Legends of the Hidden Temple
From Freepedia
Image:Legends of the Hidden Temple (Fogg and Olmec).jpg Legends of the Hidden Temple was a game show hosted by Kirk Fogg that aired on Nickelodeon from 1993 to 1995. It was a physical challenge game show, with six teams of 2 kids competing for prizes. The show was produced by Nickelodeon in association with Stone Stanley Productions. The format of Legends was similar to other physical challenge shows of the time, such as Double Dare and GUTS, although the stunts were less messy than Double Dare's.
The set design resembled various ancient Central American iconographies, especially the Aztec or Mayan stone-face Olmec. It included areas for different types of physical challenges; a set of steps (the Steps of Knowledge); and a large, two-floor vertical labyrinth (the Hidden Temple) in the back of the stage. At the labyrinth's gate was a giant animatronic talking Olmec head simply named Olmec.
Every episode had a theme: a particular legend was picked (written), regarding a certain artifact from around the world that found its way to the Temple, and the winning team had to retrieve it. Some such artifacts were "Lawrence of Arabia's Headdress," "Galileo's Cannonball," "The Milkbucket of Freydis," and "The Applewood Amulet of Emiliano Zapata."
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Gameplay
Teams
In each game, six teams of 2 members each competed in 3 rounds to get to the temple. Each team was designated a color and animal, indicated on their shirts:
- Red Jaguars
- Blue Barracudas
- Green Monkeys
- Orange Iguanas
- Purple Parrots
- Silver Snakes
Round 1: The Moat
The first round of the show involved a stunt where the six teams had to cross a small swimming pool, labeled as a moat. All six teams attempted to get both members across according to the rules and hit their respective podium button, their "gong". Upon doing so, the podium lit up and a gong sound played over the studio speakers. The first four teams to successfully make it across went on to round 2.
Round 2: Steps of Knowledge
Round two allowed Olmec to tell a story about the artifact of the day. The story was always quite detailed, and after it was told, the 4 teams were asked a series of questions testing the teams' memory of the story. A team that knew the answer buzzed in by hitting the button on their step with their feet. If the team knew the answer, they were allowed to step down to the next level. The first two teams to step down to the bottom level moved on to the physical challenge rounds.
Round 3: The Temple Games
Physical challenges employed on Legends were many and varied. After each challenge, the winning team was awarded some portion of a protective Pendant of Life. The first two challenges awarded a half-pendant each, and the final challenge awarded a full pendant. If a Temple Game ended in a tie, both teams were awarded the pendant value of that game. After these rounds, the team with the most pendants went on to the final round. In the event of a tie concerning the number of pendants each team was awarded, a tiebreaker question was asked to determine the winner. The first two Temple Games were one-on-one, and were not restricted to sex, meaning that both individual Temple Games could be (and occasionally were) boy-vs.-girl, and the third and final Game involved both members of both teams taking part.
Round 4: The Temple
In the final round, the winning team took whatever Pendants of Life they had (most commonly, a full pendant and half of the second) into the labyrinth. The labyrinth consisted of 12 to 13 rooms, depending on the layout, each connected by a doorway which may or may not have been open during the game, depending on the setup used that day. One room in the labyrinth had the themed artifact; three rooms held Temple Guards. If the winning team had an incomplete pendant, the remaining half-pendant would be in a room as well.
Image:Legends of the Hidden Temple (assembling monkey).jpg The winning team had three minutes to retrieve the artifact. One player was sent in first, with a complete pendant. The second player remained outside the Temple gate to watch the first player's progress. In each room, completing a puzzle or accomplishing a task would unlock a door to another room. For example, the Shrine of the Silver Monkey held three pieces of a silver monkey statue, and completing the statue would unlock a door. The Jester's Court placed the switches to the door at the hands of one of three outlines; posing in the position of the correct outline and pressing the buttons opened the door.
When a player encountered a Temple Guard, the player was forced to give up a full pendant in order to continue or be pulled backstage as if he were swept away to oblivion. The second player now had the chance to enter, with all opened doors remaining open and all known Temple Guards nonexistent. If the second player possessed only half a Pendant of Life, a Temple Guard could catch him or her and end the game. To prevent that, the second player would also have to find the other half of the pendant.
If either player reached the artifact, all Guards disappeared and all doors opened, allowing the player to escape unhindered. Different prizes were awarded depending on whether the team merely made it to the temple, retrieved the artifact, or escaped with the artifact.
Show trivia
- 3 seasons of the show aired, and 120 episodes were produced. Of those 120 episodes, only 32 episodes featured teams successfully getting out of the temple with the artifact. 17 episodes featured a player grabbing the artifact with time remaining, but running out of time before they could actually bring the artifact out of the Temple, making for a total of 49 episodes in which the artifact was actually snatched up.
- Legends was the third-longest running Nickelodeon game show in terms of episodes produced. Only Double Dare and GUTS surpassed it (and by considerable margins).
- The show was taped in Soundstage 18 of Nickelodeon Studios, at Universal Studios, Orlando, Florida. (This soundstage is immediately stage-right of the classic "Nickelodeon" building shown at the conclusion of each episode.)
- The hours of taping each day ranged from around 7:00AM to midnight, although those times altered between taping days.
- The first season's temple featured nine different layouts, as rooms changed almost each day of taping; the second season's temple featured five different layouts. Only season three's temple never changed layouts.
- The only room in the temple that was featured in all 120 episodes was the Shrine of the Silver Monkey.
- There were over 45 different rooms that were featured across the show's 120-episode span.
- Some of the show's temple runs in the third season were taped without an audience. This was because usually six episodes were taped a day, and all segments were done at once (i.e. all moat rounds were taped, then all Steps of Knowledge rounds, then all Temple Games, then all Temple Runs; players usually waited two hours in-between taping a round for their episode). The main reason for no audiences, though, was because the Universal Theme Park, where the show was taped, had closed, and the audience members had been sent home.
