Good news everyone! They’re bringing Blockbusters back! It has been about three weeks since the last revival after all, only now they’re asking for students who clearly won’t have been around when the original was on and therefore has no cultural cache. Still it’s lucky that shows are an hour long these days, seeing the paroxyisms of laughter “Can I have a P please?” got every single time on the Challenge revival goodness knows how eye-watering an event it will be everytime in 2019 and both contestants and audiences at home will require five minutes to just catch their breath each time it happens. It’s a reference that ages like a fine wine, look:

It’s just science. I look forward to them keeping it £5 a question as well.

Anyway, someone (TheWestonator89, who has a lot of good stuff on his channel) uploaded most of an episode of Dale Winton’s The Other Half on Youtube the other day and it struck me that there’s no real reason it couldn’t work today, indeed with reality TV being as it is everyone snogging everyone else seems pretty normal. Great theme tune as well.

Welcome to the second series of long-running occasional series Bother’s Bar Plays Badly, featuring EXCLUSIVE VIDEO CONTENT, where we look at computer games old and new (mainly old) with a gameshow bent and play them remotely on Google Hangouts. With hilarious consequences! Or not.

This episode I invite Game Night regulars Matt Clemson, Liam Davis and Alex Richards to try their luck on the 2013 PC adaptation of Wheel of Fortune, right now available on the Windows Store for £2.29. Will anyone win a million dollars?

We’re using Manycam to get the footage and Google Hangouts remains not graphical lag free, but it’s way better than the five frames per second we have been used to.

It’s Christmas time so let’s have a look at what we know is coming out this year.

All our links will be from Amazon and we’ll get a little cut if you buy after clicking. You can tip us by buying general stuff through this link or the one in the sidebar. We thank you in advance, and of course you’re more than welcome to buy stuff from elsewhere.

So without further ado…

Good Game Good Game Gamey-Game Games

The New Crystal Maze Board Game

Right now £25.43. We’ve written about this previously, although we’ve still not played it properly yet.

Or you can buy the old one for £99.99 if you wanted.

5 Gold Rings

£18.16 for the full game, featuring 245 questions. I haven’t played it but Buzzerblog seemed to like it.

There also seems to be a sort of travel card game version for £12.97 right now.

Strictly Come Dancing

£19.99 buys you the voice and doubtless also the soul of Craig Revel Horwood as you answer questions and dance-off whilst moving about on a 3D staircase.

The Voice Battle Board Game

A music quiz game rather than a singalong apparently, £9.99.

Pointless 2018 edition

Not seemingly on Amazon, but The Entertainer are selling it for a tenner, a good fiver cheaper than other places. Sounds like it includes a replica Pointless trophy, probably about the same size as an actual Pointless trophy. Also sounds like they’ve changed the rules to make it like the show, not that anybody actually played the board game with the board game rules and the actual board.

Best of the Rest

Not new for this year but there’s Wogan’s Perfect Recall going for £4.99.

Books

Taskmaster: 200 Extraordinary Tasks for Ordinary People is OK, think I was hoping for something a bit deeper.

2,024 QI Facts To Stop You In Your Tracks – Every year there’s a QI book and this year is no exception. And it’s under a fiver.

Music

Disappointingly, after last year’s cash grab we haven’t heard of any gameshow celebs releasing an album this year. Needless to say, we’re still hoping for an Armstrong and Walsh cover of I Knew Him So Well for Xmas Number One. Imagine.

Are we missing anything? Add them in the comments and I’ll add them to the list.

Do you remember a little while ago there were rumours Mark Labbett was doing Celeb Big Brother (RIP) and we said that what we really wanted was Anne Hegerty to do I’m a Celeb, and she told us that she’d really rather not do it?

Well she is. And what a supporting line-up!

• Football manager – Harry Redknapp
• Corrie star– Sair Khan
• TV presenter – Nick Knowles
• Singer – Fleur East
• Popstar – James McVey
• TV’s ‘The Governess’ – Anne Hegerty
• Hollyoaks actor –Malique Thompson-Dwyer
• Comedy actor – Emily Atack
• Actor & entertainer – John Barrowman MBE
• Actor – Rita Simons

What seems incredible is that about half of these are going concerns, I mean Nick Knowles? is he eyeing up an ITV transfer?

Obviously we’re #TeamHegerty all the way and wish her the best of luck, she’ll probably just scare the bugs away.

I also fear that Fleur East will be finding cockroaches in her hair for weeks afterwards.

I’m a Celeb, which has an additional concern in that Ant is still in rehab so is being replaced by Holly Willoughby, starts Sunday at 9pm on ITV.

Happy First Episode Of The Second Half Of The Second Recording Block Of Richard Osman’s House Of Games Day!

In other news, we’ve been watching a lot of videos on theme parks and rollercoasters recently and this popped up in my suggested queue. With Little Lion apparently about to crack America after their very successful Crystal Maze Live Experiences, this seems like the most obvious cultural touchstone to base a US experience on. But is this what it’s going to be?

I like Legends of the Hidden Temple, but it always seemed a bit odd Olmec doing prize plugs.