Right, just a quickie this morning:
- One of our favourite writers Ellie Gibson has written a feature on an insider’s history of everyone’s favourite teatime show Gamesmaster . I’ve not read it yet (I look forward to reading it later), but on previous form it will be very entertaining. Edit: She was also responsible for the highly entertaining piece on Knightmare for Gameological a little while ago.
- Tonight’s the night! The night Exit starts on SyFy US. We’re really pulling for it, because it will be a crushing disappointment if it’s rubbish. Hopefully it will be “available” tomorrow. It is of course the American adaptation of top Japanese show Dasshutsu Game DERO! If you watch it, please feel free to talk about it although if you could try avoid spoilers of results that would be grand.
- And if you’ve ever wanted to watch old episodes of The Mole in Polish (where it was called Agent) with English subtitles then hurrah! You can.
- Your Face Sounds Familiar records live at Elstree on Saturday nights June 29th until August 3rd. Tickets via SRO.
That article is really good by the way. Find out what REALLY happened on that GamesMaster Christmas Quiz, and find out what Dave “The Games Animal” Perry is up to now.
Also, never occured to me that Top Gear these days is effectively the same show.
Looks fantastic! Can’t wait to read it in full later.
Dave Perry saw GamesMaster as HIS baby? Really?
GamesMaster was a very fondly-remembered show for me when I was growing up. I loved seeing all the different challenges on all sorts of games, and seeing people asking for help in the Consoletation Zone. It’s great that you can see every episode of the show on YouTube now so future generations can see it.
I think you’ll be pleased enough with Exit- it doesn’t stray from the original format too much..
I just watched the premiere of Exit, and I was pleasantly surprised to find out it’s actually good. I went in fully expecting the worst, including gratuitous stalling and obnoxious contestants. But the pacing is about the same as the original. Several of the contestants seem to have been picked for their weird hairstyles and they’re a bit hammy, but they’re tolerable, about on par with The Bank Job. And the show does cut to confession cam quite a lot, but they’re short and to the point, unlike, well, every other American show premiering in the last 5 years.
I had never heard of Curt Doussett before this, but he makes for a good host. He banters with the players just like the original, although his style is a bit more deadpan snarky and less goofy, but it works.
I do wish they could’ve kept the Block Word Quiz in the Beam Room and the more puzzle-y elements in the Ceiling Room, though. Also the Kanji Illustration Quiz, although that might not have translated well.
One other really nitpicky thing that kinda bugs me is that the rooms flashing red seem to have been done in post-production and looks jarringly fake. It also feels kinda weird how they randomly switch between using the full 16:9 screen and squishing everything into the middle so the sides can be cut off for 4:3. But those are minor details.
Overall, I give it a good, solid B+, and I definitely plan on watching it in the next few weeks.
Exit was fairly good, and against my expectations I only wanted to punch one of the teams in their loud, obnoxious faces. It feels like the production team actually took a look at the Japanese show when making this, and tried to make it feel at least a bit like it.
I wasn’t fan of Curt. All of his comment felt stilted and prepared, and none of them were particularly funny in the first place.
I was rather disappointed that, for the most part, the fun, clever puzzles were replaced with basic pop-culture trivia, and the puzzles that remained were either basic “say-what-you-see” puzzles or about celebrities.
The previews before the breaks were painfully spoiler-y. It was clear what team would win before round three even started, and while I hoped for the other team’s demise anyway, I really don’t understand why they need to spoil anything in the first place.
Also, I think it’s obvious in the 2nd round that each team did the room individually, and they edited it to make it look like they were all doing the room at the same time…so I wouldn’t be shocked to see that round being a “photo finish” almost every time..
I cannot find Exit anywhere on the interweb, anyone got any links? If I’m not really allowed to ask please do delete this.
Ha ha, it’s fine.
I’m surprised it’s not up on the SyFy site yet. I will have a proper look when I get in later.
Goodo, wasn’t sure if that sort of thing was treated as some kind of underground fight club that everyone knows about, but can’t talk about. I’ve said too much already.
I’ve been having a good rummage and can’t find anything, even the short promo clips on Syfy’s site are helpfully geoblocked.
It’s no real secret that I pay for a good VPN with Vypr to get round most geoblocking, free options are available. I’ve also got USENET access, but I’m afraid you’re on your own with that.
Can’t find a decent link nowhere either, I am also surprised that it is not up at the SyFy site…
When will any of the ratings come out?
This link appears to be working for the time being:
http://vidbull.com/qdtr92ka9d8j.html
MUCH APPRECIATED, thanks.
Be aware, lots of pop-uppy stuff on that link, so keep your wits about you.
Thanks for that disclaimer, I have numerous popup and tracking blockers installed on my browser so I don’t see them but I hope the site doesn’t give any users any computer nasties.
Alright, liked this a lot but it’s not quite truly great. Basically think they’ve done the format justice.
I thought it was a big shame there was only one puzzle type in the beam room, would have preferred a different idea to just making it more parts.
Presumably the freeze room is the competitive version of the Dero! timebomb. Fine.
Didn’t like the abandoned mine, I thought it was pretty tedious to be honest, could really do with the against the clock element of the original I think, what we’ve got is not especially tense with clues that aren’t especially useful. Intrigued as to how this works as a production, though.
The Cabin looked quite nice, and I quite enjoyed the fireplace tipping the logs out. However I thought the straight trivia compares poorly with the more interesting puzzly original. Also saying they’ve got to complete three rounds of questions when it’s clearly four is odd.
I thought the host was OK, a bit try hard with the occasional great comment.
Not perfect then, but definitely something I hope to watch more of.
EXIT left me with a fair-to-middling feeling.
