8 game shows that every kid wanted to be on

In the 80s and early 90s, we didn’t have reality television, we had game shows. And if you were kid during that time you knew that Nickelodeon pretty much ruled the roost when it came to game show awesomeness. If you were a kid back then, you knew all about Purple Parrots, Marc Summers and the fact that you couldn’t find Carmen Sandiego on just any map. It was truly a golden age of children’s competition.

You have to admit that given the chance (even right now) you’d have given your entire summer vacation to be a contestant on one of these shows…or at least part of your Spring Break.

1 GUTS

Do you have it? This may have been the greatest kids action sports show that aired on Nickelodeon or any channel for that matter. Remember when the Time-Warner Cable guy, Mike O’Malley, was the host of this show? And you had a secret crush on the British co-host, Mo. Kids would get all bungee corded-up to compete in awesome games like “Slam Dunk,” where kids would jump off that wall and try to dunk over the other competitors. The games on this show were basically everything you ever wanted to do with bungee chords, but where unable to because local laws and insufficient funds. And then there was the greatest endgame of all-time in the Aggrocrag. A 50-foot-tall mountain of smoke, flashing red activators, falling rocks and confetti– it was everything you ever wanted in your backyard, but didn’t have room for because of that stupid swing set. And if you won, you got a piece of the Aggrocrag! It glowed with power of a contestant’s physical dominance …or possibly radiation. Either way we all wanted a piece of the Aggrocrag.

2 Press Your Luck

This was one of those shows that you caught when you were sick and stayed home from school. The questions they asked were pretty easy (even for a kid) and then they brought out a big flashing board that you got to scream at for 10 minutes. It was the only game where you could press a magic button and get a sailboat. There was yelling and little cartoon men who stole your money and you could slam down on the button as hard as you wanted. This show was tailor made for kids with ADD (like me). No whammies, no whammies, no whammies…

3 Double Dare

Thee game show that tops this list. It’s probably quite difficult to find a lot of people that had cable in the 90s and don’t know about Double Dare. It was arguably the greatest show to ever appear on Nickelodeon. It had trivia, it had slime, it had physical challenges, an obstacle course and if you won you got to go to space camp. It was 30 minutes of fun and every single kid that saw it wanted to be on the show. It even had a host that we thought was the coolest adult in the world, Marc Summers. It may not have been at the top of the list, but admit it– you would have happily gone head first down a slide with a giant hot fudge sundae at the bottom at some point as a kid. Especially if doing so hinged on you going to space camp.

4 Let’s Make a Deal

This one may be a bit dated for some readers, but as a kid, you really couldn’t go wrong with the show’s premise. You get to dress up in your Halloween costume, some old guy would just hand you money and you got to be on TV. You could even bring a sign. As a kid, that was a perfect premise. The simplest, no thinking game show ever; take the money or pick a door. You could literally watch a pirate and his clown wife argue on national television. Then when you thought the situation couldn’t get more comical, behind door #2 is a goat. As a child, this game only had winners, because what adults saw in a goat was a loss, but to you, that just meant you got a new pet. You could lose $200 picking the wrong door, but if there is a pony behind that door– you’d have spent that money on a pony anyway. To kids, there were no losers; only deals.

5 The Price is Right

I think most people can safely say that they have always wanted to be on The Price is Right at some point in their life. This probably went double as a kid. You probably didn’t even really care what that dinette set costs– you want to play Cliffhangers! Or maybe you liked “Hole in One…or Two,” so Bob could show you his putting skills. Well I know for a fact that you wanted to play Plinko, because everybody wanted to play Plinko. And tell me that you didn’t want to spin the big wheel when you were little. A day of Plinko, spinning the Big Wheel, and meeting Bob Barker and his skinny mic on national television in the same day would have been like Christmas for some kids. And then if you won the Showcase Showdown…Best. Day. Ever. The Price had something for everyone (I still want to spin that wheel!) and as a kid, we all dreamed of Roddy yelling “Come on down! You’re the next contestant on The Price is Right!”

6 Legends of the Hidden Temple

This game show is on the list because it was pretty awesome. It was like watching kids in a fairly safe, fairly Nazi-less, Indiana Jones movie. Kids on the show got to be amateur archeologists for a half and hour; finding made-up ancient artifacts and getting a history lessons from a giant talking statue. It would have probably been the coolest game show to be on, but the final challenge on the show called “The Temple Run” was almost impossible to win. Nobody ever seemed to be able to make it through the 12 rooms in the allotted time without running into Temple Guards or getting stuck in one of the more difficult rooms. You could have had 10 minutes in the Temple and still not gotten through the Hidden Temple because it was just that insanely hard. But it still would have been a blast to be on the show because most kids would have enjoyed the fun of archeological games with the prize uncovered being a vacation to Hawaii. Admit it, you’d have been a Silver Snake or Blue Barracuda if you could have.

7 Wild and Crazy Kids

Slip ‘n’ Slide races, Spagettios getting dumped on your best friend’s head, water slide bowling, playing cops and robbers on the set of Miami Vice, Omar Gooding– this show had it all. It was by far the most interesting show on Nickelodeon because you never knew what craziness was going to rule the day. It was messy, it was goofy and it looked like an insane amount of fun. Plus their were celebrities like Chuck Norris, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lisa from Saved by the Bell. How awesome would it have been to slime or pie Chuck Norris without fear of him roundhouse kicking you into space? Answer: Write any amount on this blank check and I will gladly pay it sir. Wild and Crazy Kids looked like the most fun you could have in Nickelodeon orchestrated chaos.

8 Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?

It was basically a video game that they played in real life. Gumshoes that enjoyed history and geography finally had their show; traveling the world, while chasing around a international thief like you were in one of the Pink Panther films.You even got to dress up like a less bumbling version of Peter Sellers. Plus, they had the Rockapella, who came out and sang you the clues. It was like being in a video game, except you got to throw the steel over the wrists of international criminals all over the globe. You got power, people thought you were super smart and you got a slick fedora (possibly a new sleuth jacket as well). It was a video game that you played on TV. Couldn’t go wrong with that premise.

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