LIVE, here tonight at 9pm (and on Youtube)

You’re advised to read the write-up at UKGameshows.com before checking out the statistics! I’ll hide them under a cut.

I mean it’s all in the headline really, join us to see what the fans, the pundits and the production insiders have made of the year that’s just finished in our annual LIVE broadcast, where our Polls Panel, TV professionals David Bodycombe, Laura Conlon, Daniel Peake and (non-TV-professional) myself try and make sense of the way you’ve voted.

About half an hour after broadcast the write-up will appear on UKGameshows.com, as well as figures here at the Bother’s Bar afterparty.

We’ll also have the Youtube chat running and all sorts of interactivity, probably. So join us!

You will definitely need to use the Dark Arts for this, but Nickelodeon have put up the first episode of The Crystal Maze US a week before it airs. Here’s the Youtube link, but it’s geolocked so get your VPNs ready.

Main takeaways:

• They’re into the first game within two minutes.
• Despite that they only get 8 games + Dome. The Megacrystal is also in effect. Plenty of between game chat, and certainly before the Dome.
• Graphics have been touched up a lot – zone map transitions look great, as does the VR game from last series.
• Games from all (modern) series have been used, a medieval game has been adapted for Eastern.
• Games are a bit easier – extra lives, extra thirty seconds added for some of them.
• Breaks mid-game because it’s America.
• Dome is $100 per gold, -$100 per silver, more than 100 gold after deductions bumps the prize up to $25,000.
• I hope you like high pitched screaming because there’s a lot of it.
• Jury out on Adam Conover for me. There’s not really a lot of room for him to be funny in an endearingly odd way, and his corny jokes came across as a bit overtly scripted (although there was a bit with an exercise bike which suggests a fun direction). He’s doing a lite-version of the Ayoade “this is because of editing” schtick. Really it’s difficult for me to judge because I’m quite far away from the target audience.

So… not sure what to make of it, keeps many of the UK’s issues, improves some bits, does other things slightly worse… score draw? Fascinated to see what they make of it over there though. I kind of hope it’s successful, because imagine a set built with American money.

Today is the last day Microsoft will be supporting Windows 7.

So this seems as good a time as any to link to a vid of The WB’s Studio 7 from 2004, where seven young adults lived together for a few days then came to a studio to do a quiz, where they could help or hinder or each other as they saw fit. In the end, one walks away with $77,000 and returns for the final for an additional $777,000. It only lasted one series, despite the DRAMATIC SHOTS.

An interesting question posed in a recent comment I thought I would amplify:

Unrelated: a nostalgia podcast I listen to, on which guests talk about things they remember which nobody else seems to, had a guest a while ago that made a remarkable claim that a popular UK quiz show briefly made, or at least trialled, spin-off confectionery in the mid-’90s. I’m not going to identify the podcast or the confectionery yet so as not to lead the witnesses, but does anybody remember (or, better still, provide evidence for) such confectionery?

I’d be interested in UK game show spin-off confectionery in general; the only example that springs to mind straight away is I’m A Celebrity!s spin-off bush tucker trial chocolates which may not be what they seem. Sadly there’s no evidence to suggest that Donny Osmond’s Pyramid revival ever led to a Pyramint revival, but it’s nice to imagine.

Chris M Dickson

Turnabout M and Ms, that would work. Anyway, anyone?