This would have been a great show. I'm glad to finally see the full pilot after only being able to find a leaked sizzle reel. Michael Burger did a great job with the ill-fated Match Game '98, he did a pretty good job here and if he's still up to hosting game shows I think he deserves another chance.
Michael Burger used to host Family Challenge for Season 2 on Freeform when it was Family Channel. He replaced former Family Feud host Ray Combs due to his death in Spring of 1996.
@@justmeiniowa I remember when there was slingo.com, a website that also played slingo-based variants. One was "Brazil" where you had NINE reels to spin, and you could score millions if each of the reels had a joker. I think I tried to put forth an idea to them about a real-life game show where back in the early 2000s a Brazil-based game could have a player win ONE MILLION DOLLARS for nine jokers. They didn't bite, sadly.
I was introduced to spinal via Flashpoint, an Adobe flash emulator, and the timer is kinda annoying when you look away from 2 seconds, but its not that bad.
Thanks as always for the upload, Wink - I really love seeing these pilots. This is too far a cry from the PC game. The only thing we saw from the base game was the devil. I wanted to see some gold coins flying, some jokers going crazy, and just for the whole thing to go much quicker, much snappier. And have more of the proper sounds. That ding when you mark a number? The slots clunking into place? That "da-da-DA!" when you get a line? Anything? Even by pilot standards, this show didn't have nearly enough attention to detail.
They could have made it like national bingo night but with the computer generating the numbers rather than a giant prop ball machine with a jackpot of $100,000 up for grabs, and allowing the viewers at home to play along with coloured cards that they can purchase for $2 from the local Wal-mart, K-mart, or Target.
Slingo CD-ROM computer game seemed like a lot of fun and this TV game show adaption had some potential. But unfortunately this was a terrible idea for a game show. It could have caused you to go bankrupt and lose your job by giving away a quarter of a million $250,000 dollars in every episode. Still love your works, Wink, one of the greatest legends of game shows and television entertainment history. Keep up the great work
Well I had never heard of this so here is my review: PLUS: Host Michael Burger did a fine job, announcer Randy West is good as always, I liked the concept of the punned responses and the bonus round. MINUS: The audio. Several times, it seemed like the audio of Burger's was added in post production causing confusion at times. Also there should NOT have been 5 players for this. at most 4 in the first round would have worked. The bonus money was too much. Given had this pilot been sold to what might have been GSN at this time, I'd say $25,000 would work making the first Slingo in the bonus round $5,000, the second $10,000 and the last $25,000. Also the contestants seemed to "act" a bit too much especially Tattie. Overall rating: a 6 out of 10.
Michael Burger is a GREAT HOST, the problem with "Match Game 98" was it was just so cheap and boring. It looked like a rejected 'GSN ORIGINAL'. Game shows should always have big fancy sets, chasing lights, distinctive sound fx... You can't stand people in front of a video wall and expect the viewers to give a crap.
The game show was pretty good until the end game. I would have set it up where everything in the bonus round is the same (I’d even add extra spins on Super Slingo based on the number of completed columns in the main game) BUT once you run out of spins, the game ends. Also I’d use the “devil” differently where two things happens: 1) like baseball, you run into three devils at any point of the game you lose. Heck, I’m even open to having it where if the devils pop up on every column, gg. 2) The devil eliminates one number from the column where it lands. Make the game a bit more exciting. Otherwise, the end game is similar a snoozer and too easy to win the top prize, which makes the ending so anti-climatic.
Thanks as always for sharing it, Wink! Michael and the question writers are great, but cripes, what a dull game. The endgame is like Catch 21 but without any strategy.
Man, there is WAY too much ADR in this pilot. It sounds so off. Also, 5 contestants is far too much. Should have had 2 or 3 and just give them their own full boards.
This is hardly Slingo. Only single digit numbers, no classic board, no angels, gold coins, free spins, zip. Even though the TV versions of Candy Crush and You Don't Know Jack lasted less than a season's worth of episodes, they still had some original material.
Yeah, how did that work out for them? The idea was to adapt Slingo for TV, and doing that you can't bring in each and every element. Scrabble isn't Scrabble. The board game doesn't have clues, the player's aren't making their own words, there is no Sprint Round...but there is enough to make it look like Scrabble. We wanted to mimic the board and the columns and the number and the reels, but we had to add a "game" as well, and then to add devils and angels and coins, would have been too much to incorporate. We kept single numbers because we felt just giving people a bunch of numbers that meant nothing, would feel odd, so we came up with people coming to us with "their lucky numbers", so we felt keeping them single digits made more sense. Look, some comments like this, some don't, you can't please everyone! And to all the people who said, "I can see why this didn't sell", has no idea how this business works, so please. Any game show was still a tough sell back them.
