A 100+ gold winner should be a treat, a rarity, there shouldn't be nearly half a series of winners. People are clearly winning too many games and earning too much time. A little conversation I had the other night started at frogs and ended up at games that were never won and as such, here's the '90s games that were never won, and should be looked at so as to stop people winning quite so often. I'm not including any of those one-off games made for a kid's Christmas Special as it's a lot easier to be an unbeaten game if only one small person has a go.
Series 1 - 1990
Nuke Defusing - A nice simple two minute game sharing a room with a nuclear bomb. It needed defusing by connecting the correct coloured wire to the associated image on the wall. For example connecting the YELLOW wire to a picture of some PAGES, or a GREEN wire to some FINGERS. The trouble comes in knowing what word was meant to be shown by the image, while it was meant to represent fingers, it's clearly a picture of a hand. With a two minute time limit, there was an explosion every time. Or the lights were turned up. Same thing.
Assemble the Shape - A wooden shape puzzle on a much larger, and heavier, scale.
Balls on Holes - Rolling some ball bearings around in a capsule trying to get four to stop in small holes on the base. Balls moving too quickly over holes that were perhaps a bit too small proved too difficult.
Word Totem - In theory a simple game, spelling out words removing a letter each time to create a new word.
Exclude the Symbol - It was only played once, possibly because it was just a confusing game with little entertainment value. The player had to figure out which puzzle pieces went in which column, and why, and it mostly just saw the player looking at the layout and just not getting it.
Crystal Slide Puzzle - One of those puzzles we all got in party bags as kids, just bigger.
Series 2 - 1991
Shield Boxes - Using the designs on the wall, identify a specified box, unlock it, take the key from it, identify the next box. Rinse and repeat a few times until you find the key that unlocks the crystal. Unfortunately there was just never enough time to get through every step.
Magnet Crane - Manoeuvre a crane with an electromagnet on the end of it to pick up weights to release the crystal, which also needed retrieving with the magnet. It was very awkward to get the swinging magnet to stop exactly on the magnetic spots required, even more so on the tiny target that was the crystal.
Frog's Stepping Stones - Figure out a sequence combining numbers and words. For example, start on the stone "Dwarves -3" so "seven dwarves", lose three gives you four. Looking for something associated with four. You could well manage to figure out "poster" as in a four poster bed. But how many would think of "Just Men" as in the 1939 film "The Four Just Men".
Magnet Maze - Looks simple at first glance, roll some large ball bearings through a very basic looking maze. Trouble is some hidden strong magnets under the surface. And when a ball gets stuck on a magnet it creates a larger hazard as other balls get stuck together.
Magic Hexagram - Roll some balls around a number puzzle, making each line of balls add up to a magic number. Trouble was if the wrong numbered ball rolled into the wrong divot, it wasn't getting out easily.
Maths Pyramid - Working out some maths problems, but with every number substituted with a symbol. Line up all the right solutions on the pyramid akin to a combination lock and win. A bit complicated within the time limit.
Megabytes - I think this one is a case of pressure getting the best of people. Easy to figure out at home, it's just a maths sequence which requires filling in the blanks. And rembering to plug it in at the end.
Rotating Maze - A large maze with some sliding panels needs manipulating on the wall. A bit fidgety at parts trying to get the crystal through small holes in the sliding panels, and perhaps a bit of a lengthy maze to complete in 3 minutes.
Water Sacks - Archery target shooting, aiming for sacks full of water. Puncturing enough to outweigh a counterbalance and release the crystal. Nobody could hit enough targets.
Cable Connect - 12 images need linking up in a continuous sequence. Similar to the nuclear bomb defusing, it was difficult to decide which word was meant to be represented by the image.
Double Maze - Two mazes in one cell, find the key in one to unlock the next, then find the key in the next to unlock the crystal. A game redone in a slightly different layout in the next series.
Series 3 - 1992
Route the Coloured Wires - A familiar puzzle for mobile games, join up coloured points without crossing paths.
Aztec Quest - A five part puzzle requiring understanding instructions, figuring out exactly where to dig, and not tripping over the string grid marking out steps. A bit too much to be done in the time limit without mistakes.
Series 4 - 1993
Access Codes - More maths, this time working out fractions, percentages and decimals to arrive at a common answer.
Time Zones - Maths again, and something that should be easy in theory. Working out the times in different cities with all the information given to you. However if you make an error then all subsequent working out can go wrong.
No Consecutives - A logic puzzle, place each piece on the grid so that no consecutives are placed adjacent to one another. Easy if you know how to start, but easy to get stuck and stay stuck. Clue: start with 1&8/A&H, they only have one consecutive each.
Extinguish All The Lights - A row of illuminated words, 15 buttons. 10 turn them off, 5 turn them back on. The aim is to find the 10 that turn off lights without turning them back on.
Winch Crane - A three/four stage game where the fiddly job of retriving keys using a pole and unlocking items from a chain proved time consuming. Even more so if the wrong key is retrived adding to the workload.
Dice Triangle - In theory a simple game, reverse the position of the 6 numbered pieces by manoveuring them around the apparatus. However it proved difficult in practice, knowing which pieces to move where.
Trivia Fan - Another game thats easy in theory, a trivia machine that dispenses coins for correct answers. The trick was knowing what the coins were for, and then why they powered a fan. The time limit meant there wasn't much room for error.
Y Fronts - A word game made tricky with a no conferring rule. Contestants had to spin the drums to match each word with a prefacing letter (e.g. Y Fronts, U Bend). Whilst they made have figured that part out, without any help it was easy to miss the word that was then arranged across the top of the drums to say where the crystal was.
Series 5 - 1994
Swap Ships - Similar in theory to Dice Triangle, move the pieces around the apparatus so that they switch starting positions. A basic puzzle that can be very tricky if you simply don't know how to do it.
Making Faces - Recreate the faces using the sliding pieces to reveal the combinations to some locks. There was a few faces to get through and if the wrong, similar looking, facial feature was used, time would be lost trying to undo a lock.
Word Maze - A wooden maze, four words at each side. Move the last letter from each word on the left to create four new words on the right. A good looking game, the knack was the fact that moving the letters blocks the way for the others, and each letter could fit in more than one final position.
Water Pipes - Another good looking game on camera, water shooting around, a very active game for the contestant as they could only use one coloured valve wheel at a time. Going back and forth through the water for the valves, usually having to get the same wheel more than once after divering the water the wrong way. Difficult in the time limit.
Planet Orbits - One I feel was a bit out of place in Medieval, anything planet related sure would fit somewhere else. Not too tricky, but a very limited supply of each planet could lead to the game quickly becoming unwinnable. You can't win a game if you haven't got the balls for it.
Series 6 - 1995
Fishing Maze - A three dimensional maze involving moving the crystal back and forth through a maze on the end of a fishing line of sorts, but also up and down over bars underneath the maze.
Key Cutting - A tricky and time consuming case of trial and error. Build a key by rearranging the teeth to raise some grooves to the right height to remove the crystal. Many different possible posiutions and combinations simply made this too time consuming to anyone not working it out properly.
All pictures taken from http://crystalmaze.marcgerrish.com/
If you ever want stats and details on the original '90s series, that's where you want to be looking.
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