The Game Show Forum
The Game Show Forum => The Big Board => Topic started by: Lirodon on December 20, 2009, 03:39:26 PM
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Leave it to Five to try and put excitement and depth into among other things: the coin toss. Justin Lee Collins hosts this new British game show which seemed to premiere today from what I heard, overshadowed by everyone listening to see Rage Against The Machine be Christmas #1 after an online campaign, seems to combine some Deal or No Deal like elements with the fun of 50/50 wild guessing.
Format goes a bit like this I'm told; Basically, 20 coins, each secretly valued with either one of 16 amounts of pounds (100/200/300/400/600/800/1000/2000/3000/4000/6000/8000/10000/25000/50000/100000), or a Life (which are the rest). Basically, you get 12 flips, and for each one, you pick a coin and then try and predict the result of a coin toss from a regular coin (heads or tails, as it were). Get it right, and the coin reveals its value and becomes live (indicated by turning gold), or if its a life, its saved for the endgame. Get it wrong, and its revealed, and is taken out of play. Now, to actually bank the money from a live coin, you have to play another flip on it. You can take as many tries on live coins to bank them (limited by your number of flips of course)
At the 10th flip, you can either continue on, or you can choose to use "Fast Forward" (which exchanges the ability to bank an unrevealed coin on one flip for your 10th flip), or "Show the Lives" (which at the same cost, reveals where all the lives are hidden)
Now the end-game, this is fun: its more guessing. Every correct call doubles your current bank contents, every wrong call reduces it by half, and costs you one of the lives you earned earlier. If you're out of lives, you lose everything if you get one more wrong call. The winnings no matter what, is capped at a potential top prize of £1,000,000. And yes, you CAN safely leave during this too.
And yes, you got the obligatory "appearances friends and/or family" stuff too, and as the kicker, they wheeled out Dane Bowers to give advice on what the contestant should do, he was only slightly popular in 2002 for gods sake!
The format itself seems pretty solid from what I've learned about it, and JLC does seem like he's a pretty popular personality up there but until I see some videos I won't say anything. Its an hour long, and they only get through one game per show, but thenagain I don't think a "rolling" format like DoND could work here.
This might be good enough to be picked up in the U.S., it's extremely less ridiculous than Million Dollar Beat the Clock, but at the same time its just as.
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The actual reality is that it's really boring, and JD Roth co-created it so we're not taking the credit/blame.
Also Fast Forward means you automatically bank any of the final two coins you correctly guess for.
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"It's almost usually heads!"
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Was anyone else reminded of the "Million Dollar Heads and Tails" that appeared in that one episode of How I Met Your Mother?
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The Million Dollar (Pound) Coin-Toss?
Really?
Have they been trolling us for ideas?
We. Were. Kidding.
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I will overlook this as an anomaly as opposed to the norm of recent game show development in the UK.
/Cube, Pointless
//I can't be the only one who really likes Pointless, am I?
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[quote name=\'tpirfan28\' post=\'232600\' date=\'Dec 20 2009, 05:36 PM\']I will overlook this as an anomaly as opposed to the norm of recent game show development in the UK.
/Cube, Pointless
//I can't be the only one who really likes Pointless, am I?[/quote]No sir. I dug it, or at least the idea. The level of Anglophilia in the questions bothered me, as well as the kicking-off mechanic, but the game is a solid one, and it is a fun, quiet way to spend an hour.
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Whoever created this show was probably inspired by How I Met Your Mother, IDK :-/.
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[quote name=\'TLEberle\' post=\'232601\' date=\'Dec 20 2009, 07:39 PM\'][quote name=\'tpirfan28\' post=\'232600\' date=\'Dec 20 2009, 05:36 PM\']I will overlook this as an anomaly as opposed to the norm of recent game show development in the UK.
/Cube, Pointless
//I can't be the only one who really likes Pointless, am I?[/quote]No sir. I dug it, or at least the idea. The level of Anglophilia in the questions bothered me, as well as the kicking-off mechanic, but the game is a solid one, and it is a fun, quiet way to spend an hour.
[/quote]
What didn't you like about the eliminations? They should have shuffled around the order of the second half of each round to avoid the anti-clamaxes they had, but other than that, I wasn't bothered by it.
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Hey, if Card Sharks worked, I don't see why this couldn't.
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[quote name=\'fishbulb\' post=\'232611\' date=\'Dec 21 2009, 01:38 AM\']Hey, if Card Sharks worked, I don't see why this couldn't.[/quote]
Apples and oranges. With CS, in most cases you had more than a 50/50 shot. Math was my worst enemy in high school, so I don't know the probability of calling "HIGHER!" with a 3, only for the next card to be a deuce (1 in 51? I warned you that I suck at math). Regardless, with some common sense, you can at least play the odds, knowing that 9 times out of 10, your next card will be a 3 or higher.