Using a button/buzzer/plunger to stop spinning numbers? Sounds like "Spin-Off" to me. Oh, and avoiding a Devil? "Second Chance" and "The Joker's Wild" vibes here.
Well, he had to win; or else all of those balloons would have been blown up for nothing. It's almost funny how the balloons just sat there on the floor in a perfect configuration; doing nothing. ("Hey, could we maybe put a few fans in the floor to keep the balloons in motion?") And, no, I wouldn't watch this. It's basically just a Q-and-A game, but the amount of money you win is based on random.
Yeah, I guess a show that had multiple choice questions that then went into a game of luck would never be popular...I mean hell, any producer who did that would be pressing their luck...right?
@@jrjgames One critical difference is the speed of the reels. Could have slowed it down a small tad to make it more obvious that the players were influencing the outcome instead of it looking a bit predetermined. PYL wouldn't have worked had the board been as fast as the reels here.
@@jesuszamora6949 Well since this was a pilot, it WAS predetermined, so that is why it looks like it does. We have one day to do this and we wanted certain things to happen and couldn't leave it to chance. On the real show, of course the outcome would have been legit. Years ago you could do a pilot and live with the outcome, these days, you need certain things to happen to help get it sold.
@@jrjgames Naw, I mean the way the spinners spin, being so damn fast, it wouldn't look like there was really any relation to when the button was pressed and what number would be shown. I'm assuming/hoping the spinners would have been slowed down if the show had made it to air. In PYL, the cursor (for lack of a better term) is slow enough that someone could theoretically keep it from hitting a Whammy at will. That's what I"m talking about. Obviously it's hard to know what this would have been like in an actual show, but that was just what got me. As we all know, it's all about appearances in the end.
@@jesuszamora6949 Understand, but to that point, you pressed the button on Bullseye and then the board does it thing to stop, so it's not unprecedented that we did it this way, it was just a choice.
Not too bad of a concept to convert Slingo, and I liked the question-writing. There are little rules changes I'd make to streamline some stuff, but that's not my major issue... The contestants were AWFUL because they came off so fake and over-caffeinated, and the pickups for rules and explanations were so overt they were offputting, plus they had more air time than IRL Michael himself, which looks really bad from a production standpoint. Michael himself (when we could actually hear him in the studio) was great, but their editing and rules explanation definitely needed to be drilled down more. Thanks Wink!
You know I have to ask ... as a fan of Slingo.... If they were gonna put this to air I have to ask you You got the Devil sure enough... BUT WHERE'S THE ANGEL AND THE JOKER????
So this was more of a "demo" to show how the game worked, as opposed to being an actual "legitimate" episode that would have/could have aired? Did this contestant actually get the $250,000?
Yes, that's how a pilot works. Contestants rarely get any prize money but they do get paid an appearance fee, sometimes they get prize money as an encouragement to play the game properly, but it's much lower than it says in the show, in the high hundreds or low thousands.
All I want to know is how the spinning reels work and who is running them. How do we know they are stopping randomly? How convenient in the one and only taping of this game, one of the contestants comes from behind and then wins the big prize at the last possible moment. Sorry to be so cynical, but suspense and vicarious excitement for viewers at home is the point of every single game or quiz show. That keeps you watching every day and increases the value of a commercial minute. I was a contestant on three quiz shows, but those didn't involve anything spinning and stopping at random. Either you had a winning strategy or you didn't. Either you knew the answer or you didn't. Either you and your partner, if you had one, played well together or you didn't. Nothing the producers could do about that to make the game more or less exciting. It was up to the contestant coordinators to match contestants in the most likely way to produce an exciting game. The host is fine. He explained the rather complicated rules quite clearly. The contestants were enthusiastic except that Johnny barely got a close-up. It's the actual play that concerns me and would concern me every day I watched.
