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loogslair.com Is that your final answer?


VITAL STATS

Lifespan: November 1999 - July 2000
Host: Chuck Woolery
Announcers: Mark Thompson (Thanks to Nicholas Young for providing the name)
Produced by: Dick Clark Productions

Front Game Rules

Our six qualifiers play for position At the start of each game, a total of six players are read a numerical quetion, and each of them lock in their guess. The player that comes closest to the answer advances to the main game, as the captain, with the remaining players ranked according to how far away they are from the answer. Ties are broken by speed of response. The player that was farthest away is out of the game.
A typical lower-level question The remaining players are subjected to up to eight questions. Starting with the fifth-ranked player, a question is read, the player makes his/her choice, and then the captain has the opportunity to accept the answer, or veto it and replace it with a different choice. The first two questions have four choices, the second two have five. Each of the first four questions is worth increments of $25,000. Accept or veto?
After the first four questions, "The Terminator" makes its first appearance. One player is randomly selected and has the opportunity to challenge another player in a sudden-death faceoff for that player's share of the winnings. If the player selected takes the challenge, s/he is guaranteed $10,000 regardless of the outcome. The player who wins gets both players' stake in the winnings, the other player is knocked out of the game. Time to Terminate someone...
A typical upper-level question For the last four questions, the team is shown six to nine answers, four of which are correct. One by one, each player offers one answer, and the captain has the opportunity to delegate any remaining answers (in case there are three or fewer players left) to anyone on the team. At that point, the captian can veto one answer given and replace it if so desired. After three correct answers, the captain is offered a bundle of cash to stop, or continue at the risk of the last answer being wrong. At the upper levels, the team was offered luxury cars with money in the trunk, and each player made their own decision.
Ouch. The fifth question is worth $200,000, the sixth $500,000, the seventh $1,000,000, and the eighth question $2,000,000. (Early in the run, the last question was worth $2M plus $50K for every game it wasn't won.) The host also gives the captain a "Freebie" for the second round, which can eliminate one incorrect answer from the bunch. The captain could elect to stop and take the money after each question, but if at any point the team gave an incorrect answer, the team lost all their money (although money acquired through Terminator challenges was kept).


Loogaroo Looks it Over

When I first reviewed this show, I blasted it as a total carbon copy of WWTBAM. Now that the show has run its course, I'll relent... somewhat. There are still some glaring faults with the show. First off, the show relied way too heavily on polls and sales figures. That's part of the reason why few teams ever got past $200K; they knew they'd be asked "What are the four best-selling kinds of cheese?" later on (And yes, that was a question). The Terminator added a cutthroat edge to the game, but the dynamic it created sometimes bordered on the downright nasty. Ironically, there were many cases where someone who was eliminated through a Terminator actually wound up walking away with more money than the other teammates! One more irk: it was obvious that the producers were stalling in certain spots, trying to straddle the important stages of a team's campaign onto the next episode. Chuck Woolery did a fairly good job hosting.

Greed

Gameplay: 1 pt.
Host: 3 pts.
Presentation: 2 pts.
Execution: 1 pt.
Total Score: 7 pts.



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