History NintendoHard / GameShows

** ''World'' wasn't much better, the beacons the player had to place needed to be put in ''exactly'' the right spot or the sensor wouldn't register. Not only that but they were just ''slightly'' top-heavy and had a tendency to fall over and need to be replaced in order to win. Add in the fact that the locations were given in such an order that it usually forced the player to wind through beacons they had already placed (thus accidentally knocking them over and having to spend extra time putting them back up) led to many grand prizes lost.

* ''[[Series/{{Wipeout 2008}} Wipeout]]'' imported the Japanese obstacle course show concept to the US... though they're nice enough to let you finish the course after you inevitably fall off the Big Balls. In fact, they play Nintendo Hardness for fun! ...At least until the last course of each episode, the Wipeout Zone, where failure means you have to swim ''back'' to the last checkpoint.
** In fact, Website/{{Cracked}} wrote an article on strategies to beat various game shows, and their strategy to win Wipeout was to deliberately fail every obstacle course so that you wouldn't waste time trying to (and mostly likely failing to) clear them. [[SchmuckBait If you actually try this]], have fun racking up time in the water which is edited out in broadcast but still adds to your clock.
*** Despite the above, it all pretty much comes down to whoever can complete the Wipeout Zone in the quickest time, if you're one of the finalists that is.
** In a different vein, the unrelated quiz show ''[[Series/{{Wipeout1988}} Wipeout]]'' (which had Peter Tomarken as host), which had a fairly standard setup of picking the correct answers from the false ones, all displayed on a big screen. But picking an incorrect answer zeroed your entire winnings so far, each round continued until either all the correct answers or all the 'wipeouts' were found, and the prizes weren't much anyway. Players would usually pass after a correct answer rather than risk another one, and you'd frequently see two players going home with nothing and the third with a hundred quid or so.

* ''Series/MillionDollarMoneyDrop''. The premise is that you start with a million, and you put how much you want to bet on the 4 answers given for a question, but you have to leave one answer with no money on it. If there is any money on an incorrect answer, you lose that money. Round 3 reduces the answers to three, but you must still leave one with no money. But in the final round, you have two answers, and you must still leave one answer with no money (turning it into an AllOrNothing question).
* The Nickelodeon kids show ''Series/LegendsOfTheHiddenTemple'' had a really low success rate (less than 25%). The locked doors guaranteed that you would have to go all the way to the far end of the temple and double back to retrieve the artifact (making Olmec's slogan "The Choices are Yours and Yours Alone" BlatantLies), and you had to perform tasks and solve puzzles in up to 12 rooms before you found it (some were simple, like the Throne of the Pretender, but others, like the Shrine of the Silver Monkey, messed EVERYONE up.) Adding to that were Temple Guards, who would "kidnap" you and would cause your teammate to have to start over from the beginning. Throw in [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking darkness, shadows, music, fog and Kirk Fogg]], and you'll see why more than one kid ended up walking in circles with confused looks on their faces. According to Fogg himself, this was very much intended, as the prize budget was fairly limited and they couldn't afford to have high win-rates.
** There were also some technical problems with the temple; namely, it appeared to have been designed, built, and tested with adults, meaning that some of the child contestants simply ''were not tall enough to complete the tasks.'' The two worst rooms for this were the Shrine of the Silver Monkey (the three pieces of the monkey puzzle were overhead and shorter contestants had to jump to reach them) and the Jester's Court (contestants had to line up with a wall painting and hit three buttons on the hands, feet, etc., and again, some kids just were not tall enough to reach.)
** Also not helping matters is that the kids were supposedly [[https://www.knowable.com/people-whove-won-nickelodeon-games-like-legends-of-the-hidden-temple-reveal-what-it-was-like given endless free pizza and soda]]. Probably not the best things to have before doing physical activity.
* The final round in ''Series/WhereInTheWorldIsCarmenSandiego'' wasn't too bad if you knew about geography, but the final round of ''Series/WhereInTimeIsCarmenSandiego'' was painful. In theory, The Trail of Time wasn't too bad. There were six gates you had to pass through. Carmen asked a history question with two answers (EXAMPLE: It's 1960. The song "We Shall Overcome" is dedicated to which US protest movement? Civil Rights or Anti-War?) Get the answer right, the gate opens automatically; Get it wrong, however, and you have to perform some time-consuming task like pulling up a rock with a rope or spinning a wheel. This wouldn't be too bad, except for the fact that they didn't put the gates in order. They were generally scattered around, and all the kids had to work with were a few blinking lights and the Engine Crew leading them around with airport flashlights. It was confusing enough to fuel the theory that they made the Trail of Time deliberately confusing so they wouldn't have to pay out the grand prize as often (Since ''Time'' was created after ''World's'' budget was cut down.)
** ''World'' wasn't much better, the beacons the player had to place needed to be put in ''exactly'' the right spot or the sensor wouldn't register. Not only that but they were just ''slightly'' top-heavy and had a tendency to fall over and need to be replaced in order to win. Add in the fact that the locations were given in such an order that it usually forced the player to wind through beacons they had already placed (thus accidentally knocking them over and having to spend extra time putting them back up) led to many grand prizes lost.