First, the reels are controlled by computer and if the show went to air, it would be all random like any other game show you see on television. We can't fix a game show, as you know, it's illegal and we'd all be in jail. That being said, this was a pilot and we can do anything we want. Family Feud is run by a computer, do you think they change the answers before they reveal them? It's no different. Game shows have strict rules we have to adhere to. Again, when it's a pilot that isn't meant to be aired, we can produce things so we can show the buyer different scenarios. Hope that answered your question.
Plus the contestants are probably all paid the same amount regardless of whether they win or lose. They're more like actors than per se contestants in that they're probably told ahead of time what they should do/say, who should win, etc. Then the question becomes which role to assign to which actor.
The best Game Show Pilot ive seen in some time. Mike is a talent that deserves a hit show. Nice to have Randy at the mic too. 😆 at the Bill Gates question.
This would have been a great show. I'm glad to finally see the full pilot after only being able to find a leaked sizzle reel. Michael Burger did a great job with the ill-fated Match Game '98, he did a pretty good job here and if he's still up to hosting game shows I think he deserves another chance.
Great rare treat to see this, thank you!
I have to agree with others here, I don't think this show in this fashion would have run long.
Michael Burger used to host Family Challenge for Season 2 on Freeform when it was Family Channel. He replaced former Family Feud host Ray Combs due to his death in Spring of 1996.
I used to watch Michael Burger on Family Challenge when I was little.
Great pilot. This should have been on the air.
Loved this as a computer game
Love this game on the computer
Wait, so they actually discard that first $10.000 win and only count the biggest win only on super slingo round???
Not gonna lie, I played the shit out of the original game back in the AOL glory days. Still annoys me that I can't play a proper version nowdays.
Same !
@@justmeiniowa I remember when there was slingo.com, a website that also played slingo-based variants. One was "Brazil" where you had NINE reels to spin, and you could score millions if each of the reels had a joker. I think I tried to put forth an idea to them about a real-life game show where back in the early 2000s a Brazil-based game could have a player win ONE MILLION DOLLARS for nine jokers. They didn't bite, sadly.
I was introduced to spinal via Flashpoint, an Adobe flash emulator, and the timer is kinda annoying when you look away from 2 seconds, but its not that bad.
Thanks as always for the upload, Wink - I really love seeing these pilots.
This is too far a cry from the PC game. The only thing we saw from the base game was the devil. I wanted to see some gold coins flying, some jokers going crazy, and just for the whole thing to go much quicker, much snappier.
And have more of the proper sounds. That ding when you mark a number? The slots clunking into place? That "da-da-DA!" when you get a line? Anything?
Even by pilot standards, this show didn't have nearly enough attention to detail.
And it wasn't a game we played all our lives! #SCRABBLE!
They could have made it like national bingo night but with the computer generating the numbers rather than a giant prop ball machine with a jackpot of $100,000 up for grabs, and allowing the viewers at home to play along with coloured cards that they can purchase for $2 from the local Wal-mart, K-mart, or Target.
I remember playing this game. I was just a teen though, so I didn't really get into it. Thanks, though, for the flashback, Wink!
So much audio replacement in the episode.
Well, it's a pilot...
I had a slingo handheld game I was addicted to.
Haven't posted any new ones in a while; was getting worried; but with SLINGO, once again; The Winkster DELIVERS!!!!!! Keep em' coming. O' Great One!
Slingo CD-ROM computer game seemed like a lot of fun and this TV game show adaption had some potential. But unfortunately this was a terrible idea for a game show. It could have caused you to go bankrupt and lose your job by giving away a quarter of a million $250,000 dollars in every episode.
Still love your works, Wink, one of the greatest legends of game shows and television entertainment history. Keep up the great work
No sounds from the original game?
Interesting game show slingo, I remember Michael Burger from Match Game '98. I thought he did good. He was a good game host.
Well I had never heard of this so here is my review: PLUS: Host Michael Burger did a fine job, announcer Randy West is good as always, I liked the concept of the punned responses and the bonus round. MINUS: The audio. Several times, it seemed like the audio of Burger's was added in post production causing confusion at times. Also there should NOT have been 5 players for this. at most 4 in the first round would have worked. The bonus money was too much. Given had this pilot been sold to what might have been GSN at this time, I'd say $25,000 would work making the first Slingo in the bonus round $5,000, the second $10,000 and the last $25,000. Also the contestants seemed to "act" a bit too much especially Tattie. Overall rating: a 6 out of 10.
Having flashbacks to Nipsey Russell's "Your Number's Up"
Interesting to see LBC’s (Long Beach, California) own Michael Berger hosting this pilot.
