Beginners Guide to The Crystal Maze

If you've recently seen Adam from Adam Ruins Everything talking about doing a game show for Nickelodeon that's been on British TV for 30 years, you've thought one of three things:

• I've seen that on YouTube, he's perfect for it.
• Oh cool, never heard of it, but looks pretty good.
• What? 30 years? What is it? What's with the bald guy in animal print? Did I just see the guy from that Ben Stiller alien movie?

Well there's a lot more to it than this, but here's the basics:

The Crystal Maze was first shown in the UK on Channel 4 in 1990. Each hour-long show saw the Maze Master lead a team around a £250,000 set to complete individual tasks which would take 2 to 3 minutes to complete. Success in a game would yield a Crystal, however staying in a room beyond the allocated time limit would result in the player being locked in. The only way to get a player back would be to relinquish a previously won crystal.The team could choose to buy them out straight away or later on when they'd earned a few more crystals. 

In the 90s teams were made up of 6 strangers so buy-outs weren't always guaranteed by the end of the game. The recent UK revival changed this to groups of 5 friends/family so there hasn't been a case where someone wasn't bought out since the 90s. The show was also off-air for 21 years between '95 and '16, dropping viewing figures against very high cost was never going to survive.

The teams would move around the 4 distinctive zones of The Crystal Maze playing 3/4 games per zone. Zones changed over time but it would be one out one in so there's never more than four. 

Aztec

Lots of sand, games constructed with a very rudimentary manmade aesthetic with bamboo featuring prominently. The zone always had 1 room with a water tank to allow for wet games.

Futuristic

Lots of electronics, science and computer themed visual. The sci-fi theme also allows for lasers and higher budget game ideas.

Industrial

Lots of corregated metal, wires, mesh, some mechanical and hazard themes

Medieval

Plenty of stone, similar handmade look that came with some Aztec games. Knights were a recurring theme in some games.

Ocean

Set on a sunken ship, one cell with a large water tank so getting wet was guaranteed. Other games used water and a nautical theme was recurrent in games.

Eastern

Made use of paper fans and lanterns for set dressing. Games featured make use of iconography such as dragons, cats and the Yin Yang symbol.

After the team have played all their allocated games in all 4 zones (fixed at 10 games since the revival), they then move on to The Crystal Dome.

Every crystal earned means 5 seconds in the dome, they must use that time whilst in the dome as a team collecting foil tokens being blown around inside by a system of fans. They aim to collect at least 100 gold tokens posted through a letterbox on the side of the dome in order to win the big prize. Every silver token collected deducts one gold so say they collect 101 gold but 2 silver, that leaves them with 99 and no big prize.

However prize levels have had some variance over the years. 100 gold has always been the mark for a big grand prize, and for the UK version I'm being generous calling it big and grand. The prize was always something underwhelming and average, because the real prize was being on the show, and taking home a commemorative crystal. The very first series included even more underwhelming prizes for a score of 50-99. This was dropped for the rest of the 90s and reintroduced in the revival.

Here's where the big difference beween the UK and US version seems to lie. UK prizes have always been... meh. Museum trips, hot air balloon trips, rafting weekends. I don't think US audiences would appreciate that so they've gone in with $25,000 as a grand prize which I'm guessing will be for 100+. I might also assume there's $10k for 50-99 on offer too.

It's had a range of varied hosts over the years a.k.a. Maze Masters. Starting with Richard O'Brien, creator of Rocky Horror. He was followed by Tenpole Tudor and Sex Pistols rocker Edward Tudor Pole. After Ed came a 21-year hiatus which ended with a one-off charity special hosted by actor and comedian Stephen Merchant. He filmed it whilst also having a role in the movie 'Logan' which required a shaved head so the O'Brien comparisons were inevitable. Bringing up the rear on the list of UK Maze Masters is comedian, writer, actor, director, author, travel host and keen cyclist Richard Ayoade who's had the role since 2017.

Hopefully that should give you some background to Nickelodeon's newest asset but if you've any questions, leave a comment below.