* The UK kids GameShow ''Series/{{Knightmare}}'' had 80 teams challenge the Dungeon of Deceit over the course of 8 series. Only eight of them won; 72 of them failed. The first and third series didn't have a single winner.
* ''[[Series/{{Wipeout 2008}} Wipeout]]'' imported the Japanese obstacle course show concept to the US... though they're nice enough to let you finish the course after you inevitably fall off the Big Balls. In fact, they play Nintendo Hardness for fun! ...At least until the last course of each episode, the Wipeout Zone, where failure means you have to swim ''back'' to the last checkpoint.
** In fact, Website/{{Cracked}} wrote an article on strategies to beat various game shows, and their strategy to win Wipeout was to deliberately fail every obstacle course so that you wouldn't waste time trying to (and mostly likely failing to) clear them. [[SchmuckBait If you actually try this]], have fun racking up time in the water which is edited out in broadcast but still adds to your clock.
*** Despite the above, it all pretty much comes down to whoever can complete the Wipeout Zone in the quickest time, if you're one of the finalists that is.
** In a different vein, the unrelated quiz show ''[[Series/{{Wipeout1988}} Wipeout]]'' (which had Peter Tomarken as host), which had a fairly standard setup of picking the correct answers from the false ones, all displayed on a big screen. But picking an incorrect answer zeroed your entire winnings so far, each round continued until either all the correct answers or all the 'wipeouts' were found, and the prizes weren't much anyway. Players would usually pass after a correct answer rather than risk another one, and you'd frequently see two players going home with nothing and the third with a hundred quid or so.

* ''Series/DealOrNoDeal'', at least in the US version, brought down scores of contestants who failed to win the top prize of $1,000,000. Many of them had children who needed college funding, and as soon as the banker slapped a tempting offer on the board, they were done. Other playthroughs saw contestants knock out all of top dollar amounts and leave with as little as ''five dollars''. Worse, contestants have picked the suitcase with the top prize, and even some cases where the top dollar amount was ''doubled'' or ''tripled'' because of a special event (Thanksgiving, season 2 premiere promotional event). But the worst failing of all was the total disappointment of a great big publicity stunt with a '''$6,000,000''' top prize that needed an ''armored car with a police escort'' to get the money in safely. The top dollar amount was promptly revealed really early, and viewers fled the channel in the wake of another another mediocre playing of the show. The first time they put in multiple million-dollar cases, no one hit (In the last program of that particular run, contestant at least got a good deal out of it and bailed out just before revealing the last million case. His case? ''One cent!''). It took the second attempt and ''five'' million-dollar cases to get their first millionaire (she felt it worth the gamble since she was down to the last million and $200,000--either way she would walk away with major money). The second and ''last'' millionaire got lucky and ended the game early by knocking out all the non-million cases with ''three'' to spare. Yes, the show offered sextuple its top prize and struggled to give away the normal amount, with nobody taking away more than six figures even when there were even multiple seven-figure increments on the board. In the end, the series was demoted from a primetime show to a syndicated show and the top prize got slashed to $500,000 because it wasn't delivering results. That also stalled out and led to complete cancellation.

