What Got You Hooked?

[Don Howard]

Fellow fans of the game show genre,
What was it that first made you a fan of game shows while growing up?
Was it the music, the flashy lights, watching the numbers change?
In my case, since Video Village was the show that started my interest, it was the big game board come to life.

[Mike Tennant]

Good topic, and one that I don't believe we've covered before from this angle.

I would have to go with the flashing lights, and even more importantly, trilons and other set pieces that moved.  Seeing things done with computers is much less impressive because I consider it something that anyone with the right skills could do at home for practically nothing.  Seeing big turning trilons and such (and all the moving parts they still use on TPIR) is impressive because it requires a budget and materials and so forth.

I would also add the fascination of being able to win all those prizes and the obvious excitement of the participants and the audience.

Plus, I've always been a ham and an emcee (are the two really much different?) at heart.

[tpirfan28]

Wheel of Fortune's $25,000 sign.  I grew up in the Pat and Vanna "glory days" (nighttime late-80s)...and apparently it was my favorite show.  The only thing I remember is that huge sign.

And Nick's Double Dare and Legends, so Nick's sudden revival of the old eps. brings back a lot of memories.

[gwarman2005]

Without a doubt, the flashing lights, more specificily the chasers.

A close second would be the eggcrate scoreboards that flashed when there was a winner.  I dunno, I always felt cheated when a winners score didn't blink.

[SRIV94]

My answer is best reflected in a quote by yours truly on June 18, 2003.  And it goes something like this:

But I became fascinated with the world of bells, buzzers and digital scoreboards, which started me on the road. Eventually I got hooked on the content.

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'tpirfan28\' post=\'152308\' date=\'May 15 2007, 10:35 AM\']
Wheel of Fortune's $25,000 sign.
[/quote]
Christ I'm old.
[quote name=\'gwarman2005\' post=\'152309\' date=\'May 15 2007, 10:40 AM\']
Without a doubt, the flashing lights, more specificily the chasers.
[/quote]
I think this is me, too. Later, I learned to appreciate the gameplay (which is when I fell in love with the word-communications games like Pyramid and Password and Go), but when I was teeny it was all about flashing lights on a big set.

(Which doesn't explain why I love Narz Concentration so much, because with the exception of the overhead sign, not a flashing light on the set. Concentration might have been the very first game show that I got into for the gameplay.)

/Who among us smiled wide the first time we saw mass-market Christmas lights that had a chaser effect?
//I still want to wire up chasers to the window of my over-blinged PC case
///Get ready to match the stars!

[Tim L]

Most of my early game show watching was on a black and white set so I didnt appreciate the lights so much..I was more into it for the gameplay and the hosts' personalities, which is why I became such a fan of Bill Cullen, Gene Rayburn and Tom Kennedy, among others of the era.

[Robert Hutchinson]

Honestly, I can't ever remember a time when I wasn't watching game shows (mostly) for their content. Being a spelling and word freak, I was already cleaning up on Wheel of Fortune at age 5 or so. And despite how strongly I was supposed to love Double Dare for the mess they made every day, I was hooked on getting more questions right than the players, and yelling at them to hurry up on the obstacle course because they still had a chance.

[hines2000]

I was into Scoreboards when I was younger, and growing up in Chicago gave me the huge manual board at Wrigley Field and the exploding board at Comiskey Park. Yes, the flashing lights and flipping numbers drew me in, and my love for games helped to keep me coming back for more!

Eric Hines

[PYLW]

Oddly enough, the comedy.

The show that first got me started on this little genre was Body Language. I used to find it funny when the celebrities and the contestants would act out impossible to act words. Later on I started appreciating the game aspect more, like the puzzles and such.

[Chief-O]

Sound effects!!! They still interest me to this day. I'd bet hosts and visuals had to do with it too.

[tpirfan28]

[quote name=\'clemon79\' post=\'152311\' date=\'May 15 2007, 01:50 PM\']
[quote name=\'tpirfan28\' post=\'152308\' date=\'May 15 2007, 10:35 AM\']
Wheel of Fortune's $25,000 sign.
[/quote]
Christ I'm old.
<snip>
/Who among us smiled wide the first time we saw mass-market Christmas lights that had a chaser effect?
[/quote]
No Chris, you can't say you're that old.  That card only comes into play 20 years from now, when someone says "I grew up with the seizure-inducing lights of Deal or No Deal!!!!!".

And your first slashy brought up another fond memory...a house near my grandparents had chaser Christmas lights.  What makes it noteworthy is that where they were hung...it was a tall A-frame style structure.

God, you don't know how many times I wanted to go by the "$25,000 Pyramid House".

[Jay Temple]

[quote name=\'clemon79\' post=\'152311\' date=\'May 15 2007, 12:50 PM\']
[quote name=\'tpirfan28\' post=\'152308\' date=\'May 15 2007, 10:35 AM\']
Wheel of Fortune's $25,000 sign.
[/quote]
Christ I'm old. [/quote]
That, more or less, was my reaction. Like Tim L, I remember enjoying them in B&W, so it had to be the game play first. In fact, Match Game was probably the only game where the thing I enjoyed most wasn't the game play.

[TLEberle]

From watching game shows on my father's knee, I think it was a combination of the nifty lights/set, the hummable themes, and people getting paid huge amounts of money to have fun on TV. (I remember seeing a handful of lot wins on Sale of the Century, as well as Ten-in-a-Row wins on Scrabble, and thought that was just about the coolest thing ever; winning $50,000 just for playing a game.)

After a few years, I realized that for several of the shows, I could actually hold my own from the couch, so play-along value overtook the presentation aspects. Like several people here, that meant I grew to enjoy shows that involved filling in words, and guessing of words, but a good old-fashioned trivia quiz will keep my attention, too.

[aaron sica]

What got me hooked? Solari's and wheels.

When I was 4, I wasn't watching $20K Pyramid for the gameplay, but for the solari's - watching those numbers flip on the timer, and on their score was so fascinating to me, along with wheels...

What hooked me on MG was the Star Wheel - imagine my disappointment when I saw my first '70s MG on GSN and there was no wheel yet! WOF's wheel also used to fascinate me, too.