ABC Carnival '74 Across the Board Baloney Bamboozle Be What You Want Beat The Genius Beat The Odds (1962) Beat The Odds (1975) Bedtime Stories The Better Sex The Big Money The Big Payoff Big Spenders Blank Check Body Language Body Talk The Buck Stops Here Bullseye Call My Bluff Card Sharks (1996) Casino Caught in the Act Celebrity Billiards Celebrity Doubletalk Celebrity Secrets Celebrity Sweepstakes Chain Letter (1964) The Challengers (1974) Change Partners Child's Play The Choice Is Yours Combination Lock (1996) Comedy Club Concentration (1985) The Confidence Game Cop Out Countdown (1974) Countdown (1990) The Couples Race Crossword Decisions, Decisions Dollar a Second Duel in the Daytime The Fashion Show Fast Friends $50,000 a Minute Finish Line (1975) Finish Line (1990) Get Rich Quick Going, Going, Gone! Head of the Class High Rollers Hollywood Squares (1965) Hollywood Squares (1985) The Honeymoon Game Hot Numbers Hot Potato House to House How Do You Like Your Eggs? Jackpot (1984) Jeopardy (1977) Jokers Wild Jumble Key Witness Keynotes (1986) King of the Hill Let's Make a Deal (1963) Let's Make a Deal (1990) The Love Experts M'ama Non M'ama Match Game (1962) Match Game (1973) Match Game (1990) Match Game (1996) MatchGame (2008) Mindreaders Missing Links Monday Night QB Money Words Money in the Blank Moneymaze Monopoly (1987) Nothing But the Truth Now You See It (1986) Oddball 100% PDQ Party Line People On TV Play For Keeps Play Your Hunch The Plot Thickens Pot O' Gold Pressure Point The Price Is Right (1972) Pyramid (1996) Pyramid (1997) A Question of Scruples Quick as a Flash Razzle Dazzle Riddlers Run For The Money Says Who? Scrabble (1990) Second Guessers Second Honeymoon Sharaize Shoot for the Stars Shoot the Works Shopping Spree Show Me Showoffs Simon Says $64,000 Question (2000) Smart Alecks Smart Money Spellbinders Spin-Off Split Decision Star Cluster Star Play Strictly Confidential TKO Talking Pictures (1968) Talking Pictures (1976) Tell It to Groucho Temptation (1981) $10,000 Sweep Three of a Kind Tic Tac Dough Tie-Up Top Secret Twenty One (1982) Twenty Questions Twisters Up and Over The Waiting Game We've Got Your Number What Do You Want? What's On Your Mind Wheel of Fortune Whew! Whodunit Whose Baby Wipeout Word Grabbers Write Your Own Ticket You Bet Your Life (1988) You Bet Your Life (1991) You're Putting Me On Show a Random Pilot Show Unreviewed Pilots Bob Stewart Flow Chart | Monopoly (1987)Producer: Merv Griffin/King World Host: Marc Summers Announcer: Don Morrow Assistants: Both unnamed, one female as a piece mover, one nerdy male as "Rich Uncle Pennybags" Taping Info: September 28, 1987 Other Pilots: At least one pilot was made with Peter Tomarken in 1988. Made it to Air: Eventually in 1990 as the weaker half of an hour of Saturday night summer game shows with Jeopardy! on ABC. The history of game shows coming from board games has been sketchy at best. Video Village, Shenanigans and Seven Keys were based off of Chutes and Ladders and had moderate success, and strangely even spawned their own board games. Scrabble did not resemble its namesake at all, which I'm sure the producers figured out early on that watching people play Scrabble can be pretty boring. At some point in 1987, Merv Griffin bought the rights to Monopoly, and gave it over to King World to try to figure out a show out of it. Marc Summers is your host for a show that seems a little more of a run-through than a true pilot. Indications of this include the heavy use of magnetic props rather than true art cards or video displays and the absolute butchered audio. Several times it was hard to hear Marc over the music. Players were stationed around a larger version of the board and did their own dice rolling. Normally I'm not a big fan of PowerPoint and bulleted lists, but there are so many rules in this game that I really couldn't think of any other way to both get them all across and show the sheer insanity of trying to play a complicated game in a tight time frame. So, here we go:
The bonus game is very similar to the airing version three years later. A player had five rolls to get around the board while avoiding one of seven Go To Jail spaces for $25,000 if they passed Go, or $50,000 if they landed. Each successful roll also earned the player a prize of varying values such as a bicycle or a computer which had to be risked on each turn. A player could stop at anytime to keep the accumulated prizes. Money earned during the main game was kept even if they landed on Go to Jail. As you can see, my largest complaint about this game was just the ridiculous amount of rules you had to keep up with to try to keep this game true to Monopoly: The Board Game. Not that the way the eventual airing version played was any better, but was just one of those cases that unless you threw the pretense of the board game away and made something entirely different (like Scrabble did), there just isn't anything here to make an interesting half hour of television. This pilot has been viewed 20551 times since October 6, 2008 and was last modified on Dec 20, 2009 17:42 ET |