Really short-lived rules

[Jay Temple]

On Musical Chairs, they switched from eliminating a player after each round to keeping all four until the final round and picking them off one by one. Or was it the other way around? They had a bunch of different bonus rounds, too.

Originally: 3 50's, 3 75's, then eliminate one person after each $100 question
At the end: 3 50's, eliminate 1; 3 75's, eliminate 1; 3 100's, eliminate 1.

Bonus A: One of the week's singers sings lines from 10 songs, contestant has to provide the next line. $100 each, 10 in 60 seconds gets $2,000.
Bonus B: Ten lines from a single song are provided, contestant tries to put them in order.

Originally, they had one of these bonuses. (I think A, but I'm not positive.) Then, for a while, they had no bonus, but they doubled the winner's total. Finally, they went to the other bonus.

[Kevin Prather]

50's Twenty-one:

Originally, the contestants played without the aid of the producers.

[Brian44]

/Someone had to give a better explanation than Karlberg

All Hail Nicholas!!!

[golden-road]

Originally on Scattergories, there was a tossup to determine who went first, later the challengers went first. Also, in the endgame, the money was "placed" behind a star, and the team had to capture it to win; this changed to capturing three to win.

[Allstar87]

Originally on Scattergories, there was a tossup to determine who went first, later the challengers went first. Also, in the endgame, the money was "placed" behind a star, and the team had to capture it to win; this changed to capturing three to win.

Were the early rules only in place during the first week?

[Steve Gavazzi]

50's Twenty-one:

Originally, the contestants played without the aid of the producers.

You win the thread.

[That Don Guy]

Another one from 79-80 Beat the Clock: the first time there was a tie going into the Bonus Shuffle, they tossed a coin backstage to decide who went first; after that, the challengers always went first (whenever there were two new couples because of a retiring champion, they tossed a coin to determine who would wear the red "champions" shirts and who the green "challengers" shirts; the green shirts went first in case of a tie).  (In the All-Star version, they always tossed a coin.)

Re; the 21 rule. You don't remember it that way because it didn't happen that way. IIRC, there was no $500,000 game until the format was switched up and once you won your fourth game everything restarted.

For some reason, I had "at first, 100-200-300-400-500 and repeat 500" written down, but I will defer to the masses (especially those of you who saw the reruns on GSN).

Keep in mind that I am also one of those people who is pretty much "convinced" that "Moneymaze" was always one word...

[Kevin Prather]

For some reason, I had "at first, 100-200-300-400-500 and repeat 500" written down, but I will defer to the masses (especially those of you who saw the reruns on GSN).

It might be possible that this was the original plan, but it was quickly nixed before air.

[wdm1219inpenna]

I don't recall this rule, but apparently on Wink's Tic Tac Dough, in the bonus game, for a very brief time, you had to get EXACTLY $1,000 to win the game.  I don't ever recall seeing an episode with that rule, and haven't been able to find any video of that either.

Price is Right Bullseye I, Bob gave a range for the price of the car, but on the first or first couple of playings, no range was given to the contestant.

When Hi Lo began, the player selected any item, and then I think the price was shown, and they had to select to place it in the HI or the LO row.  Once either the HI or LO row was filled, the other products' prices were revealed, and if they all "fit" in the proper row, the player won.  This was scrapped very soon to the current rule of "Pick out the 3 highest priced products".

Again I've never seen this, or recall having seen it, but the earliest playings of Cliff Hangers involved 4 small prizes instead of 3.

Dice Game car prices when it first debuted could have 7s, 8s, 9s and 0s in the price of the car.  That changed pretty fast I think...

Make Your Move temporarily had two 3-digit prizes and one of the digits "overlapped" in the array, but that got too confusing so they changed it back to the 2, 3 and 4 digit prize thing again.

Pass the Buck, the first few playings had 8 numbers instead of 6 on the board, and all 3 picks had to be earned by passing the buck.  That changed soon to the 6 numbers and 2 pricing of grocery items + 1 free pick given rule.

During the first playing, or maybe the first few, of Pocket Change, all 5 numbers had to be filled in by the contestant, the first one hadn't been given for free.

