Take a bunch of teenagers, fantastic prizes and a whole lot of sticky green slime, put them all together and what does that make? The amazing Nickelodeon game shows that every millennial would have given anything to be a contestant on.
“Legends of the Hidden Temple,” “Double Dare 2000,” “Figure It Out” and “Nickelodeon GUTS” are only a few in Nickelodeon’s lineup, but they are the ones that best capture the essence of this marvelous time in television game show history.
Starting off the lineup is “Legends of the Hidden Temple.” An article on Gawker describes it best “the original Survivor with oddly named teams competing in physical and mental challenges with a jungle backdrop.” Six teams – the Red Jaguars, the Blue Barracudas, the Green Monkeys, the Orange Iguanas, the Purple Parrots and the Silver Snakes – consisting of two contestants each, face off as they make their way through three rounds of challenges until one team remains.
The last team standing goes on to the final round and enters Olmec’s temple in search of a hidden artifact related to the legend that the episode is based off of. Watching contestants miserably fail at navigating their way through the temple is perhaps the most stressful three minutes of television that a person can witness.
Next up is arguably one of the best and messiest game shows to ever come out of Nickelodeon Studios – “Double Dare 2000.” The show has two components: trivia questions and physical challenges. The latter of the two is where the mess comes in as players try to complete challenges that often result with them covered in food and slime.
If contestants still look too clean at the end of the show, the “Slopstacle Course” is sure to change that. This sloppy obstacle course is the show’s final challenge that consists of eight mini obstacles. If completed, the winning team goes home with an awesome grand prize.
Another show that showers the winner in both amazing prizes and the iconic Nickelodeon slime is called “Figure It Out.” The object of the game is for the contestant to stump the celebrity panel for three consecutive rounds as they ask yes or no questions to reveal the contestant’s hidden talent. After every round that panelists fail to “figure out” the hidden talent, the contestant wins a prize and at the end of the show, the contestant actually demonstrates their talent.
The last show in the lineup of the best Nickelodeon game shows is “Nickelodeon GUTS.” Known for being the game show that requires the most amount of skill and athletic ability, “GUTS” is basically an X-Games for children.
Similar to the other shows, “GUTS” consists of several rounds that lead up to an ultimate challenge. In this case, the final obstacle is the Aggro Crag, what an article on Clipd describes as “a man made mountain with falling rocks, blasts of glitter snow, and climbing walls.” What more could anyone ask for?
These game shows are pieces of television gold that everyone should experience. Just a few weeks ago, Nickelodeon launched “The Splat” to bring back many of their legendary shows. Reruns of all four game shows discussed in this article are played on the network every night at 10 p.m. to feed the hearts of nostalgic fans.
Joey Spagnuolo is a campus correspondent for The Daily Campus. He can be reached via email at joseph.spagnuolo@uconn.edu.
