Pyramid

[Dbacksfan12]

[quote name=\'Jay Temple\' date=\'Jan 12 2005, 01:29 AM\']However, if you can get an automaker to give away a car for two perfect boards in one day, that would be a great addition.
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I think $25,000 [or $50,000] is enough compensation without having to throw in a car as well.

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'TLEberle\' date=\'Jan 11 2005, 11:58 PM\']If you truly want to discourage WC ties (something I didn't mind from the 80s shows) have the WC values increase 25-50-100-200-400-800.  The only way you get a tie is if the two players get exactly the same boxes in their games.

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But that effectively happened on the old show, too. How often did someone score $750 in such a way that didn't flip the first five boxes? Two, four-fifty, five, six, seven hundred and fifty dollars. That's how it happens.
 
I would wager that if you look back over every tie on the Clark shows in the 80's, the percentage of those ties that also had the contestants scoring a different combination of boxes would be so small as to not bother legislating over.

[Don Howard]

I don't see Donny Osmond as the problem with The 21st Century Pyramid. He understood the game, didn't have any John Davidson-style foul-ups and truly seemed to be enjoying himself. If some of those celebs had been able to stay a full week instead of one day and gone, they could've eased into the game and become better players. How good were Terry Lester or Barry Jenner their first times out? But, boy, did they get great!!

[BrandonFG]

[quote name=\'Don Howard\' date=\'Jan 12 2005, 09:23 AM\']I don't see Donny Osmond as the problem with The 21st Century Pyramid. He understood the game, didn't have any John Davidson-style foul-ups and truly seemed to be enjoying himself. If some of those celebs had been able to stay a full week instead of one day and gone, they could've eased into the game and become better players. How good were Terry Lester or Barry Jenner their first times out? But, boy, did they get great!!

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Last nite I thought a little more about this, and realized that the one day thing was prolly part of the reason the show focused so much on the celebrities. The celebs only have the one day to play the game, and also showcase their latest projects. Had they stayed for a full week, there's a good chance that they could've stretched out all the comments for their TV show/movie/etc., instead of cramming it all into the half-hour.

I also wonder if they could've done 7 words/:30 if the celebs had stayed for the whole week.

[Steve McClellan]

[quote name=\'fostergray82\' date=\'Jan 12 2005, 06:54 AM\']The celebs only have the one day to play the game, and also showcase their latest projects. Had they stayed for a full week, there's a good chance that they could've stretched out all the comments for their TV show/movie/etc., instead of cramming it all into the half-hour.

I also wonder if they could've done 7 words/:30 if the celebs had stayed for the whole week.[/quote]
Well, the celebs did do three episodes per sitting; we just didn't see them consecutively. And with commercial time the way it is these days, if you'd wanted to add a good minute and a half of game play, you'd have had to replace Donny Osmond with John Moschitta.

[chris319]

And with commercial time the way it is these days, if you'd wanted to add a good minute and a half of game play, you'd have had to replace Donny Osmond with John Moschitta.

How many minutes of commercials did it have? More than six? If you got rid of the bumpers, the project plugs and abbreviated the end game language, there's plenty of time for 7 in 30.

[Robert Hutchinson]

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the main game board reveals probably ate up a minute more air time than they ever did on a Clark version.

(Cut to them laughing! CUT TO THEM LAUGHING!!!)

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'Robert Hutchinson\' date=\'Jan 12 2005, 04:45 PM\']I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the main game board reveals probably ate up a minute more air time than they ever did on a Clark version.

(Cut to them laughing! CUT TO THEM LAUGHING!!!)

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"Describe to your partner these reasons we love Estelle Harris so darn much."

(Cut to Chris vomiting! CUT TO CHRIS VOMITING!!!)

[TonicBH]

For my idea of a Pyramid revival:

- Let's revert the maingame back to 7-in-30. 6-in-20 REALLY made players rush, and if you got hung on one word, you were screwed for the rest of the subject. Not cool.
- Bring back the 7-11 and Mystery 7. In fact, I'd bring in the "Gamble for a Grand" bonus from Davidson Pyramid to give the game a little bit of a twist.
- If either team gets 21 points, give them $1,000 for doing so. And give them $1,000 more for whoever wins the tiebreaker presuming the score was 21-21, otherwise no bonus money awarded for winning tiebreakers.
- I'm not sure if I should keep the 80's amounts of 50-100-150-200-250-300 or if I should double them. Probably would be wiser to keep the original amounts.
- If a player fails to get to the top of the Pyramid the first time, but gets into the Winner's Circle the second time, they play for $15,000, not $25,000. (Or we could retain the Osmond format and let them go for $10,000 again.)
- Retain Bob Cobert's 80's theme. None of this non-sensical techno shit that stained the Osmond revival.
- Same with the set. The "Millionaire-style" set with suspenseful lights from the Osmond version is so 1999 and it just doesn't fit. Something more true-to-form to the 80's version would work just as well. And keep the monitors.

