Starter For Ten: 10 MOST INFLUENCAL GAMESHOWS!

Welcome to Enlightened Towers Theme Month, the empty slot between Bound For Glory and the Rumble Royal where anything can and will happen.

Much like, a game-show!

Yes Game-shows where people lives are enriched by wealth or their loss immortalised forever. On Challenge.

This was my hardest deliberation yet so much that many shows my American TGWTGers would not have heard of are let on the cutting room floor for now. this is a list of international known show that changed the world we know, however I'm strictly reviewing the British versions I grew up on.

SO, READER! COME ON DOWN!

NUMBER 10
THE KRYPTON FACTOR
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVrYeGrcrU0
A real crowd pleaser from the Eighties, "the Ultimate Mental and Physical Challenge" has being rebooted twice but will never recapture the charm of it's original run. The show went like this 4 contestants who were told to wear 1 colour for convenience, had to win challenges in the heats to get to grand final, where a holiday finally went to the winner. These challenges were:

• Mental Arithmetic-A riddle was devised and each right answer was a point.
• Co-Ordination-After learning how the day before, contestants had to land a plane in a flight simulator.
• The Assault Course-The Reason this show was successful to the point the 90s reboot made it the final round.
• Mental Agility-A Puzzle had to be completed in the quickest time to win the most points. This puzzles were fiendish and some took hours to complete but thanks to editing you never knew!
• Observation-a vignette/Cartoon was shown and question asked afterwards
• General Knowledge -this was a quickfire round where every answer was 2 points and every wrong answer lost 2 points.

Number 9 (Tie)
ANY GAMESHOW HOSTED BY BRUCE FORSYTH
With a Career that has spanned since the birth of television, Brucie has hosted many game-shows as the BBC and ITV clamoured for the star for decades. "Tebowing" long before Tebow's parents were old enough to think of a stupid name for a child!, Brucie always had showmanship since his dancehall days, but his success as a host can be traced to when he was the straightman to the Late, Great and Sadly missed, Norman Wisdom.

Number 8
MASTERMIND

THAT SPOTLIGHT.
THAT SPINE-SHIVERING THEME.
THAT ICONIC BLACK CHAIR!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOa9Zl-nYVI
Considered to be bragging rights for the biggest brains in room, Mastermind has no cash prize just the honour of being proof that you won a hard quiz! You can have your own specialist subject, from classical music to Classic Cars. then the quick fire round of general knowledge.

But where did the idea came from?
Well the producer was a soldier in the last war, and he was captured by the gestapo, who barraged him with question under a harsh spotlight in front of an auditorium. Strange, But it's indeed true!

Number 7
Ninja Warrior
If Mastermind is the ultimate bragging rights for smart people, then this is ultimate physical challenge. On Site on Japan's Mt. Madoriama (Sic), The Ever changing course changes whenever Stage 1 is completed, never mind defeated out right, Only 1 Man has ever defeated the course. let's watch!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnSyQkZDBAI

NUMBER 6
FAMILY FORTUNES (THE GOOD VERSION, NOT THE CELEBRITIES SHIT AT THEIR ACTUAL JOBS VERSION!)
Called Family Fued in it's native America, 2 families in teams of 5, were giving questions based on surveys given to 100 people. With a pound for each person who gave that answers. as well as spot prizes. the real star of the show were the public when they gave funny answers as this famous clip demonstrates!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2AWKfMvDtw

Number 5
CATCHPHRASE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ap51UNCw8KY
"Say what you see!"
The simple instructions as given by original Irish host, Roy Walker, the show that started Itv's dominate run on Saturday primetime in the decade where Ant N'dec were blinding eachother with Paintballs! Roy with Catchphrase's mascot, Mr chips in tow, Helped as much as they can to contestants to guess the turn of phrases animated on the screen wall for a change to win a holiday (Until the Reboot RUINED IT! By being hosted by Ant N Dec's Man-bitch and turned the EndGame into Win Or Still Win!)

Number 4 was so groundbreaking, I don't know if you can call it a gameshow, but still earning it's spot is SURVIVOR
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyb2HYSne3E

CBS took Channel 4's castaway and moved from the dreary Orkney Islands to the untouched of the south Pacific, While Challenges for food and supplies and immunity from being voted off, the real excitement was watching the true colours of these people come out, paranoia, alliances, Elitism and cliques, you name it. For Intrigue, shocks and yes, it's fair of half naked Women! Survivor makes it up this list.

NUMBER 3:
WIPEOUT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df1tOhQfAl0  
No, not the true or false gameshow that became the battleground for the long feud between Paul Daniels and Bob Monkhouse' but the show that became TOTAL Wipeout to stop BBC from suing. taking it's nod from Japanese Game shows!, once again its the members of public with playful nicknames from the hosts that make the show.

Brits don't do Playfulness, as I'll get to later!

