h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Does anyone remember the Adventure Game? It was shown in the 1980s and involved a talking aspidistra (an alien) and the final part of the game consisted of a contestant walking across a board, section by section, Once the contestant has moved, an invisible object (not to the tv audience) would move. If the contestant moved on to the same square as the object they would be vaporised - great stuff when your five anyway.

Anyway, can anyone remember an episode with John Craven (from Newsround) on a train? What I want to know is why was he there?

Was it a show on BBC2 that created spin offs like 'The Crystal Maze' and 'Fort Boyard'?
Is an 'aspidistra' a plant?

I thought it was the Children's BBC show Incredible Games. This talking lift with a yellow plasic wig took contestants up and down a building with the puzzles in. One of the puzzles was this board game with the Dark Lord, and if he touched you, you were vapourised.

I only remember it because of his catchphrase

MOVE!

All i remember is that it was the early 80s and maybe a little like The Crystal Maze.

An aspidistra is a plant - it used to stand around and wobble a lot when it was speaking.

My memories of childrens programmes in the 80's are a little hazy, as I was less than ten at the time.

Do you remember Orm and Cheep? That was a really great puppet animation narrated by the multi-tallented Richard Briers. Oh how I loved that programme.

I believe the plant was the host Uncle cannot remember the name, and yes the similarities to Crystal Maze ar their, but these were all team games with "celebrities"

A quick search has turned up this;

[URL removed by moderator]

I am now going to read it and reminiss

CH

Yes I remember this, though sorry I don't know why John Craven was on any trains. Didn't all contestants travel on some sort of contraption to "get to" the alien planet. Logically this would be a rocket, though, and not a train. The puzzle was largely (if not completely) the same every week asI recall. Celebrities who took part had to swear that they had never watched a previous episode. All I remember with particular clarity was that contestants were given "alien" coinage with which to buy things or bribe characters. There was some bizarre logic to the coinage, which was identified by colour and shape. Thus a purple triangle was worth 3 yellow circles or whatever. Part of the puzzle was to work out the relative value of the coins before you had to spend any of them, otherwise you might find you'd just given your largest coin away for a very small return.

I must have been thinking of a completely unrelated programme, but with a similar format. When was this programme aired origially?

People always seem to remember the 'souped-up' version of TAG; the one with the costumed/human-looking aliens whose names were all anagrams of Dragon (like the coins - Drognas?). This version had the grid crossing CSO 'empty space' and you had to choose which position to move to alternatley with an invisible 'thing' which would kill you.

Does anyone remember the original? If I'm right this included a maze game the participants played on a BBC computer! It also always had as the first puzzle a hexagon grid of patterns which you could only cross by stepping on a particular shape or colour; you weren't told which ones beforehand, of course!


I've always thought that this is the precursor (in Britain, at least) of such things as 'The Crystal Maze'. I've also though that a 'roving' version of either TCM or TAG instead of one where you are essentially taken from puzzle to puzzle would be much more interesting (although more confusing to film and watch!).

I seem to remeber in the earlier series the trick to geting over the maze was to do with working out the values of combinations of colours and shapes.

My memory is that the contestants were alway fairly well known British childrens presenters - (John Craven, Lesly Judd, Janet Ellis etc).

It wasn't as simple as you could go from a read square to a green square or a red triangle - but it was a bit like that.

There was also a similar show on ITV about the same time called something like secret agent which was a bit more like crystal maze in that it was members of the public and you could win prizes.

Everyone had to go 'gronda gronda' to the aspidistra and the chap who ws the guide couldn't hear anything unless he put his glasses on and there was a chap who only spoke backwards.

I remeber the backwards chap cos we all tried it at school but were rubbish at it.

I don't remember Secret Agent, unfortunately.

The 'gornda, gronda'/aspidistra/talking backwards stuff was part of the 'new' TAG.

I'm afraid I'm a wee bit too young to remember the Adventure Game, but I do remember a game a bit like it in the early 90s. Does anyone remember Knightmare? It was basically the same except it was all Tolkeinesque and the contestants were kids. One of them would wear a daft looking helmet and the rest had to shout at him to tell him where to go.

Gronda gronda was the greeting.
There was also an ear trumpet and a pair of glasses which could be used at one point to make a telescope.

The money was simple. Colours in rainbow order eg red = 1, orange = 2, yellow = 3 and so on, multiplied by the number of sides, so an orange triangle would be worth 6 (2 multiplied by 3 sides). Well maybe not simple as no-one ever seemed to work it out.

Doogy rev was another catchphrase I think, I am pretty sure it was from the Adventure Game and I am sure the plant was just plain 'Uncle'.

Ahhh Knightmare .... memories!

The Plant was just called Uncle.
The Old Adventure game was excellent, but they changed it to the new format after only a few series.
Bring it back I say, it made excellent viewing, and whilst you are at it bring back, Runaround and Uncle Bentiens Potty Time! (Please correct spelling!)

R :o)

The board at the end was where you had to escape The Vortex. If you got vortexed then you missed the train home. I remember one team had some milk with them, and placed it on one of the nodes on the board, the vortex went after that. The commentator (or someone anyhoo) said it was now evaporated milk Hee, well it was funny when I was seven, or some other such age One of the puzzles involved blowing into a tube, to raise some floats, or something similar Until later....
BCNU - Crescent

I'd forgotten 'Doogy rev' - I'm glad I'm not the only person who remebers the backwards speaking chap.

Knigtmares - was a wee bit later wasn't it. It had Brian Blessed doing it for a while - there was one person in a helmet who couldn't see and the rest of the team had to guide them.

Had a sort of "Remeber team time is running out ..." catchphrase