Game shows aren’t just a US phenomenon; but it seems we don’t see the game shows from other countries like movies from other countries. I think game shows reveal tons about a country since they involve pretty ordinary people.

Nobody has crazier game shows than the Japanese; but Europe had some interesting gameshows too. I previously had known about Knightmare (wikipedia) in which kids would play through an adventure in front of a green screen and directed by their friends.

I recently learned about 2 new ones. Fort Boyard and The Crystal Maze. Both were aired during the 90’s and 2000’s and were created by Jacques Antoine.

Fort Boyard was originally a French gameshow. It soon spread to multiple countries and multiple languages, ultimately airing over 1,800 episodes during the 90’s and 2000’s. The game consisted of a team of 5 players completing a number of timed puzzles and physical challenges to collect word clues. When they collected enough word clues, they had to find the connection between the words and if correct would be given a short time to collect as many gold coins before the gate to the arena closed.

The Crystal Maze was a British game show that was based upon Fort Boyard. A team of contestants would complete a number of timed puzzles and physical challenges to collect crystals in 4 themed areas (Aztec, Industrial, Futuristic, and Medieval). When the time was up for the challenges, they added up the crystals which were converted to time in the crystal dome. The team would enter the crystal dome and they had to collect as many gold paper tokens being blown around and put them into the center letter box before the time expired. If they got over 100 tickets, they won the grand prize. 50-100 tickets they won some pretty decent secondary prizes. Less than 50, and you got nothing.

The puzzles seemed more diverse than the ones on Fort Boyard.