NUMBER 2:
21
You May not have heard of this show, but because of it, strict rules had to be enforced, in fact they made a film about it some years ago, Aptly titled Game Show.

2 Contestants Who Written in, one was looked in a sound booth and given music to listen to as another was given Questions to answer. What we now know is that the so called oblivious Contestant were not listening to music, they were being piped the answers via C.B. Radio. the Broke on both sides of the Atlantic. Gameshows for a whole decade fell into near extinction. As Britain Devised the "rules of Television, cash prizes were now capped at £1000 or goods over that amount were the prize. In 1999, the prize cap was abolished in time for a new kind of show...and a bigger cheating scandal!

AND THE MOST INFLUENCAL GAMESHOW OF ALL TIME IS....
NUMBER 1: WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE

The twentieth Century was over, and what better time to unveil to the world the biggest prize that ever was up for grabs in television history?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6y20VCCal4
Spreading the globe like a force of Nature, Millionaire has given away more money, sold countless game books and board games, inspired new pub quizzes, and gave us the false drama pause that all gameshows now have. the show was dirt simple, as it was the key to it's success. The reboot in it's Death Throes years not applying here, 10 contestants went through fastest finger first a sequential round in the fastest time, the fastest contestant went to play through 15 questions the first 5 were joke questions (You'll be surprised how many Americans 'MURICANS! got them wrong!) and 10 questions of ascending difficulty. Fortunately, the contestants had 3 "lifelines" 50-50 cut the choices in half, Ask the Audience (Which was a Crapshoot!) and Phone a Friend were you can rely on a buddy(Unless you're in Russia, were lawsuits doubled when Phone-a-Friends when people expected a share of the prize money!)

Of Course Controversy would rear it's ugly head again and it's name was Major Charles Ingram...The Man Dubbed in the British Media as Major Fraud!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeR4jS_IO7Y

So that's it! If you favourite wasn't heard don't worry! the next countdown is 10 gameshows you'll probably never heard of, but some off you will, and it's going to be Super-Smashing-Great!

See you Later!
Eamonn.

A RICH IDIOT WHO DIDN'T BOOK HER CHAMPION IN HER COMAPANY'S MARQUEE EVENT PRESENTS: BOUND FOR GLORY: THIS IS MUTA'S HOUSE, DIXIE! YOU JUST PAY THE RENT!

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Long Road has stopped with the smallest ever hand-draft of notes I took from Britain's "debut" of Bound for Bankruptcy Glory. Let's get this over with!

If you thought getting some featherweight to wear the Suicide costume, change his name when he people could tell it wasn't Daniels or Kaz wasn't torture enough, they repackage him with Aldo Montoya's Ring Gear, right down to the mask that looks like a jockstrap! However his match against his former teacher Minoro Tanaka had good flow, lots of action and told the story well.

MULTIPLE CHOICE QUIZ!
FINISH THIS SENTENCE
Ethan Midcarder the TURD....

1. Won his Match against Hama, Cleanly! (Thank god for small miracles!)
2. has the dubious honour of being undefeated for a year
3. looks and wrestles like the SmackdownVSRaw Default Create-A-Wrestler Model
4. SUCKS!
5. ALL OF THE ABOVE!

When MVP's opponent was revealed to be Sakamoto, I thought "Lord Jason Sweet TenseAlberTrain's manservant can wrestle?" 2 minutes later the answer was clearly "Yes, but not very well!"

Next we had a good but I was so out of my depth, as Mexican and Wrestle-1 is not televised Where I Live. It was El Hijo De Pantera and Andy Wu vs Shiryu and Kodama. Shiryu, who wrestles with a Jacket on as his gimmick, won for his team with 2 twisting Corkscrew Moonsaults.

We cut to the Day before's Hall of Fame induction for Team 3D. Standard fare but 1 thing I saw, it was a "blink and you'll miss it" kind of thing, They cut to Abyss's table, the only table with a plate food on it during the speech, and he looked generally annoyed that he had to stop eating to look up and listen to the speech!

To The Hardcore Tag match between the newly inducted Hall of Famers vs Tommy Dreamer and FLAByss, still annoyed about having his meal interrupted, denied the handshake to start the match. It escalated out of control when all the ring contents was uncovered. 3d used their namesake move to pin Abyss.

Jimmy Sazuki was right, the Women's match will be nothing but a footnote, But at least it wasn't Maddie versus Gail for the umpteenth and two millionth time! Havoc Massacred Angie's Sidekick with a BearHug to Retain. However the title has changed hands already which only serves to cheapen the Pay-Per-Views.

Finally the Main event. The Great Muta booked himself into the main event (REALLY(?) NO(!))
And he and Tajiri (who has since turned heel) defeated the new faction of James Storm and Sanada. After the match, The heels jumped Muta, helped by JockStrapFace, but 3D made the save to end the last ppv I do this year.

Join me on Monday at my tumblr page enlightenedtowers.tumblr.com for the next 8 weeks when I review British Boot Camp.