For a genre that started all the way back in 1941 with a quiz show called Uncle Jim’s Question Bee, the humble TV game show has certainly come a long way. Some of these developments have been good. Some have been bad. Some have been absolutely goddamn insane. Today we’re taking a tour of the latter. And would you believe, it’s not all from Japan!... Just a lot of it.

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10. Nick Arcade
A poorly thought out attempt to capitalise on the early '90s video game craze in kid’s TV show format. While the technology obviously wasn’t really there, I’m also inclined to believe that the general quality of contestants may have been slightly higher than that shown by Nadine, featured here.



9. Colpo Grosso (Big Shot)
You can thank Silvio Berlusconi for this one. An Italian TV show from the late '80s that featured sequence of games set in a casino-style environment, almost all of which required women to remove their clothes. At other times the women seemed to remove their clothes without the contestants having to do anything. The really important thing seemed to be that the women removed their clothes.



8. Scavengers
It’s 1994, Gladiators is off the air for a few months and the network needs a replacement that brings with it the same degree of scintillating energy and ridiculous set pieces. And so Scavengers was born, a game show set in the far distant future where contestants had to complete bizarre tasks on a rapidly decomposing spaceship. Over-conceived but strangely compelling.



7. Sasuke (Ninja Warrior)
Contestants try and make their way through a four stage obstacle course of almost impossible complexity. The competition has run 27 times since 1997 and has been completed by only four people out of the almost 2700 who have competed.



6. Distraction
Another show of Japanese origin that made its way around the world, Distraction was basically a straight-up game show mixed with the outtakes from a particularly creative Libyan interrogation chamber. In the UK it was hosted by Jimmy Carr, who seemed to get just a little too much satisfaction out of the piteous scrambling of his contestants. I cannot imagine they could pay me enough money to take part in this.



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