oldest thing you remembered from the first time

[tvmitch]

I remember watching $25K Pyramid and Wheel of Fortune daytime while being babysat. This would have been sometime in \'84.

 

Also a memory of visiting my Aunt in upstate PA, and seeing what I now know is TJW. I remember that the host had thick glasses. Hence, 1985 or after. Oddly, I don\'t have any other recollection of watching the 77-86 run of TJW, but the TTD reruns on USA were a staple later in the \'80s.

 

EDIT: Someone mentioned being scared of the Penny Ante sound effect. Had to throw this in. I was absolutely terrified of the Stinger sfx on $1M CoaL. I would hide behind our recliner. But it was worth it to watch the show simply for the giant keyboard, which I wanted to build in my house.

[aaron sica]

The first game show that I remember that I was able to see on GSN is a 2-way tie between $20K Pyramid and Match Game, each fascinating me in their own way. $20K Pyramid fascinated me by the solari\'s, and Match Game fascinated me by the Star Wheel. I really wasn\'t interested in any other part of the program but that. I remember being sort of disappointed when $25K Pyramid premiered and they went all-LED.

 

And in typing the reply to this I got an idea for ANOTHER thread....Stay tuned!

[JMFabiano]

I saw one recently: on an MG/HS episode that was posted online a while back, I distinctly remembered the \"Cheerios grow up to be ______\" question (and Richard Kline\'s response of \"cheerleaders\")

 

As for less-specific ones...my earliest memories had to come from 1980, as I remembered bits and pieces of: TTD, TJW, Ward TTTT, Woolery WOF, Whew!, Blockbusters, High Rollers, Marshall HS, Kennedy NTT, and PW+ way before I\'d see them again via tape trade and/OR GSN.  Odd thing is, at 3 years old, I think I remembered the Allen-to-Tom transition on PW+ and feeling funny about it. 

[KWJCDon]

I remember my Mom Watching the Fleming Jeopardy from the mid 60\'s. I thought $10 was big bucks back then!

[MikeK]

The Dream House finale in 1984, specifically the final house win but also Bob, Johnny, and the crew in the audience saying their goodbyes.

[MTCesquire]

My earliest game show memory was \"Go\".  What stuck out in my mind was the guesser bouncing from seat to seat with Kevin occasionally yelling out \"Go!\".  The first few bars of the theme song stuck with me all the way until the mid-\'90s when I was finally able to hear it in its entirety on 80stvthemes.com

 

There were another show that aired a couple years later that I thought I had dreamed up.  All I remembered was some guy pushing a button and repeating \"No bandit!  No bandit!\".  Fast forward twenty-plus years and, via YouTube, I discovered that it was an actual show called \"Strike It Rich\".

 

On the topic of \"scary\" SFX, PYL\'s Whammy sound guaranteed to have me running out the room screaming like a banshee as a baby.  I swear I couldn\'t watch that show until I was like eight years old.  Honorable mentions go to Combs Feud\'s strike cue and Pathfinder\'s wrong number zap.  I used to have to watch that game on mute for a while.

[TimK2003]

The earliest recollection of a specific game show moment that I remember seeing for the second time years later was a specific question on MG\'7x when one of the possible answers was \"Potty\".  When it came for Patty Duke Astin to reveal her answer, she said \"Potty\" in some weird voice, exectly the way I remembered it decades earlier.  The only GS SFX that scared the crap out of me was when I was a kid was the HSq Tacky Buzzer on the syndicated episodes.

[Offshored2007]

Gotta show my age and say a Fleming episode of Jeopardy! from the late 1960s

[JMFabiano]

On the topic of \"scary\" SFX, PYL\'s Whammy sound guaranteed to have me running out the room screaming like a banshee as a baby.  I swear I couldn\'t watch that show until I was like eight years old.  Honorable mentions go to Combs Feud\'s strike cue and Pathfinder\'s wrong number zap.  I used to have to watch that game on mute for a while.

 

For me, it was:

TPIR losing horns

Bankrupt

Stopper

TTD dragon (and by proxy I turned the sound down during the TJW bonus game cause I feared the Devil made a noise too...either way, I didn\'t like the Penny Ante SFX, which at the time sounded like a weed whacker starting for some reason...no, really...)

[Ian Wallis]

Not really sure of the very first thing I remember.  I think it might have been something on the syndicated Beat the Clock in the late \'60s or early \'70s.  Can\'t recall if it ever played on GSN.

 

I destinctly remember a LOT of Tattletales questions from original broadcasts and remember seeing some of those on GSN. 

 

I also remember a fair bit from the CBS Joker\'s Wild, and that probably would have qualified if GSN hadn\'t dropped the show and never brought it back

[The Ol' Guy]

Probably the very earliest memory blurb is a few moments of Warren Hull on Strike It Rich, specifically him leading the audience in a singing jingle for Fab detergent to the tune of \"Hot Time In The Old Town Tonight\". Other three-second blips include the flashing game board on Double Exposure, the giant gift box on Your Surprise Package, the contestant entry door on Tic Tac Dough, and a reveal on Split Personality. Longer term memories include Concentration and Video Village, both Narz and Hall versions. Even remember a couple of more verse lines to this tune..or one closer to the original theme...\"Stroll awhile along the Magic Mile, where dreams are waiting to come true....\". http://www.televisiontunes.com/Video_Village_-_The_Village_Bus.html

[Eric Paddon]

On many occasions, I have seen a specific game show episode as an adult through GSN or through a game show trade that I remember as a specific episode I watched at age 5 or so in the mid-1970s. Some specific memories that had stayed in my head all those years and I had my memory confirmed were the last Password All-Stars in which I remembered correctly the celeb players, Allen mentioning there were no qualifying games to be played this day and also that the last password they didn\'t get to was \"rhyme\".

 

I also had exactly one memory of \"Now You See It\" from age five, and it was a moment during the semifinal \"Letter, letter\" portion of the round where the contestant gave the answer \"foot\" and Jack Narz said, \"Yes, foot or feet!\" When I went through all the NYSI episodes the last time GSN aired the whole cycle, I kept waiting for that one moment and there it finally was in a June 1974 episode which confirmed the date of when I\'d seen that fragmentary memory.

 

And I remember seeing syndie HSQ episodes with Wally Cox airing at least a year after his death in the markets I lived in, in 1974 and GSN aired one episode with an intro I remember where Mr. X was a bird expert so Peter had Wally Cox do a bird call of some kind and then when Peter asked the contestant what that was, the contestant answered, \"That\'s a Wally Cox.\" It was a freaky moment again to see something specific I remembered from age five again for the first time in my early 30s.

 

Many Match Game 75-76 moments provided similar experiences too, including the Johnny Olson fills in for Gary Burghoff day.

[gridlockjoe]

My oldest game show memory was of a contestant winning the $1000 end game on Joe Garagiola\'s Memory Game.

[Unrealtor]

I\'ve never seen a specific episode and realized that I remembered it. The closest that I probably get is remembering the \"coffee can\" lights around the big doors for the 1986 Price specials that tended to show up in clip montages over the years, and a few details about Super Password that weren\'t confirmed until it showed up on GSN.

[BrandonFG]

I\'ve never been able to confirm this, but when I was about 2 or 3, I remember watching \"Super Password\" and I could\'ve sworn they talked to the guy behind the board, and showed things from his POV, several feet up. Am I making this up?