- Fogg's entrances onto the set were different for each season. At the beginning of each episode in season one, Fogg would come down the steps to the temple. In seasons two and three, Fogg entered the set on a rope. In season two, Fogg would come straight down on the rope from the rafters, but he swung onto the set in season three. Also, Fogg's entrances onto the set for seasons two and three were pre-taped, as the same entrance was used in each episode of the second and third seasons.
- In the show's first season, Fogg gave the instructions for the moat round and the temple games. In season two, these duties were turned over to Olmec, and many began to question the relevance of Fogg on the show. Nonetheless, Fogg stayed throughout.
- In season one, Fogg wore shorts with the denim shirt and work boots he wore throughout the series' run. Beginning in season two, Fogg wore blue jeans.
- Olmec's voice was provided by Dee Bradley Baker, who also announced prizes on the show in his normal voice. To make Olmec's mouth move, Baker pulled a wire. Baker went on to provide voices in Nickelodeon cartoons, most notably SpongeBob SquarePants and The Fairly OddParents.
- The fastest completion of the temple run was in "The Mask of Shaka Zulu" (Season 1). The player completed the temple in 1:46, without the help of his partner. However, this was arguably the easiest temple design; the player encountered no locked doors.
- The quickest loss happened just 1:31 into the run in "Elizabeth the First's Golden Ship" (Season 1). The concentration of temple guards in the four rooms the team entered prevented them from going further.
- Four temple runs were completed with a single second left on the clock.
- Three temple runs involved the player who entered the temple grabbing the artifact without encountering a single temple guard. These runs were from "The Enormous Iron Nose Ring of Babe the Ox, which was from Season 2, and "The Much-Heralded Helmet of Sir Gawain" and "The Broken Trident of Poseidon, both from Season 3. However, only "The Enormous Iron Nose Ring" and "Much-Heralded Helmet" episodes ended with the player successfully getting out of the temple with the artifact. In the "Broken Trident" episode, the player, Kimberly, was so startled by the noise of all the locked doors opening upon her grabbing the trident, that she forgot she could leave the temple without completing any other objectives. Upon entering the Room of the Ancient Warriors, she put down the trident, and attempted to complete the objective. When Fogg told her she needn't do that, she took off without the trident. She went back to get it, but went down into the Tomb of the Ancient Kings through the Chamber of the Sacred Markers. Time ran out just as she entered the Ledges.
- The record for the fastest time by an individual took place in season three's "Secret Map of the Bandit Queen" episode. It was set by Zac Turney, whose episode has become one of the most circulated on Nick GAS. His partner, Miriam, was taken out of the Temple in the Dark Forest with 1:17 left. He got out with 9 seconds left, a split time of 1:08, easily beating the "Mask of Shaka Zulu" episode. Turney is now an actor; in 2004, he was selected by TBS to be one of the two Gilligans on their new reality show, The Real Gilligan's Island.
- In the temple run of the first season's episode "Henry VIII's Great Seal," one of the contestants (the team's follow-up runner) was so startled by a temple guard's appearance that he literally ran out of the temple's cross-sectioned boundaries and onto the main studio floor, causing him to be disqualified. However, his team would have lost as well otherwise since he had encountered the third temple guard because he only possessed a half-pendant.
- The only regular Nickelodeon network in the world that has Legends in its regular rotation is the Japanese version of Nick. [1]
- Not all actuators in the temple, when hit, would open doors. As temple layouts changed, many were removed from the temple or made completely inactive.
- In season 1, the hidden half-pendant is often visible at the silver monkey's base in the Shrine of the Silver Monkey, but the only episode where it is visibly hidden elsewhere, and the only episode where a player picked it up, was "The Treasure of Anne Bonny" (Season 1, Layout 9).
- Olmec's look and placement during the show's 3 year span changed. In season 1, he was at ground level. In season 2 he was placed farther up on the Temple stairs, and the stairs were also stretched out more. In season 3, Olmec stayed were he was on the Temple stairs, but had a very old look, and in some episodes of season 3, he had a very odd golden glow.
- The closest failed acquisition of an artifact was in "The Blue Pearl of the Dragon Lady" (Season 1, Layout 8). The player in this run entered the artifact's room, The Holes of Python, with ten seconds left, and scurried past the obstacles, only to fall a finger's length short of the Pearl.
- Only 12 episodes had the team end up being caught, and have the run ended, by three Temple Guards.
- Only armed with 1 pendent, 6 teams mannaged to get passed the Temple Guards for the win.
- The closest win was in "The Broken Wing of Icarus"(season 2 layout 5). The green player, Jason, was just behind Olmec, getting off the slide to exit the Temple. A mere three seconds later, Jason crossed the Temple Gate.
- Olmec's eyes were voice-activated, indicated by the transition between Dee Bradley Baker's dual voice roles of Olmec and the announcer.
- In only two episodes did a player enter all twelve rooms of that particular layout. Of these, the only win was in "The Metal Beard of the Egyptian Queen" (Season 3).
- The only two episodes where the stone wall connecting the two southwesternmost rooms could not be broken were "The Keys to the Alhambra" (Season 1 layout 3), and "The Imperial Purple Robe of Empress Theodora" (Season 2 layout 2).
See also
External links
- The King's Storeroom - A large fan site devoted to everything related to the show. Includes an episode list and an interactive game
- Lotht2001 - Includes many screenshots of the show, with information on some of the more notable temple runs
- The Shrine of the Silver Monkey - A fansite with much information on the show as well as a variety of additional resources
- Rules of the game - includes a diagram of the labyrinth and description of each puzzle
