CBS: (September 1996 - September 1997)

THREE WEEKS AGO ON GAME SHOW GARBAGE.....

Well that wraps up yet another Kid's Month on Game Show Garbage.  Maybe it's time to take a look...

Not only that, you enter the roun....I'm sorry.  They call their rounds, "Frights" I don't know why the call them that, but there ya go.  You enter the rounds by going through doors in the main corridor, like the upstairs middle door or one of the two doors on the first floor. But when you enter the rooms, it's like you're warped to a different house altogether.

Kind of wish they did the whole door number one, door #2 and door #3 stuff.

 I'd take one less round for something like that.  But let's talk about some of the "Frights" aka Rounds, because I don't know how some of these made it past the censors.

I wonder how many lawsuits they actually had.  Round one was Fireball Alley oh wait Fright #1.

It doesn't matter, the name sucked.

Fireball Alley had a CGI set and let's just say while some may say of course the set looks dated now, but here is the thing. There were game shows earlier and they had way better use of CGI.

Heck, SNES Games looked better than the effects on this show.  But we should clarify that almost every game on this show had CGI Sets.

Now let's talk about Digger.

Digger was the Cryptkeeper's Lackey of sorts.  In this game, he'd fire off dodge balls at headstones that were behind the kid.  The kid had to block those shots without falling off a bridge and being vaporized by poor CGI effects.

and this guy SUCKS................

In more ways than one.  His commentary is very annoying and he was a poor shot, I guess to be kind to the kids.

Oh yeah and he had you answer questions for each headstones that his crappy shooting didn't knock down.

The questioning was inventive and pyramid-esque where he gave you 4 people, places and things and you had to find the connection of all 4. It's a bright spot in a dire show.

Folks........just to let you know......any bright spots on this show will be hidden in the darkness of all the crap.

Or in the constant remarks that the Cryptkeeper makes throughout the show.  So, let's talk about him right now.

Or, you talk about him, since he's right in your wheelhouse.

Ah yes, for those of you who have seen Tales From The Crypt.......you would know that the Cryptkeeper was shown at the beginning and end of every show Because he was the only part that had anything to do with the better show, they used him a lot.  This brings a few problems: 1) Because he had to move from late at night on HBO to Saturday mourning on CBS, he was understandably neutered. 2) there is a reason you saw him only at the beginning and the end because his act got annoying rather quickly if you had to listen to him constantly that is the issues with him and yes, he would come on and try his best to insult our contestants, but because he was neutered, they were extremely childish and well....weren't very innovative. I mean when Treguard from Knightmare can not do anything and be more innovative with his thoughts about your try, you have issues.

 Yeah.  He did get annoying fast. Since we're talking about talking heads, let's talk about the host, Steve Saunders.

He was okay.

He didn't do anything terrible, but then again he wasn't very memorable either.  He just was there.  But that makes him in the top 25% for kids game show hosts.

Yeah.........kids game show hosts were rather terrible.

Quite a few of them were.  Another major thing that bugged me was some of the events were very dangerous.  I mean, who thought it was a good idea to put kids in a wind tunnel.

Apparently these people did as that was part of what was mostly level 2: Worminator.  explain the complexities of this one

The kids had to move 3 dodge balls through a wind tunnel blowing at 100odd miles an hour.  and during certain areas, had to exchange them.  Then at the end, put them in a bucket.  They had to do this all in 35 seconds.  If they did it was 10 points per ball, otherwise they got "vaporized"

And if you ever wondered how stupid using a wind tunnel was...........look up any YouTube video on wind tunnel and imagine you had kids going into one and then add they had to multitask with the balls It would be a wonder if no one got hurt.......which of course did happen. Yes, people got hurt plenty of times.

And if you guys thought the Worminator was bad, there was one that was worse, The Abyss.

Wait..........wasn't there another level that sometimes replaced Worminator?

And this was the event that replaced it.

No, I thought the event that replaced it was the swamp from hell

Both actually replaced each other. The Abyss sometimes would be in event 2 or event 4

Oh ok.  Well.......the abyss wouldn't be too bad. I mean, it must be like rock climbing and.............WHAT THE FUCK?! Seriously guys, that looks like something you would see the guys at ninja warrior do. This is a kid's game show, not Boot Camp.  You'd think kids don't want to go to military school........apparently they do if the cryptkeeper and a bunch of sideshow rejects are running it

Yeah, swinging to three rope ladders and answering a bunch of number-based questions.

 And the Abyss where you fell was several feet deep, I believe

That was the gimmick.  I would think it was 5 or so feet below, and you fell onto a big air mattress.

 Still five feet is nothing to sneeze at

No, especially if you land wrong, and you could be seriously hurt.

Yeah.........like we said, this game should have been insanely sued.  At least it was tame with The Swamp From Hell.

Even with a name like that.

Well considering the alternatives, this was tame.  Although the CGI "swamp" was filled with lava.

Yeah.  I think it's time to put an end to this by talking about one of the more confusing end rounds in game show history, Skull Duggery.

Wait........what about the incredible shrinking room, or ghost battle, or endless hallway?

At least those were decent events.

Or vampire's lair where you had to wake a vampire?

Ok, that one we need to talk about. Even though it was only played like twice.

I mean, the other games kind of made sense with objectives, but this one............why the fuck would you wake up a vampire.

Maybe the vampire was Count Chocula.

You better have a chocolate bar then.

Or at the very least a bowl with some milk.

Otherwise, he will kill you for waking his ass up.

No kidding.  The last person that did that became Boo Berry.

Well there was Frankenberry, but Chocula put him back together.

Hahaha.

The only smart one of his group that wasn't stupid enough to do so was Fruit Brute.  Of course he didn't last long for other reasons...........i.e. accidentally pissing on the carpet.

I think we've gotten off topic.  Let's end it before we start wondering where the hell Yummy Mummy went.

He became toilet paper. Don't ask about the details.  Anyway...........we better get to Skull Duggery aka Clusterfuck that makes the other 4 rounds pointless

We'll have to ask Blade about the Yummy Mummy toilet Paper. But yeah, Skull Duggery.

Lets just say that if you won the other 4 events, you could still lose.  So you could bust your ass on the Abyss and still lose thanks to being unable to compete in Skullduggery.

 Right.  What the round was about is having to grab a bunch of skulls and putting them in a bag, while running through various actual parts of the house.  After you run through the house, grabbing skulls, you came out to the graveyard and put all the skulls you got onto a pike. If you topped your pike, you got 50 points.  if neither one did, then most skulls got the 50 points and almost every single time, you win Skull Duggery, you win.

 Sounds like a Vince Russo-esque person worked on this game.  But lets talk about the prizes for competing in this basic and dangerous waste of time.