Andrew Newton plays a selection of retro video games based on classic 1980s UK TV game shows…
Back in the 80s the four television channels (yes, we only had four channels) all loved their light entertainment. Every night of the week they came up with a variety of comedies, variety shows and game shows in order to attract an audience. It was the latter type of programme that gained a lot of interest by game developers with gamers having a good selection to enjoy on their home computers. Here, we will look at a few of those games based on the game shows we loved.
Bob’s Full House – Domark/ TV Games
Some of the imaginary prizes that players were able to win in the Spectrum version
Starting in 1984, Bob’s Full House was a Saturday evening quiz hosted by the wonderful actor and comedian Bob Monkhouse. The game itself was a general knowledge quiz with a bingo theme and split into three rounds. Four contestants would have a unique bingo card display with the objective of answering the questions to light one of their numbers, whoever lit up all their numbers first won the game and would go onto the bonus round. The bonus round, or Golden Card Game as it was called, required the contestant to answer 15 questions in 60 seconds. If they uncovered all the letters spelling out a holiday destination they would win the holiday and some spending money (in the game’s inlay they state that prizes can’t really be won, more than likely done to avoid some smart-arse contacting them for holiday).
Bob grimaces at the scariest looking contestants in the Commodore 64 version of the game.
The computer game (yes, that’s what we would call them) was released for the Spectrum, C64, Amstrad and BBC Micro and players got a pretty faithful recreation of the TV show. The game could be played solo or get a few mates round and have a chuckle as you beat them intellectually. To be honest, playing with mates was by far the better option due to the fact it was very easy to beat the computer opponents.
The Bob’s Full House game was quite good looking with animated (although simply drawn) contestants and a very recognisable caricature of Mr Monkhouse, all very nicely animated with the smiles and eyebrow wiggles of the great man himself.
Though the Bob’s Full House game was a faithful recreation that is wonderfully presented it was let down by too few questions, you could probably see the majority repeated within an hour’s play, which is a shame. Despite this, it did have reasonable scores by the majority of reviewers of the time.
Bullseye – Macsen
This is the mascot ‘Bully’ who was referred to many times through animations and catchphrases. This little fella would also be a souvenir for all contestants. Screenshot from the Acorn Electron version of the game.
“You can’t beat a bit of Bully!”, “You win nothing but your BFH – Bus Fare Home”, “Let’s have a look at what you could have won” and “Super, Smashing, Great”, were all catchphrases viewers regularly enjoyed coming from Bullseye’s host Jim Bowen between 1981 and 1995. The show was particularly interesting for darts fans with its contestants mainly being those who were good at darts (or at least thought they were) and a friend who would answer questions.
Each episode would see three pairs of contestants compete for cash and prizes through three rounds. The first round had a dartboard with 10 categories with each representing a different subject, books, places, history etc., the non-dart player would choose a category and the dart player would have to get it, this would result in a question and if both achieved what they needed to resulted in cash prizes. The second round was a standard dartboard with the objective for the dart player to score higher than the others to win control of the question and the cash.
Finally, it was time for Bully’s Prize Board, and the pair that had won the most money would throw 9 darts (with 3 thrown by the non-darts player) at a board divided into 8 red and 8 black sections. Getting a dart in the red would win a prize which would range from kitchen utensils to TV sets (I think there may have been a Spectrum 128 as a prize once). Once this was completed old Jim would then give them a choice of gambling their points and money on a Bully’s Star Prize, if they gambled and scored the required 101 with 6 darts then they would keep their prizes and the Star Prize, which very often seemed to be a speedboat. If they didn’t beat the target it was the dreaded “BFH” catchphrase.
A clearly stoned Bully invites players to step on up to the oche in the BBC Micro version.
