Classic Concentration

[TLEberle]

I realize, what with the attention span of the average TV watcher, that Concentration stands almost no chance of getting a revival any time soon.  But thinking about that sparked a question.

Back in the 80s, when GSes were at least viable programming, would this have been plausible as an alternative to "Classic Concentration":

* 25 square gameboard, with one wild card, Take/Forfeit cards, a cash amount somewhere, and various other bonus pieces from time to time

* No bonus round.  If you solve the puzzle, you win everything on your side of the ledger.  Two losses and you're gone.

* If time runs out during a puzzle, just isolate the players until the next show airs, and make sure Friday ends with a solve or a 'tie game.'

* Five time winners get a car, play until you reach the winnings limit, if any.


Basically, did NBC have to update the show with the car game bonus round, and the other stuff to add, or could they have just gone with the REAL classic "Concentration," and let people who had never seen the original show know how good it was?  Or is my idea of a return to simplicity a pipe dream?

Travis

[davemackey]

Audiences have been progressively more demanding of game show formats as times have changed. Rare is the format that requires little or no changing when it's time for a revival (such as "Jeopardy!" - apart from the dollar figure inflation, the game today is exactly as it was in 1964 - yes, we could quibble about non-champs taking home their money in the old days, but that's not the point we're making here).

In the case of "Concentration", Goodson-Todman never wanted to just do plain vanilla "Concentration" as it existed on NBC for 15 years, so they added the Double Play round and made other changes to the show to make it fit into a self-contained half hour unit. And naturally, when NBC decided to air the show again, there were other changes, such as fewer squares on the game board, and the car matching game. Nobody would sit still for the plain ol' matching game that enthralled viewers in living black and white (until 1966, anyway).

G-T couldn't help themselves when updating formats to add little tweaks to make them that much better. The idea of the "Password Puzzle" was such a gem when introduced in "Password Plus" that it just naturally carried over to "Super Password"; now you couldn't possibly picture "Password" without it.

[DrBear]

[quote name=\'davemackey\' date=\'Jun 27 2004, 02:47 PM\'] G-T couldn't help themselves when updating formats to add little tweaks to make them that much better. The idea of the "Password Puzzle" was such a gem when introduced in "Password Plus" that it just naturally carried over to "Super Password"; now you couldn't possibly picture "Password" without it. [/quote]
 Old geezer (47) that I am, I could. I still maintain that putting the puzzles in limited the choice of words and made it easier to guess them (if you have a puzzle that is pointing for, say, "Friends," and you have an idea that's the case, it's going to be very easy to guess, say, "apartment.")

That's always been my complaint about the P+/SP format, anyway. (On the other hand, switching the Ligntning Round to Alphabetics was a terrific change.)

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'DrBear\' date=\'Jun 27 2004, 01:56 PM\'] (On the other hand, switching the Ligntning Round to Alphabetics was a terrific change.) [/quote]
 Alphabetics, at least in the Super Password flavor (where an illegal clue disqualified the player from the big prize outright, not just reducing it) is for my money the second greatest endgame of all time, right behind the Winner's Circle.

Now, give me SP's rules with P+'s cool Alphabetics board, and you have the UberGame.

[Neumms]

[quote name=\'clemon79\' date=\'Jun 27 2004, 04:14 PM\'] [quote name=\'DrBear\' date=\'Jun 27 2004, 01:56 PM\'] (On the other hand, switching the Ligntning Round to Alphabetics was a terrific change.) [/quote]
Alphabetics, at least in the Super Password flavor (where an illegal clue disqualified the player from the big prize outright, not just reducing it) is for my money the second greatest endgame of all time, right behind the Winner's Circle.

Now, give me SP's rules with P+'s cool Alphabetics board, and you have the UberGame. [/quote]
 Well, obviously, you've forgotten about the $10,000 Dash from "The Money Maze."

My small gripe with Password Plus and Super Password is that they used proper nouns as Passwords. It seemed like they cheapened the game somehow. Often, they're too easy. Bert's version had more clever puzzles sometimes where the clues didn't lead to each other but all surprisingly had something in common, sort of like the board game "Tri-Bond." Those were a great challenge.