[mystery7]

[quote name=\'TonicBH\' date=\'Jan 12 2005, 08:31 PM\']For my idea of a Pyramid revival:
- Bring back the 7-11 and Mystery 7.

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You rang?

If we were to re-revive Pyramid, I'd keep it true but do a few things new. Not much that needed to be messed with so I'm being careful to perserve as much as I can.

- One more vote for 7 in 30. 7-11 in the first round, Mystery 7 in the second.
- Retain $5,000 bonus for 21-21 tie. ($5 large isn't as large as it was 20 years ago.)
- Have the show directed according to the Gargiulo/Burmester Stylebook: static shot of both players in the front game - all 30 seconds. 2 shots for WC: side shot of the players and the board shot.
- Revert SFX to real bell and buzzer (preferably the original buzzer from the '80s), and use the signature Bob Stewart Clock Sound for the Winner's Circle.
- Trilons are ol-skool but I like 'em. Although I could use monitors with a DVE effect to simulate the motion of turning trilons.

New twists:

- Bonus-in-a-bonus for Mystery 7: identifying the common bond wins $1,000 bonus, whether the team gets all 7 items or not.
- Winner's Circle values range from $100-$600.
- Have Ed Flesh do a new set based on his original.
- Modernize the Bob Cobert theme, a la Match Game '90.
- One announcer and one announcer only: Bob Hilton or Charlie O.

- And most importantly...
I'D BRING BACK THE CUCKOO!

[MSTieScott]

Personally, I didn't have a problem with 6-in-20. If you reinstated 7-in-30, and everybody got good at the game like they did during The $100,000 Pyramid, you'd start getting a lot of ties. Sure, you could reclaim the time needed to go back to 7-in-30 elsewhere in the show, but add a tiebreaker in there as well, and things are going to get a bit rushed.

I'm sure I'm in the minority on this, but I really didn't miss the cuckoo. (That's not to say that I liked their new illegal clue sound effect, mind you.) Playing a cuckoo sound effect on any TV program that isn't a kids' cartoon seems so dated. I mean, when was the last time you heard a cuckoo sound effect that wasn't coming out of a wooden clock?

--
Scott Robinson

[Jay Temple]

[quote name=\'Robert Hutchinson\' date=\'Jan 12 2005, 12:47 AM\'][quote name=\'Jay Temple\' date=\'Jan 12 2005, 01:29 AM\']4.  To decrease the likelihood of ties, the values in the WC go to $100-200-300-400-500-600.[/quote]

That, um, wouldn't decrease the likelihood of ties. All you did was double the dollars--the ratios of scores would be unchanged

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No, not compared to the Clark era.  I meant it would reduce the likelihood of ties compared to the values on Osmond's version (200-200-200-300-300-500).  I doubled them because nowadays it would look really cheap to have returning champions routinely come back with less than $1,000.

[MCArroyo1]

[quote name=\'TonicBH\' date=\'Jan 12 2005, 08:31 PM\']The "Millionaire-style" set with suspenseful lights from the Osmond version is so 1999 and it just doesn't fit. Something more true-to-form to the 80's version would work just as well.

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Funny how you mention that the set was "so 1999," and I agree with you.  But IMO, the 80's set would look even more out of place; it was so 1982.

And another thing: the perfect-score bonus makes perfect sense.  But I never understood the hefty $5K for 21-21 ties.  Why reward only one team just because another team happens to do just as well?

[zachhoran]

[quote name=\'Jay Temple\' date=\'Jan 13 2005, 12:28 AM\']
No, not compared to the Clark era.  I meant it would reduce the likelihood of ties compared to the values on Osmond's version (200-200-200-300-300-500).  I doubled them because nowadays it would look really cheap to have returning champions routinely come back with less than $1,000.

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When families don't win Fast Money on Karn Feud, their total for the day is routinely less than $1000.

[Ian Wallis]

- If a player fails to get to the top of the Pyramid the first time, but gets into the Winner's Circle the second time, they play for $15,000, not $25,000. (Or we could retain the Osmond format and let them go for $10,000 again.)

That's something I never liked of the Osmond version.  If you win both games in one show, you should get a shot at something extra.  The '80s Clark version got it right - first game $10,000; win or lose, second game a total of $25,000.