Paranoia
Host: Peter Tomarken
Lifespan: April 14, 2000- June 2000, Fox Family Channel (cable)
Producers; Eytan Keller and
Premise: A studio contestant hopes to win big money by protecting his or her bankroll from three satellite players. Notable for being the only big-money game show of the era to air live.
Rules: The game pits an in-studio player against three players hooked up by satellite from their home. The game begins with Peter giving the contestant a $10,000 bankroll. (Ten packets of $1,000 each, and it looks like all ones. Quite a brick.) If the studio contestant can eliminate all three satellite contestants within ten questions and without losing all $10,000, the in-studio player moves on to the bonus round.
The game is played in two alternating parts, and each part is played for each of the ten questions: The Question and The Challenge.
The Question
Peter asks a four-choice question to the four players. The satellite players lock in their guesses, and a show producer is on-site to make sure they do not change their answers. The studio player then answers. If the answer the studio player gave is correct, he keeps his money, but a wrong answer deducts $1,000 from the bankroll.
The Challenge
After answering the question, the studio player must challenge at least one satellite player to answer the question; but may challenge more if desired. If a challenged player is correct, $1,000 is given from the studio player
to the satellite player. If the satellite player is wrong, a strike is put on his column of the ledger. Two strikes eliminates a player, keeping whatever winnings are accumulated through right answers.
Pieces of Strategy
To help the studio player in his quest for money, he is given two cards with instructions on them. He may pay the amount on it to execute the abilities on them:
KNOCK-OUT ($3,000): At any point, and only once, the studio player may spend $3,000 to knock out any one player from the game.
SWAP-OUT ($1,000): The player may also spend $1,000 to swap any player with a fresh one from the contestant pool.
The End
If the studio player can eliminate all three satellite players and hold on to at least $1,000, the bonus round begins. If not, the highest scoring surviving satellite player is granted the opportunity to come to the studio to play for the big money in an upcoming show. The studio player collects $500 if he loses his bankroll. During the game, players on the phone
(who called 1-87-paranoia) can affect the outcome of the game,
as can internet players, who logged on to paranoia.excite.com.
Five random players are chosen for each question, and right answers
deduct $50 from the "interactive jackpot" which begins at $5,000.
If the studio player completes the front game, the interactive
jackpot is added to the total, for a potential pot of $15,000.
In the bonus round, ten categories are shown to the player.
Nine of them will increase the players' winnings tenfold with
a correct answer. One category will increase the winnings
by a factor of 100, meaning a perfect game would be worth
$1,500,000. To win the money, the player must answer one
question from the chosen category after fifteen seconds of
think time. If unsuccessful, the player still wins the front
game winnings. Just to add to the suspense, the winner
is hooked up to a heart monitor, which shows the waves while
the giant wall shows a green on black view of the players'
head as the think time progresses. The beats are shown
as red pulses on a readout similar to a seismograph, under
the guise of "seeing how well the player does under pressure."
Bart Broadnax won $80,000 in the first game, by knowing that
an American Roulette wheel has 38 numbered sections. This was the first blooper too, he kept only $7,200; but the screen showed "$80,000" so that's what he won. One contestant managed to find the x100 category, but missed a $620,000 question. Ouch.
After the main game is completed, Peter asks questions to
online or phone players for an e-machines computer until the episode ends or they bring out a new player.
Home Play: No board game was released. If you had a stack of four-choice questions for the front game, and open answer questions for the bonus, you could pull it off. You would need five players to pull it off. An e-mail version or two floated around while the show was on the air, but they disappeared.
Notes: Peter mistakenly referred to the network as "Game
Show Network," but the show was on Fox Family Channel.