The heads or tails is completely blind luck, and requires absolutely no strategy whatsoever.
/One thing I loved about being a journalism major
//We stopped after College Algebra I
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I kept getting IMs on this throughout the weekend thinking my friend was just yanking my chain/making snarky commentary on the state of recent picked-up concepts.
This is for real? Wow.
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Oh dear.
The pacing on this show makes Deal or No Deal look speedy by comparison. 7:30 into the show, and one decision has been made.
Flying logo with zoom through a letter (in this case, the O)? Check.
Asking "Why?" for everything? Check.
Annoying pre-commercial promo? Check.
Meet the whole family and every friend the contestant ever had? Check.
"Surprise" celebrity guest? Check.
I'm also reminded of the sketchy fake-games casino in "Vegas Vacation." Honest, if I didn't know better, I'd think this was a special parody episode, one of JLC's stunts.
"IT'S TAILS!!!11!11!!one!"
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[quote name=\'fishbulb\' post=\'232611\' date=\'Dec 21 2009, 01:38 AM\']Hey, if Card Sharks worked, I don't see why this couldn't.[/quote]
I gather you didn't see this.
[quote name=\'fostergray82\' post=\'232612\' date=\'Dec 21 2009, 02:13 AM\']Apples and oranges. With CS, in most cases you had more than a 50/50 shot. Math was my worst enemy in high school, so I don't know the probability of calling "HIGHER!" with a 3, only for the next card to be a deuce (1 in 51? I warned you that I suck at math).[/quote]
4 in 51, 7 in 51 if pushes are considered losses.
Nobody's mentioned the dimmed lights and the spotlights/Vari-lites used during the flip, and an overhead camera focused on the host's hand cupping the tossed coin. There's polishing a dog turd and then there's whatever level of pointless chrome used on a frickin' coin toss. For all that excessive, pricey window dressing, the host manually tossed the coin. Could they not build some type of non-computerized randomization device? I'm thinking something like that zig-zag chute used on Just Men! for randomizing the car keys. Someone must've had a need to make a late submission in some type of "The Worst of the 2000s" competition...
/Pointless--the best new UK show of the year, better than The Cube IMO.
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[quote name=\'Twentington\' post=\'232596\' date=\'Dec 20 2009, 06:29 PM\']Was anyone else reminded of the "Million Dollar Heads and Tails" that appeared in that one episode of How I Met Your Mother?[/quote]
before I even opened the thread
\I saved the HIMYM episode for that alone.
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I'm still trying to decipher whether or not the first post is actually real or was spawned from the fingers of some random 12-year-old who'd had one too many Mountain Dews, despite the fact that I can see pretty plainly from the rest of the posts that yes, someone has actually gone to the effort to air this nonsense.
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[quote name=\'Mr. Armadillo\' post=\'232658\' date=\'Dec 21 2009, 02:22 PM\']I'm still trying to decipher whether or not the first post is actually real or was spawned from the fingers of some random 12-year-old who'd had one too many Mountain Dews, despite the fact that I can see pretty plainly from the rest of the posts that yes, someone has actually gone to the effort to air this nonsense.[/quote]
Yes, this is real. (http://\"http://www.five.tv/programmes/gameshows/heads-or-tails\")
Of course it's Channel 5 so you got to hand it to them...since you're pretty much owned by Fremantle's parent.
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[quote name=\'Lirodon\' post=\'232678\' date=\'Dec 21 2009, 03:38 PM\']Yes, this is real. (http://\"http://www.five.tv/programmes/gameshows/heads-or-tails\")[/quote]
At least they managed to convince Jesus to host it.
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[quote name=\'J.R.\' post=\'232691\' date=\'Dec 22 2009, 01:14 AM\'][quote name=\'Lirodon\' post=\'232678\' date=\'Dec 21 2009, 03:38 PM\']Yes, this is real. (http://\"http://www.five.tv/programmes/gameshows/heads-or-tails\")[/quote]
At least they managed to convince Jesus to host it.
[/quote]
He also did the pilot for The Cube. Now that would have been interesting if it made it to series, wouldn't it?
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Good grief, this sucker is daily. The Sunday thing must have just been a special preview.
It really is a trainwreck, but for those who enjoy watching trainwrecks, it delivers. Already watched Monday's episode; getting today's episode now.
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[quote name=\'Kniwt\' post=\'232803\' date=\'Dec 22 2009, 11:34 PM\']Good grief, this sucker is daily. The Sunday thing must have just been a special preview.
