Friday 25 April 2014

Flashback Friday - Incredible Games

What do you get when you mix The Crystal Maze, David Walliams, Tinky Winky and CBBC??  The Incredible Games of course!!

Incredible Games was a children's game show that lasted only 2 seasons between January 1994 and March 1995.

The show was set in a fictional skyscraper with a talking lift (David Walliams for the first series and Gary Parker in the second).





The aim of the show was for teams of 10 to 14 years olds to complete each game (one per "floor" of the skyscraper), gradually rising up the tower.

The 2nd series had noticeable differences to the first:
- a change of channel from BBC1 to BBC2, and day from Sundays to Tuesdays.
- In the first series the final game was "alphabet soup" and n the second with the penthouse.
- The second series send players to the basement if they lost a game and the others had to go and rescue them.
- In the first series the lift doors would open directly into a game, however the second series the lift doors would open to a corridor which had a series of doors, with a light above a door in the corridor indicating the relevant room. Occasionally the lift door would open to reveal a darkened corridor with the dark knight walking slowly to the lift, the contestants had to quickly shut the lift doors.

The games were always the same, every episode:

The Victorian Schoolmaster. Contestants, dressed in Victorian school uniform, would enter a Victorian schoolroom and be greeted by the ghost of a Victorian Schoolmaster. The contestants, would have to answer the question one answer behind. e.g.
Q1:Name the 3 primary colours
A1:  no answer
Q2: What animal goes Woof
A2: Red, yellow and blue
If they got three wrong then they were gunged. 

Radioactive Balloons. Balloons full of radioactive slime had to be passed around a course except that the contestants couldn't see what they were doing.  The balloons were on the opposite side of the wall with only small spaces for their hands to go through around the room. The two players had to keep passing the balloons between each other in order to get the balloon to the top. 

The Dark Knight. This game was very similar to chess against The Dark Knight. The players had to make it across the board without the Dark Knight catching them. Players had to move forward followed by a sidestep on the next turn, then forward etc.   The Dark Knight couldn't see where they were but could see the green spot where they had been to try and work out where they were.  



Laundry Baskets. The player or players who lost any levels would each be locked in one compartment in the Basement of the Tower. Sadly, there were quite a few compartments. They were penalised levels for having to do this but they'd lose even more levels if they took too long trying to find and release the players from the Baskets.

Alphabet Soup. I loved this game, it is the one I really wanted to take part in.  The players would go into a kitchen and be 'shrunk'. Inside the soup were tons of magnetic letters and some vegetables. The vegetables were irrelevant, the letters had to be collected and taken to the person standing at the side of the pool who would use them to make words on the fridge.  The longer the words the more levels they would gain.  


Plumbing. The other water-based game was set in a flooded room.   The contestants had to connect and pipes to matching flooding pipes in the wall.

Penthouse. The end game was played in the Penthouse at the top of the tower.  Hidden in the suite were four Prize Keys (and some fake ones). Using the time they had (a set time take away a couple of seconds for each level below a certain amount they achieved before coming here) they had to find the four keys and put them into the board. And what do keys make? Prizes! 


Where does Tinky Winky fit in??  Simon Shelton, who played the Dark Knight in the series, later became (the 2nd)Tinky Winky in Teletubbies.

  


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