see contestants take part in a number of games to win cars, holidays, and cash prizes up to €500,000.
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 that was originally published by Silicon Beach Software. The original game was designed and animated by Mark Pierce and programmed by Jonathan Gay with Real Sound by Eric Zocher. In Dark Castle, a young hero named Duncan tries to make his way to the evil Black Knight, dodging objects as well as solving occasional puzzles.
Fort Boyard is a French game show created by Jacques Antoine that 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.
Catchphrase is a British game show based on the short-lived American game show of the same name. It originally aired on ITV in the United Kingdom between 12 January 1986 and 23 April 2004. A revival premiered on ITV on 7 April 2013 and is still running as of 2023.
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, airing originally during weekend afternoons, with reruns airing until September 28, 1997. It was taped at Nickelodeon Studios at Universal Studios Florida in Orlando. 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.
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.