[clemon79]

I don't recall this rule, but apparently on Wink's Tic Tac Dough, in the bonus game, for a very brief time, you had to get EXACTLY $1,000 to win the game.  I don't ever recall seeing an episode with that rule, and haven't been able to find any video of that either.

And I'm gonna call shenanigans on that, because I saw the very first episode of the nighttime show (the first episode to use the Tic-Tac-Dragon game), and this was never the case near as I remember.

Citation needed. Proof or Not Real. Etc.

[SRIV94]

I don't recall this rule, but apparently on Wink's Tic Tac Dough, in the bonus game, for a very brief time, you had to get EXACTLY $1,000 to win the game.  I don't ever recall seeing an episode with that rule, and haven't been able to find any video of that either.

And I'm gonna call shenanigans on that, because I saw the very first episode of the nighttime show (the first episode to use the Tic-Tac-Dragon game), and this was never the case near as I remember.

Citation needed. Proof or Not Real. Etc.

Seconded.  "Oh, you ended up with $1,050.  You win nothing."

[Brian44]

During the first playing, or maybe the first few, of Pocket Change, all 5 numbers had to be filled in by the contestant, the first one hadn't been given for free.

Actually I liked it better that way as it gave the game a little more of a Ten Chances feel to it.

[irismason42]

For NYSI, for the series premiere episode only, during the Finals round, when a player buzzed in and scored, her opponent is "locked-out" as long as she keeps scoring and until she makes the wrong call. For the first 3 Child's Play episodes, in the Fast Play round(and I'm sure many of you remember if you have those early episodes in your collection), the Fast Play round was played in 2 parts, the first half of the FP round was only worth 1 point for a correct answer and for some reason, when a player buzzed-in with a wrong guess, their opponent got a chance to hear the full definition before answering and the second half of FP was worth 2 points for each correct answer. After 3 episodes, the FP round is worth 2 points per correct answer permanently. The very early WOF episodes used the daytime Round 1 configuration and had the "turn their backs" in mid-round format and had FIVE commercial breaks like the daytime version had at the time. Originally, for the first few weeks of CBS Card Sharks, in the Money Cards, the player could change any number of cards in any line, now it was possible that the player could change all 3 cards in a single line. In Greed's progressive jackpot format, in the Terminator round, a player could be automatically disqualified if they buzzed-in before Chuck even finishes reading the question fully even if they give a correct answer.

[WarioBarker]

I don't recall this rule, but apparently on Wink's Tic Tac Dough, in the bonus game, for a very brief time, you had to get EXACTLY $1,000 to win the game. I don't ever recall seeing an episode with that rule, and haven't been able to find any video of that either.

Circa 1983, and you had to get either $1,000 exactly or Tic and Tac. Much like the 1990 bonus round, you could end up being (ahem) "boxed in" to where you had to find the instant-win space(s).

[Steve Gavazzi]

Price is Right Bullseye I, Bob gave a range for the price of the car, but on the first or first couple of playings, no range was given to the contestant.

On the first two playings of Bullseye, there was no range.  On the third and fourth playings, there was a $500 range given.  On the last playing, the range was done away with, and the contestant was told that the price had been rounded to the nearest $10.  I've wondered if the game might have survived with these rules for at least a little while had the contestant not made numerous bids that her previous guesses had already ruled out.

Dice Game car prices when it first debuted could have 7s, 8s, 9s and 0s in the price of the car.  That changed pretty fast I think...

Not that fast.  The best I've been able to narrow the change down to is sometime after January 31, 1977, and no later than June 29, 1977.

Make Your Move temporarily had two 3-digit prizes and one of the digits "overlapped" in the array, but that got too confusing so they changed it back to the 2, 3 and 4 digit prize thing again.

The game debuted in the fall, was played for about three months, was removed from the rotation for the remainder of that season, came back the next fall with the strange rules, and went back to the normal ones two playings later.

During the first playing, or maybe the first few, of Pocket Change, all 5 numbers had to be filled in by the contestant, the first one hadn't been given for free.

Just the first playing.