Bullseye was hugely successful and publisher Macsen released it on the majority of home computers at the time, the Acorn Electron, Acorn BBC, Spectrum, Amstrad and the Commodore 64, but it didn’t get the huge review scores they were probably hoping for. The game was strictly 2 players only, there was no AI player although you could play against yourself and have double the ummm fun. Each match was divided into three rounds with each sticking very closely to the show but unlike Bob’s Full House there wasn’t even a trace of an imaginary prize, just points. Whichever player won at the end would get a chance to gamble for Bully’s Star Prize, but the nail biting tension just wasn’t there as to win just meant double points and to lose meant losing half the points collected.
Although the gameplay lacked the excitement of the TV show, Macsen didn’t do too bad on the presentation. You can’t go far wrong in doing a dartboard on the old 8-bit systems but it was a very nicely drawn Bully who would be the host getting the player to the oche. Players would control a disembodied hand holding a dart and even this looked nice.
Review scores for Bullseye were all over the place with some magazines giving it an unfair 25% all the way up to 80%. Sure, there wasn’t the same tension of the gamble and the dart wouldn’t always hit where you aimed it, but it looked good, the use of the mascot rather than Jim’s face was a good move and best of all, there were multiple sets of questions you could load up meaning very few repeats.
Blockbusters – TV Games/Domark
Blockbusters is possibly one of the most famous game shows of the 80s and 90s and there’s even been another series more recently with Dara O’Briain (I noticed when I was flicking through the channels the other day). Hosted by actor and radio presenter Bob Holness (no he didn’t do the saxophone solo in Baker Street but he did play Bond in a radio version of Moonraker), this game show was very popular with teen audiences due to contestants being sixth form college students, possibly university students.
In the show, there would be one contestant up against two with the action taking place on a board made up of 20 hexagons with letters on them. Contestants would have to choose letters to get a question whose answer began with that letter to claim that hexagon and get from one end of the board to the other. Solo contestants would potentially have to answer a shorter amount of questions to draw a line from top to bottom with the duo going left to right. It became expected for contestants to say “I’ll have a F please Bob” and much hilarity ensued when one contestant eventually said “I’ll have a P please Bob” (P as in pee meaning to urinate). It would also become the in thing to take a toy mascot with them which Bob would chat about. Whoever won the round would go on to do the Gold Run, which would earn a modest cash prize. All contestants would win a dictionary and a sweatshirt with Blockbusters emblazoned across it.
Blockbusters was extremely popular and had many boardgames made for it over its long run, it also happened to have three computer games made for it, the first two by Macsen in 1984 with one focusing on the main game and a separate one based on the Gold Run section, and then a release from TV Games in 1988 (which is the one we are looking at here), which was released on Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad and the BBC Micro .
The Amstrad CPC version of Blockbusters looks great but very red
In TV Games’ Blockbusters, the screen is set up in the same hexagonal display as the show with players able to compete against the computer or another player. In the right of the screen on all but the BBC Micro is a little digitised image of Bob Holness that would animate as the questions were asked. Out of all the versions, I personally think that the Amstrad CPC version looks the nicest as the thick lines around the hexagons of the C64 and Spectrum versions looks off, and it still has the little Bob Holness on it, unlike the BBC Micro.
The game stays very faithful to the TV show with players having to win the best of three rounds and then going up against the Gold Run and making it across the board in a mere 45 seconds. Combined with a hearty selection of questions, Blockbusters was one of the best quiz games out there.
Play Your Cards Right – Britannia Software
A caricature of Bruce Forsyth smiles at us like a used car salesman trying to sell us a dodgy motor. Sinclair Spectrum
Hosted by Bruce Forsyth, Play Your Cards Right ran from 1980 for 7 wonderful entertaining years and, like Bullseye, earned some memorable catchphrases including starting each episode off with saying to the audience “It’s nice to see you, to see you…”, to which the audience would holler back “nice!” and the less politically correct “And here they are, they’re so appealing, OK dollies do your dealing.” as a sign for the unnamed female staff members to put the large cards on the wall.
