History of famous online games in the US

Deal or No Deal

Getting its start in the Netherlands back in 2000, the US version of Deal or No Deal, with Howie Mandel as the host started in 2005. The game contests are quite simple. A player is asked to select a briefcase from one of 26 held by 26 lovely ladies. Each contains a dollar amount; varying from 1 cent to $1,000,000. After that, they open several cases to reveal their dollar amount; there’s no quiz, no test knowledge; the contests are just chance. Those are thus eliminated from play. Then “The Banker”, a mysterious person in a darkened room calls the host to offer a sum to buy the player’s case. This is where the phrase “Deal or no deal” comes in. If the player rejects the offer, they open more cases, and another offer follows.
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Jeopardy

Back in the 1950s, contestants on American TV quiz show contests seemed incredibly smart. Charles Van Doren was on the quiz show “Twenty One”, and seemed unstoppable. Then the truth came out: the games were rigged, and it was a major scandal; it was even a popular movie. It was then that Merv Griffin got the idea for a quiz show called “What’s the Question?” His idea: give the contestants the answers, and have them give a question as a reply. They would win money as the prizes, and the show would be a simple knowledge test. NBC bought it and “Jeopardy!” was born. Art Fleming was the host and Don Pardo its announcer.
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The Price is Right

Getting its start back in 1956, the Price is Right quiz host Bill Cullen led four contestants through a series of bids on various products. They didn’t win money or answer questions; it was a test knowledge of prices. Whoever got closest to the price without going over won the prizes, and whoever won the most prizes by the end of the show was the grand winner of the quiz and came back to play again. That quiz version ended in 1965, and a new one arose in 1972 with Bob Barker as host.
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Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

The Who Wants to be a Millionaire quiz show got its start in the UK. In 1998, David Briggs created a show to test knowledge of a series of people that answers questions with multiple choice answers. The show had a simple format: a series of contests to test knowledge to win money. The player would answer fifteen questions to win money prizes; potentially one million pounds. What made the show unique was that only one person would play at a time, they would get to see the answers before deciding if they wanted to go on, and rather than focus on speed, suspense was the key.
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Wheel of Fortune

Wheel of Fortune got its start in 1975, with Chuck Woolery as host and Susan Stafford as the letter turner. The game had no real test knowledge or quiz; three players just had contests to figure out phrases. To start with, all they knew were the number of letters in each word and the subject of: a person’s name, a phrase, a movie title etc. Players spun a large wheel with dollar values and “Bankrupt” signs. If they got a dollar amount, they asked for a letter. For each one in the puzzle, they got that amount. The tiles would light up, and Susan would turn them. The player answers questions or spins again. If they asked for a letter that wasn’t in the puzzle, landed on “Bankrupt” or got the puzzle wrong, play passed to the next player. Eventually, someone would solve the puzzle, and they then got to win money. They were then presented with a sort of store from which they’d buy furniture, clothes, and other prizes.
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Countdown

Countdown is a quiz show that got its start in 1982, and has been running ever since. It’s not an online game, but it is one of the longest running TV quiz shows where people do not win money, but prizes by competing in threetypesof contests. A celebrity appears as a dictionary adjudicator in each episode, and two contestants test knowledge as they try to form the longest word possible from nine random letter tiles in the first of the contests.
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