Series by Series - My Favourite Games, Revival Edition

 I fully intended on doing this a few weeks ago while my 90s favourites were still fresh in my mind, but then life got in the way. However, I was watching one of my preferred Twitch streams (If someone's watching game shows on Twitch I'm either lurking or annoying the streamer and chat room inhabitants with a pile of pointless info) and it just got me back to wanting to get this done. 

This list is going to be distinctly shorter as I'm only choosing one game from each round of filming. All4 might have the revived series down as 8 series, but those have been put together as 8 runs from 3 rounds of filming. One round a year in 2017, '18 and '19. This is why most games were seen in multiple series.

So, my 3 favourite games from the revived incarnation of The Crystal Maze. Here we go.

2017

Code Corridor

This isn't what I expected to be picking as my choice for 2017 but it's just such a clever, and marginally evil, idea for a game. The contestant enters the game and is greeted by a door locked with a keypad and a rather basic maths problem on the door. The solution to the problem is the code for the door. Easy. Rinse and repeat a few times to find the crystal. The snag is that the same codes are required to exit, but the sums aren't on the back of the doors. Get the crystal and suddenly the game says "Surprise, I'm a memory game, good luck". It was only played 3 times (that totem/mastermind game got 8 outings, there's no justice), so I thought I might have gone for something with a bit more energy on show or scale, something that we saw a few more times, but no. Turns out, I like simple and devious.

2018

Button Wallrun

Popular with production because it's just good fun, and popular with me because it turns out this very specific thing may be my one true skill in life. Button Wallrun is easy to explain, in a ten-second period, hit all ten buttons dotted around the walls, all needing to be reached with a rope swing. If you haven't hit the subsequent 9 after striking the 1st within 10 seconds, the game resets. When we tested, this is the one I smugly dominated, and I'll take this completely irrelevant hint of smugness to my grave. Did Dylan from Derry Girls outdo my time? I genuinely don't know, but it's bloody close.

Honourable Mention: Swivel Maze. The lighting just looks so good on screen.

2019

Virtual Knightmare

I remember the moment when we first saw this. We'd been asked to nominate someone to go off for a special little task. We sent Neil off into the unknown and he came back later having got changed into one of the contestant outfits. He had sensors on under the outfit and he went off to the cell for the game. The screens come on on the desk in Futuristic and upon seeing that Tron like setting, I just exclaimed "Bloody hell, the budgets gone up hasn't it?". 

Like with my 2018 pick, I'm maybe a little biased with my choice because we got to play it, but look at it! There's thought and work gone into it, it's hi-tech, it's something different and yet familiar to those of us who know game shows, specifically Knightmare. I started giving directions and couldn't help but play it like a classic TCM game. "One step forward, one step forward, sidestep left, half a step forward". Then we got to the point Neil had to grab a hammer and it just wasn't working (the exact reason they test these before the cameras are on) "Reach out, reach out, it's not working. Quick, dance man, DANCE!" and we got a dancing wireframe Neil.

To see which 90's games I called my favourites: here you go