The game had two married couples competing to get across their row of five cards before the other, questions were based on surveys of 100 people such as “We asked 100 people in Italy: ‘Do you think politicians are basically honest?’ How many said yes?”. The couple the question was aimed at would be able to say how many they thought with the opponents just saying whether they thought the number should be higher or lower. Whoever answered the question more closely would then get to turn over their cards one at a time, stating whether they thought the following card would be higher or lower than the current one. As the whole game show was based on probability and chance each turn of the card was a gamble. Whoever won the round would get the chance to gamble accumulated points on a separate board.
A typical game on the C64. Freezing (like a save point) at 9 was a wise decision on John’s part.
The Play Your Cards Right game was also a very faithful conversion with the screen set up just like in the show. The questions asked could also be quite amusing, with some poking fun at gender stereotypes of the time such as “How many married men kept their earnings secret from their wife” and “How many women have ever found a phone number in their husband’s pocket when doing the washing”.
The game took place over 3 screens, one for the question and a space to answer your guess, the next with the row of cards (see above) and the final screen which was the points gambling game (see below). In the show points meant prizes (another of its catchphrases) but in the game they are obviously just points. Annoyingly, if the computer opponent won they would still get to have a go at this section so we would have to wait while the old AI had a think.
The points gambling section for the winning player on the Spectrum.
Despite keeping strongly to the show and the graphics and music being more than competent, the game didn’t score highly from the critics, with Crash magazine giving the Spectrum version just 38%. Maybe the lack of Bruce Forsyth’s charm and interaction with the contestants and audience was the reason for these poor scores.
Every Second Counts – TV Games/ Domark
Which of these glamorous Amstrad CPC contestants will you choose?
Every Second Counts was a creation of the old BBC (TV broadcaster not the Micro) hosted by the 80’s favourite magician, Paul Daniels. Each week saw three couples compete to win seconds by answering questions with 2 seconds per correct answer being awarded in the first half and 4 in the second half. The game was split with a bonus round that gave each couple 10 seconds to answer a question and they would get the time remaining added onto their score.
The couple that won would be able to use the time they had earned throughout the game to answer questions and progress up through 4 prize levels with the fourth level being the best prizes. Completing all four levels within the gathered time would earn them the first and fourth level prizes, if time ran out they would earn the first level and highest completed level prizes.
In the game, there’s not a trace of Paul Daniels, not a lot! Now, some of you may be saying that’s a good thing but a cheeky like caricature of him on the title screen would have been magic.
When starting the game, players would get to choose from a collection of characters to represent them and then the process of answering questions in a pub trivia quiz fashion would begin. Seconds would mount up by correctly answering whether something was true or false or what category the answer was. There was a great variety of questions that could be answered, and multiple blocks of more questions on the cassette tape that could be loaded up. Each game could have 3 players making it a great trivia quiz game to play with your pals when they came round (no online multiplayer back then).
John and Joan move onto the final round with 32 seconds. Will they be able to answer successfully what computer this screenshot came from?
Many of the questions were pretty easy to answer, especially on the multiple choice style questions and if you didn’t know the answer then you were always able to stare at your gormless would-be avatar as they blinked and winked back at you gormlessly.
Although an attractive looking game, Every Second Counts didn’t do anywhere as well as Blockbusters. Scores were average at best but that may be because the game show itself was never a hugely popular one. In fact out of all those covered in this article, this was possibly the lowest rating one, that’s not to say it wasn’t good to watch, it got its own game after all, but it was shown on a Saturday night, when competition between the channels was the most intense.
This was a mere slice of computer games made based on TV game shows, there’s plenty more out there for those interested in the genre ranging from A Question of Sport to Mike Read’s Pop Quiz. The popularity of this genre has stretched on through the years with the likes of Who Wants to be a Millionaire and The Weakest Link. But there was something a lot more likable about the 80s game shows, their simplicity and charm, their hosts who roused up the audience rather than how they ignore them today.
I may take a look at more in the future but for now the game show category on my emulators is getting put to rest, I don’t think my brain could take anymore questions.
Do you remember any of these games? Are there any other titles worthy of a spot on the list? Be sure to let us know on our social channels @FlickeringMyth…
Andrew Newton
