Disappointments

[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.

[TimK2003]

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.

And the LVG theme was just as much a disappointment.  When I think of Sin City, I think of Elvis' Viva Las Vegas or jazzy cabaret music -- not music better suited for a Good Morning America chatfest.

[aaron sica]

Adding another - one of my favorite elements of the first Pyramid editions was the tiebreakers, which could sometimes result in much higher scores than 21. I was disappointed when $25K came back in '82 and the tiebreaker was who could get 7 the fastest.

[BillCullen1]

Here are my disappointments, game show wise:

The $128,000 Question - Oh my God, what a train wreck this was. The '76-'77 season was done at the Sullivan theater in NYC with host Mike Darow. He got stuck in the curtain once. Another time, they stopped tape because someone sneezed. They were big on cue cards for Darow and the contestants. One day, they were supposed to do three shows. I showed up one late afternoon and was told they were still doing the first show. How they managed to get a full season in was a miracle, IMO, and this was a weekly show. I'd shudder to think if this was a daily production. 

The Joker's Wild '90 - I just could not deal with that drastic of a change to a show that I liked. For the record, I thought Snoop Dogg's version was decent, better than the '90 version.

Shop Till You Drop - JD Roberto's version that looked like a Costco store in a mall was a big letdown for me from the Pat Finn version.

Scrabble '93 - a cheapened version of a popular 80s show that I loved

The $50,000 Pyramid - when I heard the first time in the Winner's Circle was for $5,000, I thought "What the bleep?" They really got cheap there.

As Walter Cronkite used to say, "And that's the way it is."

[aaron sica]

The $50,000 Pyramid - when I heard the first time in the Winner's Circle was for $5,000, I thought "What the bleep?" They really got cheap there.

I mentioned I was 10 when $100K premiered........I was 6 when $50K premiered and I was so happy Pyramid was back..........I was so mesmerized by the solari boards (as I was with $20K) that I really wasn't paying attention to the money amounts.

[wdm1219inpenna]

Just remembered another one, from 50 years ago no less...

As a youth I was enamored with The Magnificent Marble Machine, so much so that I begged my parents for a pinball machine for Christmas, and God love them, they had one for me Christmas morning 1975.  It was called Egghead.  They surprised the heck out of me too as they had it on our enclosed front porch.  I opened all of my other presents and I tried to hide my disappointment when I saw no pinball machine, so my Dad casually asked me to go out to the front porch and bring in that day's newspaper.  When I walked out and saw the machine sitting there, my jaw dropped to the floor.  By far my alltime favorite Christmas memory from my youth...

Sorry I went off on a tangent there.  Anyway, MMM used to have it where if the ball hit something in the machine it scored 200 points each time.  Evidently there were flaws with the machine after they audited videotapes, so they changed it to just 500 points and only if 1 of the 7 numbered bumpers were hit and nothing else.  Further making the show meh was now it was all celebs and they played for audience members.   The show sadly flopped.

[TLEberle]

I thought it was a lovely anecdote—I received a skee ball game one year, though the noise from the balls clacking meant I was restricted to particular hours. It was a Sportcraft model and not a full size arcade machine obviously,

[chris319]

Mindreaders was a disappointment from the get-go. Dick Martin as emcee only made it worse.

[aaron sica]

Bill's pinball machine story reminded me of another minor disappointment. In 1980, my favorite games were by far the NBC ones. Big cards! Big dice! A big wheel!!! When my mom told me that we had dice, I got very excited! Just like the show. I was disappointed when the dice she gave me were a mere fraction of the ones I saw on TV.

[Blanquepage]

It's Your Chance of a Lifetime and Twenty-One, for me. Gordon was great on the former, but the game was an uninspired WWTBAM clone. I just couldn't get into Twenty-One, legit or not.

[Bob Zager]

I was disappointed when shortly into the 1984-85 season, changes started to happen on $100,000 Name That Tune.  When it first started with their SuperChamp playoff, everything seemed so good.   I even was watching that, more than Jeopardy!, airing at the same time, different station.  I got overly excited when I came home late from work one day, missing most of NTT, but catching the closing moments, and seeing more money depicted on the Melody Roulette wheel!

I then watched an entire episode with the new wheel, and found them spinning the wheels only once, and paying just that amount to the winner of the round.

Over the course of its run, I'd seen other things happening that turned me off, such as airing the pilot about mid-season (and not being as great looking set-wise, music cues not as exciting), shows airing out of sequence, featuring different sized Melody Roulette wheels, and the older and newer values on them, too much interaction with Tommy Oliver, even putting some comedy into the show.

Another turn-off, the popping of balloons during the playoff week's shows, happening a bit too often day after day.

It reminded of how during a local talk show "guest," appearance by Jim Lange, he mentioned he'd lost interest in the Dating Game, when questions/answers by contestants veered away from romance, and got into comedy!

FTR, NTT moved to a late morning time slot, and I began watch J! all the time (much better!)