TV Shows I Grew Up On: Legends of the Hidden Temple

When I was writing last week's Blank I Grew Up On, it made me think of another wonderful game show found on Nickelodeon (I might end up having a Nickelodeon game show theme for the next couple weeks come to think of it...), Legends of the Hidden Temple.  Each episode would start with six pairs of kids competing to see which pair would get to find this week's treasure in the hidden temple.  Each episode had a theme filled with historical facts and questions about some different artifact.

The contest was split into three elimination challenges.  First, the six teams must cross a moat with whatever method they are told to use (swing across using ropes, use a raft, swim, etc.  The first four teams to completely cross first and hit the button on the other side continue to the next round: The Steps of Knowledge.  The remaining four teams answer trivia questions to step down from the steps of knowledge.  Each right answer moves the team down another step.  The first two teams to the bottom of the stairs move on to the final round of team elimination.  The last two teams compete in different physical challenges that fit that episode's theme to earn parts of pendants of life.  After three of these competitions, the team with more pendant parts get to run through the hidden temple and try to find the artifact and bring it back out for the grand prize.

The temple itself is a large maze of various rooms that each have some trick or method to access adjacent rooms.  Contestants are told which room the artifact is in and must find their way into that room and get back out of the temple within a time limit to win.  However, there are three temple guards hidden within the temple that are out to catch them.  Generally, the guards were hidden along the prescribed path to get to the artifact in places the contestants were likely to trigger.  That is, if a player had to find a button in a sarcophagus to open the door and the room had multiple sarcophagi, then a guard would probably be in one of the others.  If the contestants had a full pendant of life, they could give it to the guard to keep going through the temple.  At most, a team could have 1.5 pendants of life from the last round of team elimination and another half was in the temple somewhere along the path they were meant to follow.  However, most teams only ever had one and so would be eliminated when the third guard was found (the first guard took the pendant, the second guard captured kid 1 of the team, and the third guard captured kid 2).

I always wondered if the kids had to travel along a certain path (the one the audience was shown/told about before the team entered the temple) or if they were free to try going other ways.  If they could only ever go along a certain path that it seemed designed to never let a team win ever.  I guess some teams did win, but I never witnessed these episodes.  This sort of goes along the lines of Nick Arcade where I understand that not every team can win, but at the same time it seemed unnecessarily harsh.  Of course, other times the kids were just idiots.