If You Were a Fan of the original Press Your Luck (The one with the Whammy!) Read This :-(

The MC of that show Peter Tomarken has tragically died in a Beechcraft airplane.

He was no Bob Barker, Monty Hall, Gene Rayburn, Allen Ludden, Alex Trebek, Chuck Woolery, Peter Marshall, Pat Sajak, Bob Eubanks or even Dick Clark but hey being associated a red cartoon figure who loves to take money from the contestants who "Pressed their Luck" and lost is not a bad thing. In the words of Diamond Dallas Page; "Its a Good Thing."

Most of the other shows he hosted did not last as long as PYL did. "Hit Man" and "Bargain Hunters" both lasted half a year and the later Tomarken admited sucked.

BH was a poor attempt at copying The (New) Price is Right anyway. Three "Bargain Games" were played (Bargain Quiz, Bargain Trap, and Bargain Busters in that order and everyshow), with two different contestants in each game. The winners of each of those Bargain Games would move on a final round in which they contestants had to buy three items and one who had saved the most money would be the big winner of the day and won a Grand Prize.

Hit Man took advantage of the Space Invaders type video games and used it as a backdrop for a Pop Quiz question/answer competition (meaning talk about a subject then ask questions about it), that attacted a cult following. In round one only the challangers played in a trvia race and the object was to get their "Hit Man" to reach the finish line. Just remember everything that was discribe to you before the game about a certain subject. The two challangers who did that face off with the champion in round two. In round two the game is a trivia Space Invaders type game. The challanger who reach the finish line in round one would receive Four "Hit Men" and the second only got Three. The Champ got Seven Hit Men. It object is for the Champ to knock out all of the challangers men (seven total) before one of the challangers did that to the champ. Also only one of the challangers could be in play at a time. They lost a turn if one of their Hit Men were lost. How do you knock out the rival Hit Men? Simple retain as much as you could from the second topic talked about (Two subjects given in each show), ring in, get a question correct and one of your rival Hit Men die. Get it wrong and its one of your own that gets killed. Winner gets to play a Connect Four type game called "Triple Crown" for $10,000. Here their are columns that range from having one slot to nine slots. Fill three of them complete with "Money Men" and you win $10,000 (you did won a lesser amount if you got one or two column's completed). You are asked questions on both subjects that were talked about are the show. Miss or Pass on a question and the column were your were working on is dead and you need to start a new one. Game ends in a loss after 60 seconds or if you killed all your columns and it did happen once.

"Wipeout" lasted for one year in the United States but versions outside of America had better runs. In Wipeout contestants were given a subject and had to find the correct answers and avoid the incorrect answers or "Wipeout's." Finding a Wipeout means you lost your money and your turn in the first round, or giving your rival a chance to steal the game in the second round. End Game is similer to TPIR's race game in which a contestant runs back and forth from the gameboard to find 6 correct answers among 12 possible answers (the other six are wrong, but the term Wipeout is not used here) in order to win a new car.

Sorry about your hard life Peter T. Hope the next one is better.

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