Room for Improvement

[Sonic Whammy]

The guys decided to play an interesting game for the podcast tonight.

The rules: Pick any game show past or present. You are allowed to change one thing about how the show ran to make it better. But it must be a thing. You cannot change any personnel on the show (so no replacing Steve Harvey on Feud or something like that).

So, what one thing would you change?

[TLEberle]

Bullseye: Every contract is a bullseye and the bottom window shuffles money amounts.

Body Language: Every word guessed in the acting portion goes into a pot that is collected by the team that solves the puzzle.

Weakest Link: Strongest Link in each round gets immunity.

Millionaire Roulette: Lower the value of the big values, allow the bank to be the fallback point for questions eleven through fifteen. (Yup, add the fifteenth question back.)

Family Feud: Families stay on for the entire week.

[jage]

Lingo GSN: Win $1,000 X the number of words guessed in bonus Lingo, and double if you get all 10.

[jcs290]

Family Feud (any version) : jackpot bonus for naming all #1 answers in Fast Money

Wheel of Fortune : Bonus contestant picks 4 consonants and a vowel. Vanna reveals any letters. Then, the contestant picks 4 more consonants (+WC if in play) and another vowel based on what was revealed. Then start the 10 second countdown to solve.

Press Your Luck : Round 2, Big Money prize squares, treated like prizes and the Double Your $$ square. $10,000 then (if hit) replaced with a $25,000 card.

Supermarket Sweep : Double Coupon Bonus. Kind of like the shopping list, but instead of a list, each team is given an envelope each with the same three coupons for specific products. Gathering 1 or 2 items is worth $75 each. Finding all 3 doubles the bonus to $300.

Shop Til You Drop 2-story mall version : Each of the base pre-exchange boxes has a gift card of unknown cash value along with the item. One of the cards is worth more than $500.

Match Game current version : Super Dooper Match. Both winning contestants from each half try to match a Blank with each other. If they do, they both double their winnings.

[PYLdude]

My Weakest Link change only works if the second syndicated format is used but: Strongest link throughout game automatically qualifies for final round, vote is then cast for who he/she wants to face.

Other changes I would have made:

Hollywood Squares (most recent): installed the key bonus round earlier than penultimate season. The first bonus wss too simplistic and the second out of place.

To Tell the Truth: bonus money for any subject the panel didn't identify (as in he didn't get any of the four votes) on top of his split pot stake.

[Dbacksfan12]

Wheel of Fortune : Bonus contestant picks 4 consonants and a vowel. Vanna reveals any letters. Then, the contestant picks 4 more consonants (+WC if in play) and another vowel based on what was revealed. Then start the 10 second countdown to solve.

How does that improve the game?  Do you really think people are going to pick a ton of letter outside what they're currently spotted? 

Press Your Luck : Round 2, Big Money prize squares, treated like prizes and the Double Your $$ square. $10,000 then (if hit) replaced with a $25,000 card.

Making the game pretty much insurmountable if someone managed to hit both. 

Shop Til You Drop 2-story mall version : Each of the base pre-exchange boxes has a gift card of unknown cash value along with the item. One of the cards is worth more than $500.

You're pretty much negating the need to go shopping and do exchanges.

Supermarket Sweep : Double Coupon Bonus. Kind of like the shopping list, but instead of a list, each team is given an envelope each with the same three coupons for specific products. Gathering 1 or 2 items is worth $75 each. Finding all 3 doubles the bonus to $300.

You're making this far more complicated than it needs to be.  Even if you implemented this, why not just give each team their own list.  Which still, IMO, is an exercise in futility.

Family Feud: Families stay on for the entire week.

Only plausible if casting was better.  I would have no desire to watch two dud families for an entire week.

If I was making changes, I would have made Super Password a simple best 2-of-3 match.  Let a contestant stay on until they lose twice, ala Classic Concentration.

[The Ol' Guy]

Funny You Should Ask - play more game. Merrill Heatter saw the very early slow-moving Squares and demanded the amount of questions be increased. Four rounds - $50, $100, $150, and $200, then the bonus. Maybe borrow the old Chain Reaction bonus ladder - first bonus answer right, $50, Add a 0 for the next two questions? One can dream, can't one? 

[chrisholland03]

Body Language: Every word guessed in the acting portion goes into a pot that is collected by the team that solves the puzzle.

Weakest Link: Strongest Link in each round gets immunity.

I've always thought those two changes would legit make the games better. 

With Body Language - Double values in round 2.  High score after 4 puzzles wins.  Tie breaker puzzle if needed.

Weakest Link - players blind to strongest/weakest link.  If strongest link is voted off, he/she can choose which of his voters to eliminate.

My changes:

Shop 'til you Drop - winning couples' score determines method to getting to second floor.  Low score - gotta use an elevator; average score - you get the stairs; high score - you get an escalator.  Put the high end stores on the upper floor (but not necessarily the high end prizes).  Convert the lower floor to a food court, DMV/Marriage License center, Post Office.

