History EarlyInstallmentWeirdness / GameShows

** Early gameplay was much more relaxed, with lots of chatter from Alex in particular. Despite this, Trebek was a bit more strict on the rules, snapping at contestants who forgot to phrase in the form of a question, or gave a question clearly inappropriate for the category. His admonishments softened through the years, as did his hosting style as a whole, evolving into more of a SophisticatedAsHell DeadpanSnarker who's unafraid to laugh and joke around with the contestants without completely dropping his professional demeanor. He also spent much of the early episodes over-explaining the format at the start of each round, but as on most long-running game shows, this went away once the gameplay mechanics became more familiar to viewers and contestants alike.

The long-lived GameShows viewers see on TV daily - the classics and modern-day shows - are often the result of tweaking the format on the air. Rarely, if ever, does a long-running game show retain the exact feel, flavor, and whatever of its early weeks. Often, the producers haven't yet worked out all the kinks in the rules; some gameplay factor that may have worked well in test runs may turn out poorly when actually played out.

*** Grocery Game, the first four times it was played, awarded the actual groceries used for pricing.

** The first season of the Creator/AlexTrebek era was quite different from later seasons. As was the case in the Fleming era, contestants could ring in as soon as the clue was revealed, and the buzzers made noises to indicate that someone had rung in. Trebek reportedly found the buzzer system a nuisance, and many contestants were screwed over by knee-jerk buzz-ins, so the buzzers were modified at the start of the second season to allow a ring-in only after the clue was finished, and temporarily lock out the contestant if he or she rings in too soon.

** The presentation of Daily Doubles evolved considerably over the years. For the first month or so, the sound effect was a sweeping note on a synthesizer, as opposed to the synthesized "trilling" used to this day. Also, relatedly to the change in how clues were displayed, the visual presntation changed considerably. Initially, the camera would cut to the clue monitor, which would flash a "Daily Double" logo before displaying the clue's text. After a while, the cameras would instead cut to a shot of the contestant with the clue's text displayed to the side as he or she attempted to respond, and a few seasons later, the Daily Double logo began to "flip" out of its corresponding monitor and fill the screen for a couple seconds before cutting to the contestant and clue text.

*** Penny Ante (now retired): Originally, the contestant had to guess the right prices before accumulating 100 pennies from wrong guesses and ''real'' pennies would shoot down from the game board for every mistake he or she made; also, the two correct prices could be anywhere among the eight possible prices on the board. It was later simplified to giving the contestant three big, fake pennies, and taking one away for every wrong guess, and separating the price possibilities to two groups of four for each item.

* Cannonball allowed players to stick their feet out to kick the Gladiators off their platform. However, after an infamous incident where Malibu was kicked in the face and was wounded, players were forced to keep their legs back and anyone doing that would have that pass disqualified.