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Disappointments

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wdm1219inpenna:
I'm curious to hear about other members feelings about certain game shows that were either a let down from the very beginning or that disappointed you later on in the run.

For example, one that was an immediate disappointment for me was Monty Hall's Beat the Clock.  It was "meh" at best and even worse once they changed to an all celebrity format.

I disliked that to determine the day's champion, they played a shuffleboard game, which has nothing at all to do with beating the clock!  I understand they needed some sort of mechanism to determine the day's champion and to have a base dollar amount to multiply by 10 for the bonus stunt, but I would rather they would have had more stunts and perhaps selecting money cards from a board after each successful stunt and the team with the most money would go on to play for ten times their daily winnings in the bonus stunt.

Scrabble 1984 was awesome!  As a 17 year old that summer I loved the concept and loved the pot format too.  Hindsight being 20/20, I realize the pot format was rather flawed.  I loved that 5 time champions at the Scrabble Sprint won an additional $20,000 and then another $20,000 if they won 5 more sprints.  I hated when the show augmented a 5 time champion's winnings to a flat $20,000 and then a flat $40,000 after 10 sprint wins in a row.  I rather liked when they switched it up to having 4 players each day, one champion, two crossword rounds, two sprint rounds using the same words (I loved that change!) and finally the bonus sprint.  The 1993 reboot of Scrabble was a HUGE disappointment, starting the bonus jackpot with just $1,000 (so darn cheap!) and only being able to add money to the bonus sprint jackpot by landing on a pink or blue square during the crossword round to add to it instead of getting an instant cash bonus.  Small wonder that reboot only lasted about 5 or so months.  Also the 1993 set was so bland and just gave me an instant vibe that it was at best, temporary.

$ale of the Century kind of disappointed me when they retired the Winner's Board and replaced it with the Winner's Big Money Game instead.  True it allowed contestants to win more cash than ever before, but there was something charming about that winner's board round, especially if after clearing the board the player had to decide whether to risk all ten major prizes to return for an 11th win for the cash jackpot.

Those are just 3 examples of what I am interested in hearing about.  I thank you for your time as always.

aaron sica:
It's important to remember I was 10, almost 11, when it premiered so I had no idea how such things worked yet...........But I remember seeing the ads in TV Guide for "The $100,000 Pyramid" and thinking how awesome it was for that much money to be given away on a daily basis. I figured first try was $50K, and then $100K on the second try. I was rather disappointed when I tuned in and found out the $100K was only for occasional tournaments; otherwise it was exactly like the daytime show.

TLEberle:
Not going into a laundry list here, though I will certainly co-sign onto the fact that scrabble 1993 did not come close to whelming me, becoming friends with people who worked in the industry or being exposed to more stuff generally helped me understand why shows made those budgetary or stylistic  decisions.

I did not realize it at the time but the 80s versions of Name Thst Tune or Split Second definitely lost something in moving from the 70s.

aaron sica:
Adding another - was rather dismayed that when WoF moved to CBS, the theme music got a new sound and the wheel's values were on the cheap.

wdm1219inpenna:
I thought of 2 other disappointments for me involving another game show, Las Vegas Gambit.

As a huge fan of the 70s version, I was jazzed to see it return in 1980.

My first disappointment was when the Gambit Board only had 18 numbers instead of 21 like the original.

But worse was when they replaced the Gambit Board with the High Rollers end game.  I mean I get it as it was LAS VEGAS Gambit, so they wanted to add another game based on a casino game...would have been better if they had done that from the onset though.

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