Ray's Grand Total at 20:07
Awesome
Michael Burger is a GREAT HOST, the problem with "Match Game 98" was it was just so cheap and boring. It looked like a rejected 'GSN ORIGINAL'. Game shows should always have big fancy sets, chasing lights, distinctive sound fx... You can't stand people in front of a video wall and expect the viewers to give a crap.
The game show was pretty good until the end game. I would have set it up where everything in the bonus round is the same (I’d even add extra spins on Super Slingo based on the number of completed columns in the main game) BUT once you run out of spins, the game ends. Also I’d use the “devil” differently where two things happens: 1) like baseball, you run into three devils at any point of the game you lose. Heck, I’m even open to having it where if the devils pop up on every column, gg. 2) The devil eliminates one number from the column where it lands.
Make the game a bit more exciting. Otherwise, the end game is similar a snoozer and too easy to win the top prize, which makes the ending so anti-climatic.
Awesomeness
This to me looked like a yawner of a format. If it had gone to air as is, I would have given it one or two seasons before getting axed.
Seems similiar to high rollers, spinning instead of dice.
Damn
Thanks as always for sharing it, Wink!
Michael and the question writers are great, but cripes, what a dull game. The endgame is like Catch 21 but without any strategy.
Man, there is WAY too much ADR in this pilot. It sounds so off. Also, 5 contestants is far too much. Should have had 2 or 3 and just give them their own full boards.
Wait...Slingo had a game show?!
Bring it to game show network
This is hardly Slingo. Only single digit numbers, no classic board, no angels, gold coins, free spins, zip.
Even though the TV versions of Candy Crush and You Don't Know Jack lasted less than a season's worth of episodes, they still had some original material.
Yeah, how did that work out for them? The idea was to adapt Slingo for TV, and doing that you can't bring in each and every element. Scrabble isn't Scrabble. The board game doesn't have clues, the player's aren't making their own words, there is no Sprint Round...but there is enough to make it look like Scrabble. We wanted to mimic the board and the columns and the number and the reels, but we had to add a "game" as well, and then to add devils and angels and coins, would have been too much to incorporate. We kept single numbers because we felt just giving people a bunch of numbers that meant nothing, would feel odd, so we came up with people coming to us with "their lucky numbers", so we felt keeping them single digits made more sense. Look, some comments like this, some don't, you can't please everyone! And to all the people who said, "I can see why this didn't sell", has no idea how this business works, so please. Any game show was still a tough sell back them.
The angel could at least be a wild card right?
Pretty Good Format I Think It Would Work On TV Pretty Well,I Thought Michael Berger Did A Pretty Good Job As Host.
Well, the devil from Joker's Wild got another job.
Using a button/buzzer/plunger to stop spinning numbers? Sounds like "Spin-Off" to me.
Oh, and avoiding a Devil? "Second Chance" and "The Joker's Wild" vibes here.
Ouch I don’t like the devil 👿
Looks cool
Well, he had to win; or else all of those balloons would have been blown up for nothing. It's almost funny how the balloons just sat there on the floor in a perfect configuration; doing nothing. ("Hey, could we maybe put a few fans in the floor to keep the balloons in motion?")
And, no, I wouldn't watch this. It's basically just a Q-and-A game, but the amount of money you win is based on random.
Yeah, I guess a show that had multiple choice questions that then went into a game of luck would never be popular...I mean hell, any producer who did that would be pressing their luck...right?
@@jrjgames One critical difference is the speed of the reels. Could have slowed it down a small tad to make it more obvious that the players were influencing the outcome instead of it looking a bit predetermined. PYL wouldn't have worked had the board been as fast as the reels here.
@@jesuszamora6949 Well since this was a pilot, it WAS predetermined, so that is why it looks like it does. We have one day to do this and we wanted certain things to happen and couldn't leave it to chance. On the real show, of course the outcome would have been legit. Years ago you could do a pilot and live with the outcome, these days, you need certain things to happen to help get it sold.
@@jrjgames Naw, I mean the way the spinners spin, being so damn fast, it wouldn't look like there was really any relation to when the button was pressed and what number would be shown. I'm assuming/hoping the spinners would have been slowed down if the show had made it to air. In PYL, the cursor (for lack of a better term) is slow enough that someone could theoretically keep it from hitting a Whammy at will. That's what I"m talking about.
