Jungle Run: Playing Games In Themed Areas To Obtain Items Worth Time For The Final Game, Familiar?

Warning: The following contains mentions of Keith Chegwin in a state of undress towards the end. Consider this a customary nut allergy warning.

In what could easily be classified as the Jacques Antoine genre (play some games to dictate how easy the end game will be), CITV dipped their toe with ‘Jungle Run’. 

Starting 20 years ago this week (see, there is some planning goes into these posts, it's honestly not a complete coincidence brought to my attention on Twitter) in 1999 and initially hosted by Dominic Wood. Jungle Run invited a team of three kids to play a few games in a series of themed areas to collect as many MacGuffins as they can to have as much time as possible in the final game where they could win something... well, something.

Crystal Maze Parodies/Sketches Extra (Another Video)

The bane of many a schoolteacher having to deal with their kids shouting 'Bogies', Dick and Dom in Da Bungalow was a weekend morning show (Two hours on a Saturday, one on a Sunday) that had kid contestants playing daft games throughout the mornings. Examples of such games saw them having to stick toast to themselves with chocolate spread, betting on who would win a race between a group of crawling one-year-olds, and spending points on forfeits for their friends, one of which saw a girl wearing a large gutted fish on her head. The finale of the Saturday show was always an overblown excuse for everyone to throw custard at each other to the sound of 'Ace of Spades' by Motorhead, often punctuated by a bucket of the yellow stuff slipping from one kid's hands to crack another in the head. For the last series, they made this segment into a game show parody which culminated in a muck-muck fight. 'Bullseye' was reincarnated as 'Bullsmuck' complete with original co-host Tony Green calling the scores, 'Strike It Lucky' became 'Strike It Mucky', and The Crystal Maze became...

Adventure Game Shows, Further Reading/Watching

I'd say this blog makes it quite clear which adventure game show I and many others consider to be the best of the genre but there's plenty of others that many people under a certain age have missed out on. Not to say they're all great, missing out can sometimes be a stroke of luck.

"Les Mondes Fantastique" - because Fort Boyard is too obvious.

After The Crystal Maze had been on UK screens for a couple of years, in 1992 Jacques Antoine (the brains behind TCM) brought a cross between TCM and Fort Boyard to French television. Primarily a children's game show, it borrowed a few elements from TCM such as the colourful wireframe map to show where the contestants were, as well as a very familiar lightbulb themed steady-hand game (see below from 2:00). The show was so closely related it even took the original board game for The Crystal Maze and repackaged it under the LMF name.