Also, the words weren't as challenging in general. Then again, that's where the Cashword fit in. Boy, those Goodson-Todman people did know something.

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'Neumms\' date=\'Jun 27 2004, 05:01 PM\'] Well, obviously, you've forgotten about the $10,000 Dash from "The Money Maze."
 [/quote]
 No.

[Ian Wallis]

* No bonus round. If you solve the puzzle, you win everything on your side of the ledger. Two losses and you're gone.

I'm not comfortable with that one.  It's possible for a contestant to almost "run the board", get most of the prizes on their side, miss a match near the end and have the other contestant win with very little on their side.  I like the idea of a bonus round, but oddly enough I was never too fond of the way they did it on "Classic Concentration".

[Ian Wallis]

My small gripe with Password Plus and Super Password is that they used proper nouns as Passwords. It seemed like they cheapened the game somehow. Often, they're too easy.

For a while on "Password Plus", they had a "no opposites" rule.  I guess they figured that made it too easy.  By the time "Super Password" rolled around, opposites were allowed again.

[zachhoran]

[quote name=\'Ian Wallis\' date=\'Jun 28 2004, 08:13 AM\']

I'm not comfortable with that one.  It's possible for a contestant to almost "run the board", get most of the prizes on their side, miss a match near the end and have the other contestant win with very little on their side. [/quote]
 This seemed to happen on CLassic Concentration fairly often. THere were probably a few champions who left with nada over the four year run, due to the other player either missing a late match or not solving the puzzle(after getting every prize on the board).

[Jimmy Owen]

Re: CC. The car round was very hard to win unless you had been on long enough to get a good base time, and as mentioned, occassionally a champ would have very few prizes because the way the game went.  I'll run this idea up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes: Keep the general format of the car round, but instead of matching car model names, make the bonus game a prize matching game, keeping the prizes you've matched and if all the prizes are matched, you win a car and retire as champ.

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'Jimmy Owen\' date=\'Jun 28 2004, 08:17 AM\'] The car round was very hard to win unless you had been on long enough to get a good base time [/quote]
I wouldn't go that far. 35 seconds was certainly a lot to ask for, but if a player kept their cool and concentrated (!) and stayed methodical, doing it in 40 wasn't too much to ask. 45 should have been a sure thing for anyone with any degree of confidence whatsoever. Show me another endgame that gives away a car that practically hands it to you after three tries.

(No, Zach, that was a hypothetical comment, not a request for annoying minutae.)

[uncamark]

My ideal "Concentration" format to me has been an old school front game (but with all of the modern accountrements like computer graphics and better music, but with the old "clunk clunk" sound dubbed in when the numbers turn over) and the "CC" end game, with a two-out-of-three front game format (the third being the speed game of "CC").

NBC Enterprises was supposedly considering reviving the show a few years ago.  I would be curious--if they got to pilot--if their plan matched mine.  Probably not.

[Unrealtor]

[quote name=\'DrBear\' date=\'Jun 27 2004, 03:56 PM\'] Old geezer (47) that I am, I could. I still maintain that putting the puzzles in limited the choice of words and made it easier to guess them (if you have a puzzle that is pointing for, say, "Friends," and you have an idea that's the case, it's going to be very easy to guess, say, "apartment.") [/quote]
 I really liked the dimension that the Password Puzzles could, and at times did, add to the show. Having the other words in the puzzle as context made it possible for a good player to play both the puzzle and the word at the same time. However, a lot of the puzzles, in practice, made me cringe. (Particularly the type where, read out in order, they described the answer, rather than being pointers to it, like "First" "Moon" "Walking" "American" "Man" for Neal Armstrong.) Super Password, as best as I can recall, had a higher quality of puzzle than P+ did, and made for better gameplay.

Also, we haven't mentioned that TPiR '73, the show for which Goodson and Todman are best known for today, was not just a minor tweak of the format -- it turned the main aspect of the game into a fairly minor part of the show.