For a Chance to Win Big Money!

So many television shows from yesteryear have been reinvented (Password, Press Your Luck, Family Feud), but there are so many game show gems from the past that I personally want to see again. I am an avid fan of the genre, and while some of these titles are obscure, I think they deserve some air time again. Give them a dark blue set with a visible metallic structure and let Regis Philbin host. I guarantee mad ratings.

Match Game: Why this one hasn't been redone is beyond me. Everyone loves washed up celebrities and suggestive and bawdy game show innuendo. For the uninitiated, a contestant would be given a statement with a word missing, and they would have fill in the blank and try to match that word with words written by six celebrity panelists. And the sentences would usually be wildly suggestive. For instance, "Violent Velma is so violent..." (the audience would yell "How violent is she?") "She's so violent that every night before bed she always wants to ______ her husband." The contestant would then give a nice family-friendly answer like "hit," but everyone got the joke. (another example: "Did you catch a glimpse of that woman on the street corner? She has the world's biggest _______.") And the best part of the show is that the celebrities simply screw off the entire time. There's really very little strategy involved, and the D-list celebrities they found were usually very happy to ham it up for the camera. I'm sure today a panel of Tim Curry, William Shatner, Brian Dennehy, and Kathy Griffin would work their magic. Hell, if Charles Nelson Reilly and Nipsey Russell weren't already dead, they'd be right there on day one.

Tic Tac Dough: I remember watching this game religiously, but I don't remember a lot of the rules. It's basically Tic Tac Toe, but in order to put an X or an O on the board, you have to answer some ridiculous trivia question. I imagine half its popularity was due to its incredibly groan-inducing pun of a title, but TV shows have succeeded with less. Look at Deal or No Deal.

Bumper Stumpers: I would be AMAZED if anyone else remembers this show. Contestants had to decypher vanity plates in various puzzle formats. (SK8BDR = Skateboarder for instance). I doubt this would succeed today, but I love odd word games, and this is my fantasy list, so I'm including it.

Double Dare: On the other hand, here's one that just about anyone who watched Nickelodeon at all during the 80s and early 90s remembers fondly. Back then this was relegated to a startup children's network on cable TV, but look what passes for Prime Time network television now. The Physical Challenges and ending obstacle course could be amped up, and you could call the whole thing Double Dare Extreme (or X-Treme for that added punch).

Name That Tune: This is another one that would never take off today, and honestly I don't know how anyone greenlit the program originally. This show was probably like hardcore porn for music nerds. I mostly remember the final round where the host would give some clue about a song, and the contestants would bid on how many notes it would take them to guess it. Some macho asshole typically bid it down to one note, though that was no guarantee that he or she would get it right. This show was balls hard... like Jeopardy for music majors. I'm not sure why my musically-ignorant five-year-old self became fascinated by the show, but in retrospect, perhaps it foreshadowed my later predilection for karaoke.

Classic Concentration: Like the classic children's game concentration but on TV. Match cards, reveal picture, solve picture riddle. This one used to be on back-to-back with Family Feud in the 80s, and it was hosted by Alex Trebek (back when he had his sweet Dago moustache). I've found a whole cache of episodes on YouTube, and there's much hilarity to be had in mocking the contestants for their repeated inability to remember the cards.

$100,000 Pyramid: This is the one I want the most. I used to take my lunch at varying times throughout the day until I found out that $100,000 Pyramid reruns aired at 1:00 every afternoon on the Game Show Network. I wonder if my boss ever considers why my lunch schedule has become so much more regular lately. As opposed to the Match Game, the celebrities on this show had bring their A-game. The normal rounds aren't all that difficult (though you do have to think fast), but the Winner's Circle must be like the ninth circle of hell if you're giving clues. I've seen categories like "Things that are Horizontal," "Vague Things," and "Things that are Cherished." I realize having Dick Clark host it today would lead to all sorts of unintentional and wildly inappropriate hilarity, but he took that game so seriously you would have thought he was proctoring the SATs. There was a brief attempt to bring it back with Donny Osmond about ten years back, but it flopped. I want a big one-hour sumbitch where they up the ante to a million dollars and take the categories to extremes. Let's see them get "Existential Things" or "Parts of a Metafictional Novel."

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"Forgetful Freddy was so forgetful.... (How forgetful was he??)... he was so forgetful that every time he tried to remember someone's name, he drew a blank."