#85: Legends - The Golden Cricket Cage
Of Khan Temple Run
Co-Third Place Winner In The Create An Induction Contest

Nickelodeon: (Late 1993)

Text by Andrew Mora

So for anyone who doesn’t know what “Legends of the Hidden Temple” is, let’s give you a brief overview. It’s essentially a game show created for Nickelodeon – one of the many that had their fair share of success – where six teams of two contestants each tackle obstacle courses, answer some (pseudo-)historical trivia questions, and engage in a series of physical challenges, eliminating other teams and earning “pendants” in order to earn the right to compete in final challenge of the show: the titular Temple guarded by Olmec, a talking stone face. The pendants act as extra lives for players that get attacked by hidden Temple Guards as they traverse through a series of rooms. The ultimate goal is to find a treasure located in one of the rooms and bring it back out the way came within three minutes.

 

 

Now, for the folks at home watching the show this challenge looks ridiculously easy. Just a series of puzzles that a two-year-old could figure out, and it’s being tackled by nerdy kids that look like they should be in middle school. So you’d think winning that trip to Space Camp looks like a freakin’ breeze, right?

 

WRONG.

 

You’d be surprised at how many of these braniac kids utterly fail at getting more than four rooms into the temple without getting lost! And it’s not like their puzzles are hard. Sometimes their puzzle is just to sit down! They make their own puzzles up, like FINDING THE DOOR.

 

 

Take for example the challenge of obtaining “The Golden Cricket Cage of Khan”. … They’ll make anything out of gold it seems.

 

 

The Silver Snakes team of Tia and Jon has only managed to earn one-and-a-half pendants – which in the show basically amounts to having only one, but whatever. So Jon goes in first with his whole pendant, and tackles the Cave of Size. First of all, how can someone NOT see the giant buttons that they use to open the doors that lead out of a surprisingly well-lit cave? He spends 30 seconds in the cave, before eventually working his way out, crawling into the Pit of Despair, then eventually making his way into the Throne Room.

 

 

BOO! Temple Guard, right off the bat to take his pendant. Lucky choice that.

 

Now I can understand being startled like that could throw off your game a bit. But the kid looks smart enough that the door that you unlike isn’t the DOOR YOU CAME IN THROUGH. And that you’re not making progress going BACK TO THE ENTRANCE OF THE TEMPLE.

 

 

So he wastes about half of the time they’re given going into the temple, going back out of the temple, and then going back in again before he gets taken out of the game by a Temple Guard… the next room over. Yeah, he finally figures out the door opened was above him, and in the Heart Room above, BOO! Another temple guard.

 

So now it’s Tia’s turn to tackle the Temple. So, after watching her partner’s mistakes and having the chance to get a good look at the Temple’s layout, you think that she’d have an effective plan of attack.

 

… Eh-heh.

 

 

She leisurely wanders through the temple, tries to unlock the unlocked door in the Throne Room, and presses every single button in the Heart Room to get out – including a door that led her back out to the Pit of Despair - without realizing that the door above her leading to the Observatory is open.

 

 

Way to go, Tia. Way to earn that remote control car. 


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