This probably ought to get a bit more than a straight retweet as a tribute, but there we are:

For me, the highlight of this first ten years of work was this version of Variation No. 1, the tune that played on the old zipline game where they had to swim to a ship and climb the mast:

Anne Robinson starts her tenure as Countdown host tomorrow.

But tonight The Sun has the scoop that Romesh Ranganathan is being lined up to host a rebooted Weakest Link, intended for Saturday night and played with celebs for charity.

It’s a good booking (for years I thought it should be Robert Rinder but I can see why they’ve gone for Romesh) for this up and coming TV comic who hasn’t been associated with a new show for the best part of a week now. His pissed-off uncle persona kind of fits, and Ranganation recently won a BAFTA.

Only two things working against it: if it’s going to use the recent point-missing US one as a model, and that the Children in Need one a few years ago was a bit crap. Yes I know the appeal is mainly in the insults, but you need a decent game in order to set them up properly, hopefully the production team will have taken on board lessons.

This has exploded in my timelime (and Harry linked to it in the The Wheel thread), popular Youtube troupe/gaming team The Sidemen have frequently done one-off own brand versions of hit gameshows, this time they’re doing The Wheel on the proper set with the proper music and everything.

Of course Vikstar was a celebrity expert in the previous series (I suspect they’ve got KSI on this upcoming series, especially after his appearance on Celeb Bake Off) which might be some clever forward-thinking celebrity booking from Hungry Bear, and presumably letting them film an episode whilst the set’s still up works as a bit of quid pro quo that also opens the show up to new and different audiences. My gut says it was filmed as a tech rehearsal or after the series had filmed and the set was struck. Very interesting!

Having joked that after the last two editions going for about £30, Microids will probably charge £30 for the recent DLC update for Bother’s Bar tolerated Escape Game Fort Boyard I was pleasantly surprised to see that the Toujours Plus Fort! update costs just £1.69, which for some pretty good updates and five (count ’em) new games is actually pretty reasonable. Decent even.

There are some nice Quality of Life updates to go alongside the new games – most recent Boyard-esque font used in the menus, you can actually choose your team name now from the options provided (which the team will shout out, come on THE SPIDERS OF THE APOCALYPSE) some windowed shot in shot of the team offering advice, Pere, sorry, Sir Fouras, Rouge and Blanche are all fully voiced, Passe Partout now does the signalling how many keys you’ve got with his fingers – basically if this was what was released first time round you’d still think it a bit crap (albeit more fully featured crap), but if you like the show you’d appreciate the level of basic fan service. Probably ought to swap out Mister Boo for Big Boo these days though.

As for the new games: From the Earth To The Moon doesn’t use its music, which is a pity, first two attempts I nailed it first try, couldn’t do it third time. Water Jets is hard, Arm Wrestling pretty easy, Turbo Basket OK. Shapes is probably the most successful one, being a pretty good strategy duel.

For clarity, it looks like the boxed game (certainly in France) is going by the Toujours Plus Fort! edition, but here in the UK it’s just going with “New edition”. If they kept releasing sets of games regularly at that price I’d pretty much be forced to buy them.

Can’t wait to see someone gamble £100,000 for a million or whatever, only to be mysteriously told they were a “a bit off tonight.”

I’m sure it won’t happen, it’s just that the release makes it sounds like it might happen.

After a tendering process, 30 shows were whittled down to just two, Bridge of Lies and The Tournament.

Bridge of Lies is most interesting to me here (The Tournament is screaming chess clock quiz at me, but I’ve got nothing to go on than that) as it sounds like a reimagining of STV’s (and TV3’s in Ireland) very own Bother’s Bar sort-of favourite The Lie with Susan Calman, although this sounds like it’s going to have a bit more physicality, from Broadcast: “In Catchphrase producer STV Studios’ The Bridge of Lies, teams of contestants compete for cash by crossing a bridge made up of stepping-stones across the studio floor. Each stepping-stone has a different option, and the players must try to get from A to B by stepping on the truths and avoiding the lies in order to cross safely, or risk falling off the bridge and out of the game.”

This is really poor quality but it’s the best I can find. It’s the Irish version:

There was also a French pilot made with Nagui with an actual inverted pyramid stage which looked like a health and safety nightmare.

Anyway it might not be anything like that, but it does give us something to post so that’s nice.