Password '75 - two changes -
* Password round - winner remains at the table to defend their crown
* Password pool round - first player to 4 goes to the Password round; remaining players stay until they fail to qualify twice.  Players ejected by Password pop-up seats (kidding - baaroop!)

Pyramid - main game - contestants keep getting items until their 30 seconds expire

Wheel of Fortune - number of $100k/$1 mil cards on wheel equal to the number of puzzles contestant solved in main game

Chain Reaction Cullen - ability to give letters to the opposing player on deck.  If letter is given to opposing on deck player, next letter option moves to next player on that team.

Also eliminate the double scores and/or make the win target 99.  Or at least bring back a loser for best 2/3.  The main games were so short and the bonus rounds were so long.  An average game was around 1.5 chains.

Bullseye - end the bonus round after 5 spins.  No auto freezing bullseyes.  If you don't hit $1000 after 5 spins too bad game over you keep what you've got.  Also your main game contracts are either 1, 2, 3 or Bullseye.  Bullseye contracts end when spinning player stops or when opposing player answers correctly.

[TLEberle]

My Weakest Link change only works if the second syndicated format is used but: Strongest link throughout game automatically qualifies for final round, vote is then cast for who he/she wants to face.

One of the things I liked about the first daily series was that the fifth round was played for a double prize so that the players had to balance the risk of keeping someone around who could build up the prize money but also win it. The second season not only lost a round of game play but the jump from $5,000 to $25,000 meant that teams should either go for the $25k every time or just bank $250 for each right answer.

I like your idea a whole lot but how do you ensure that the strongest link stays around? Do they also have immunity in each round?

To Mark's point: I think this would require that Alphabetics is either played for $5,000 or $10,000 every day, or the jackpot grows less quickly. That $100 puzzle balances things out so where they play one end game every day. I had previously put forward the idea that whoever wins more money plays Alphabetics at the end of the day--first three puzzles worth $100 and the rest worth $200. This would require someone who will crack the whip a little on the game play.

A while ago I had said that Tic Tac Dough needed harder questions, but I don't think that's the case. The game stalls if marks are not being put on the board, though I think good players could answer 400 to 800 level questions. Three stars would individually dance around the board denoting the question is played as a jump-in whatever the category is.

[clemon79]

Three stars would individually dance around the board denoting the question is played as a jump-in whatever the category is.

This was how it worked on CBS before the syndicated format we are all familiar with: after the first round, three categories would come up with black backgrounds instead of blue, and those were jump-ins. (And I wanna remember they only shuffled every two questions.)

[Dbacksfan12]

Shop 'til you Drop - winning couples' score determines method to getting to second floor.  Low score - gotta use an elevator; average score - you get the stairs; high score - you get an escalator.

So by large, escalators have larger steps than stairs.  Why are you penalizing a fast runner?

[Clay Zambo]

Pyramid - main game - contestants keep getting items until their 30 seconds expire

I don't think that helps anything, especially since one of the rounds is called "Mystery *7*."

But (for the current version): I'd love to see them display each team's time for the tiebreaker.

[chrisholland03]

Shop 'til you Drop - winning couples' score determines method to getting to second floor.  Low score - gotta use an elevator; average score - you get the stairs; high score - you get an escalator.

So by large, escalators have larger steps than stairs.  Why are you penalizing a fast runner?

Running up a moving escalator gets you to the top faster than running up regular stairs

[calliaume]

Family Feud: Families stay on for the entire week.

Only plausible if casting was better.  I would have no desire to watch two dud families for an entire week.

I was thinking the same thing.  It's one thing to have a dud contestant on Jackpot! all week among 15 others; that person can be hidden easier.  But if you've got a lousy family, you're stuck with them for five straight shows.

On the other hand, instituting a two- or three-loss rule would encourage more families from different areas of the country to apply.  It's hard to get excited about having five people travel hundreds or thousands of miles apiece to split eighty-four dollars.

[Otm Shank]

Body Language: Every word guessed in the acting portion goes into a pot that is collected by the team that solves the puzzle.

Yes! Yes! A million times, yes! I always felt the pantomime portion should have been a part of the maingame scoring. I guess if I put myself back in that time, it was not long after Password essentially did the same thing.

Name That Tune: The round scores of 10-10-20 kept a trailing contestant in the game, but it also allowed a poor performing contestant to eke out a victory in the last round and win the tiebreaker, while being shut out in the rest of the competition. To narrow it down to one format, I think the 1980s version should have had both contestants in the Golden Medley like the '70s version, crediting a contestant for each round won.

Bullseye: The game dragged with long contracts on questions where contestants were not well versed in either category presented. I thought the contract should be the number of questions asked, not the number correctly answered. The correct answer on the final question (which could be increased difficulty) would still control the pot. If not answered correctly, either a simple tossup question would determine control, or continue the game with the last correct player spinning, with neither player allowed to bank at that point. There would need to be a provision to prevent the "endless" game, perhaps by "freezing" the contract window, and making it an automatic 1-question contract on the next spin (which could be a provision that kicks in only when there is at least a $2,000 bank).