It really is a trainwreck, but for those who enjoy watching trainwrecks, it delivers. Already watched Monday's episode; getting today's episode now.[/quote]
IIRC, they're stunting it like WWTBAM used to- 11 consecutive days.
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I promise, if this gets up on YouTube, I'll be sure to post it, I can't wait to see how awful this really is.
In the meantime, enjoy this Indiana Jones parody ident (http://\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RY-M1De-hIE\") they used to promote this.
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[quote name=\'Lirodon\' post=\'232678\' date=\'Dec 21 2009, 02:38 PM\'][quote name=\'Mr. Armadillo\' post=\'232658\' date=\'Dec 21 2009, 02:22 PM\']I'm still trying to decipher whether or not the first post is actually real or was spawned from the fingers of some random 12-year-old who'd had one too many Mountain Dews, despite the fact that I can see pretty plainly from the rest of the posts that yes, someone has actually gone to the effort to air this nonsense.[/quote]
Yes, this is real. (http://\"http://www.five.tv/programmes/gameshows/heads-or-tails\")
Of course it's Channel 5 so you got to hand it to them...since you're pretty much owned by Fremantle's parent.
[/quote]
And for those last minute shoppers, I have dozens of the the home version I'll sell you for $19.99 each + shipping & handling.
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[quote name=\'Lirodon\' post=\'232678\' date=\'Dec 21 2009, 02:38 PM\'][quote name=\'Mr. Armadillo\' post=\'232658\' date=\'Dec 21 2009, 02:22 PM\']I'm still trying to decipher whether or not the first post is actually real or was spawned from the fingers of some random 12-year-old who'd had one too many Mountain Dews, despite the fact that I can see pretty plainly from the rest of the posts that yes, someone has actually gone to the effort to air this nonsense.[/quote]
Yes, this is real. (http://\"http://www.five.tv/programmes/gameshows/heads-or-tails\")
Of course it's Channel 5 so you got to hand it to them...since you're pretty much owned by Fremantle's parent.
[/quote]
And for those last minute shoppers, I have dozens of the the home version I'll sell you for $19.99 each + shipping & handling.
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Here's a video I uploaded from a previous episode, condensed of course. It shows the basic round play of the show:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZjPJUrumwM (http://\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZjPJUrumwM\")
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[quote name=\'mxc0427\' post=\'232959\' date=\'Dec 24 2009, 05:44 PM\']Here's a video I uploaded from a previous episode, condensed of course. It shows the basic round play of the show:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZjPJUrumwM (http://\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZjPJUrumwM\")[/quote]
I don't know what to say...
It might work in the US if they pull a DoND and make it a lower-stakes syndicated offering and cut most of the junk from it, and maybe use mechanical flipperboard things for the coins instead of an on-screen graphic (maybe like Danger Price's setup or something)
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I don't see this show sticking around long.
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[quote name=\'dazztardly\' post=\'232977\' date=\'Dec 24 2009, 10:39 PM\']I don't see this show sticking around long.[/quote]I wonder if JD gets paid more if the show is actually renewed, or if it goes six episodes or six thousand.
That said, England had the good sense to pass on more of The Colour of Money, so maybe they'll get this right too.
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[quote name=\'TLEberle\' post=\'232978\' date=\'Dec 25 2009, 06:44 AM\']That said, England had the good sense to pass on more of The Colour of Money, so maybe they'll get this right too.[/quote]
There's no real maybe about it, you can rest assured that we're discerning enough to not watch it in our droves.
Amusingly, the final episode of The Colour of Money is being burnt off this week.
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http://www.five.tv/programmes/gameshows/heads-or-tails/55401 (http://\"http://www.five.tv/programmes/gameshows/heads-or-tails/55401\")
Here's an interactive version you can play.
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[quote name=\'mcsittel\' post=\'233052\' date=\'Dec 27 2009, 11:23 AM\']http://www.five.tv/programmes/gameshows/heads-or-tails/55401 (http://\"http://www.five.tv/programmes/gameshows/heads-or-tails/55401\")
Here's an interactive version you can play.[/quote]
But I already have a quarter in my pocket.
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Based on the online game, I'm beginning to wonder if this thing is just a parody of itself, if not the genre as a whole.
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OK, does anyone else think that this online version is a little bit dodgy?
On my one and only play, I "just happened" to reveal both the 100k and 50k coins, and I "just happened" to get 10 out of 11 flips correct. (I sacrificed one flip to show the LIFEs.) I took three LIFEs into the final round and didn't need any of them, getting another three flips correct in a row to hit the million.
I know it's all probability and such, but this was so unlikely ...