I’ve never watched the Japanese original of this show. I cannot speak Japanese, so a lot of it would be lost on me.
It struck me that this show tries to mix quiz elements with stunt-show elements, and does not do a bad job of it.
The quiz elements are mostly pop trivia, such as should be known by the contestants, who are all young and agile folks right out of the Orlando branch of Central Casting.
The puzzles could be seen as derivative. However, as the target audience has probably never even heard of “Catch Phrase” or “Fort Boyard” or “The Crystal Maze”, these puzzle games might seem new to them.
Host tried some banter with the contestants, but it did not seem natural. He’s no Bradley Walsh–just an ordinary Game Show Host with not a hair out of place.
May watch it again, and may tout it to others.
Exit: I was hoping for more and am not sure I’ll be bothering with future episodes unless specifically prompted. It reminded me of how wisely done The Crystal Maze was, and felt me with a worrying feeling about how badly an attempt to make The Crystal Maze “extreme” (with current US commercial sensibilities: multiple teams, cash prize…) might turn out, even getting things wrong that Scavengers did not get wrong. The first three games were *hand-wave-y* all right but the endgame had a very anticlimactic conclusion. If the name of the show is Exit, surely the goal is to *exit* within ten minutes, not to “solve all the puzzles”?
One of the things some shows take pains to consider is the narrative issue of why a time limit might exist; if you’re going to be a show with fake deaths in the first three rounds then there’s no reason not to really use your fake death mechanism in the endgame as well – I want to see the falling wall crush all the way to the floor, or at least within the thickness of the contestants, bodies, when the clock reaches 0:00, so either there is the satisfying conclusion of someone performing the exit or another fake death, and an actual reason *to* perform the exit.
I really did not like the show’s atmosphere. It felt uncomfortable viewing; everyone thought they were it and the razzing not just between host and teams (no better than Anne Robinson at her clunkiest) but between teams and teams and even between team members and team members did not appeal. The sense of “we’re going to do nasty things to the contestants just because we can” does not sit well with me, even though the blasts of freezing air were as mild as it gets.
The puzzles were… better than their counterparts on Britain’s Brainiest, but that’s the best thing I can say about them. There wasn’t a great deal of wit to them, and more repetition of themes even within the same show than I’d have liked.
Not my cup of tea – and I watched this last night, so it’s not just a case of me getting out the wrong side of bed this morning!
Exit was fairly enjoyable but it wasn’t without its flaws. The end game just didn’t fit with the rest of the programme and of course the 9’55” is of play time was edited down ridiculously. Of course there have been plenty of US shows that have vastly improved with episode two.
I didn’t mind the host and I felt he delivered his cutting comments about the players in a decently good hearted manner. I’m not sure I like him getting involved in the questioning however, I’d rather that were left to the disembodied voice.
The beam room was good and I had no objection at all to the puzzle chosen, but the subsequent rooms just felt like they had too much trivia. The final game was basically two rounds of wipeout, a game of play your cards right and a quiz. This left me a bit disappointed after ‘Estate of Panic’ showed what a shrinking room could be at its best.
I’ll give it another go, but I think I’d prefer some friendly translator to do a few more episodes of the original.
I’m desperately hoping the hidden picture round from the Japanese beam room makes an appearance at some point as that was my fave, but I think the point is whilst the Japanese original dances between visual and mental puzzles and trivia, US producers seem a bit scared to leave the pop culture Q and A comfort zone. Assuming the final games are going to be either the lowering ceiling or the water-filling room every week it feels a shame they have the Room Full of Things Element and doesn’t really do anything clever with it.
I have no real problem with show’s aesthetic, there was no chance it was going to be anything other than mainly dark brown.
Like I said, I don’t mind the host – the show actually has some wit and humour to it, but it’s out and out arch rather than the laugh-a-minute Japanese version. I’d expect a UK version to sit somewhere between the two.
I think on the whole the show gets more right than gets wrong, and there’s nothing there that couldn’t be cheaply improved upon in a subsequent version.
I’m looking forward to seeing the US equivilent of the Stone Monster next week.
It takes 15 wrong guesses in the sand room before you go under.
Also, I wonder what’s been edited out here – check out the guy towards the end of the end game – a mysterious screwdriver appears to have turned up. Wonder what that’s about?
Interesting comment about American producers not wanting to leave the “comfort zone” of pop-culture-trivia questions. That may well be true, and it might have a bearing on the upcoming US version of “The Chase”.
One of the pleasures of watching the UK version of “The Chase” is that the questions can come from “all over the map”. In a Cashbuilder or Final Chase round, you can have a question about Kim Kardashian, then three seconds later “What’s the square root of 81?”. The “serious” questions thus seems to come out of Left Field (as we Yanks say).
As it’s ITV that are producing the US version of “The Chase”< I'd almost expect them to do this sort of thing over here. Let's hope that they do, and refrain from "dumbing down" the questions.
Simply put: if they dumb down the questions, nobody will win. Don’t forget, Mark Labbett’s going to be chasing, and he won’t be holding back. At least I hope not.
(of course, they could easily dumb down the questions until the final chase, then on Mark’s half of that give him tougher ones, but that would seem a little less fair)
My sister, who has watched both DERO and TORE with me, absolutely adored this. She said that she loved it just because she could actually understand it and play along, but her tastes in television are normally fairly representative of the American public. I could see this being a big success for Syfy, since it’s certainly better than Total Blackout.
I watched episode 2 of Exit, and I like how they used the Celebrity Face Quarter Quiz in the Beam Room, how they handled the Shredder (Monster) Room, and the fact that at least one of the puzzles in the final Water Room was definitely to the level of DERO-style puzzles 🙂