Obviously it's hard to know what this would have been like in an actual show, but that was just what got me. As we all know, it's all about appearances in the end.
@@jesuszamora6949 Understand, but to that point, you pressed the button on Bullseye and then the board does it thing to stop, so it's not unprecedented that we did it this way, it was just a choice.
Not too bad of a concept to convert Slingo, and I liked the question-writing. There are little rules changes I'd make to streamline some stuff, but that's not my major issue... The contestants were AWFUL because they came off so fake and over-caffeinated, and the pickups for rules and explanations were so overt they were offputting, plus they had more air time than IRL Michael himself, which looks really bad from a production standpoint. Michael himself (when we could actually hear him in the studio) was great, but their editing and rules explanation definitely needed to be drilled down more. Thanks Wink!
Question writing obviously was meant to be dirty funny puns.
Not a single joker? 😕
But there was a 😈
This isn't Joker's Wild.
@@sha11235yet the Joker, Devil, and the Angel were essential to the game
pass the tribondddd
I never heard of this game, but why do I have a feeling it is like Bingo? BECAUSE IT RHYMES!!!!!
It's a portmanteau of Slots + Bingo. :)
Didn't know Slingo could have had a game show! Have you tried the PC game, Mr. Martindale?
Well, I was right about the Bingo part since you have to match 5 numbers that you have picked.
does anybody know what game show used the devil sound effect...it sounds very familiar
No clue but the AOL game version back in the day was the devil laughing with a kind of hollow sound. Loved playing that game
I'd love to have seen the credits so I'd know which genius was behind the idea.
You know I have to ask ... as a fan of Slingo.... If they were gonna put this to air I have to ask you
You got the Devil sure enough... BUT WHERE'S THE ANGEL AND THE JOKER????
Did anyone get the money?
No, because it's a pilot.
When was this pilot made?
It says it at 0:04, Pilot 9/21/08.
Former "Mike & Molly" talk show host that was on ABC in the late 80's!!!
Late 90s.
So this was more of a "demo" to show how the game worked, as opposed to being an actual "legitimate" episode that would have/could have aired? Did this contestant actually get the $250,000?
Yes, that's how a pilot works. Contestants rarely get any prize money but they do get paid an appearance fee, sometimes they get prize money as an encouragement to play the game properly, but it's much lower than it says in the show, in the high hundreds or low thousands.
Not feeling it. I’ve seen worse though.
It's The Devil!!!!
All I want to know is how the spinning reels work and who is running them. How do we know they are stopping randomly? How convenient in the one and only taping of this game, one of the contestants comes from behind and then wins the big prize at the last possible moment. Sorry to be so cynical, but suspense and vicarious excitement for viewers at home is the point of every single game or quiz show. That keeps you watching every day and increases the value of a commercial minute. I was a contestant on three quiz shows, but those didn't involve anything spinning and stopping at random. Either you had a winning strategy or you didn't. Either you knew the answer or you didn't. Either you and your partner, if you had one, played well together or you didn't. Nothing the producers could do about that to make the game more or less exciting. It was up to the contestant coordinators to match contestants in the most likely way to produce an exciting game. The host is fine. He explained the rather complicated rules quite clearly. The contestants were enthusiastic except that Johnny barely got a close-up. It's the actual play that concerns me and would concern me every day I watched.
First, the reels are controlled by computer and if the show went to air, it would be all random like any other game show you see on television. We can't fix a game show, as you know, it's illegal and we'd all be in jail. That being said, this was a pilot and we can do anything we want. Family Feud is run by a computer, do you think they change the answers before they reveal them? It's no different. Game shows have strict rules we have to adhere to. Again, when it's a pilot that isn't meant to be aired, we can produce things so we can show the buyer different scenarios. Hope that answered your question.
You can't rig a game show, it is against the law.
Plus the contestants are probably all paid the same amount regardless of whether they win or lose. They're more like actors than per se contestants in that they're probably told ahead of time what they should do/say, who should win, etc. Then the question becomes which role to assign to which actor.
Could you at least ask him if he can risk 250,000 and try the middle for 25,000 but if the devil shows up he loses?
The best Game Show Pilot ive seen in some time. Mike is a talent that deserves a hit show. Nice to have Randy at the mic too. 😆 at the Bill Gates question.
I would've guessed that one correctly myself.
Didn’t Michael Burger host Match Game ‘98?
This should've sold