** Also not helping matters is that the kids were supposedly [[https://www.knowable.com/people-whove-won-nickelodeon-games-like-legends-of-the-hidden-temple-reveal-what-it-was-like given endless free pizza and soda]]. Probably not what you want to have before doing physical activity.

* The final round in ''Series/WhereInTheWorldIsCarmenSandiego'' wasn't too bad if you knew about geography, but the final round of ''Series/WhereInTimeIsCarmenSandiego'' was painful. In theory, The Trail of Time wasn't too bad. There were six gates you had to pass through. Carmen asked a history question with two answers (EXAMPLE: It's 1960. The song "We Shall Overcome" is dedicated to which US protest movement? Civil Rights or Anti-War?) Get the answer right, the gate opens automatically; Get it wrong, however, and you have to perform some time-consuming task like pulling up a rock with a rope or spinning a wheel. This wouldn't be too bad, except fot the fact that they didn't put the gates in order. They were generally scattered around, and all the kids had to work with were a few blinking lights and the Engine Crew leading them around with airport flashlights. It was confusing enough to fuel the theory that they made the Trail of Time deliberately confusing so they wouldn't have to pay out the grand prize as often (Since ''Time'' was created after ''World's'' budget was cut down.)

* The Nickelodeon kids show ''Series/LegendsOfTheHiddenTemple'' had a really low success rate (less than 25%). The locked doors guaranteed that you would have to go all the way to the far end of the temple and double back to retrieve the artifact (making Olmec's slogan "The Choices are Yours and Yours Alone" BlatantLies), and you had to perform tasks and solve puzzles in up to 12 rooms before you found it (some were simple, like the Throne of the Pretender, but others, like the Shrine of the Silver Monkey, messed EVERYONE up.) Adding to that were Temple Guards, who would "kidnap" you and would cause your teammate to have to start over from the beginning. Throw in [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking darkness, shadows, music, fog and Kirk Fogg]], and you'll see why more than one kid ended up walking in circles with confused looks on their faces.

** Pay the Rent is an extremely difficult game to win. The player has to put a pair of grocery items at each tier (except for the the top tier) and following pair has to be more expensive than the pair before it, and then the single item at the very top has to be more expensive than the last pair of items. The player can either quit and take what they won ($1000, $5000, or $10,000) or keep going and risk losing everything should they screw up. If you use most of the expensive items too early, you're pretty much boned. To date, only ''two'' people had won the $100,000 in the history of the game.

* The Nickelodeon kids show ''Series/LegendsOfTheHiddenTemple'' had a really low success rate (less than 25%). The locked doors guaranteed that you would have to go all the way to the far end of the temple and double back to retrieve the artifact (making Olmec's slogan "The Choices are Yours and Yours Alone" BlatantLies), and you had to perform tasks and solve puzzles in up to 12 rooms before you found it (some were simple, like the Throne of the Pretender, but others, like the Shrine of the Silver Monkey, messed EVERYONE up.) Adding to that were Temple Guards, who would "kidnap" you and would cause your teammate to have to start over from the beginning. Throw in [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking darkness, shadows, music, fog, Kirk Fogg]], and you'll see why more than one kid ended up walking in circles with confused looks on their faces.

* ''Series/MinuteToWinIt'' is a prime example of this trope. The first few levels are usually simple, but once you hit around Level 6, they truly start getting Nintendo Hard (try bouncing six marbles into tiny thimbles, or keeping three marbles on a slanted table with the back of a spoon for a full minute, or using a chopstick in one hand to make a stable tower of ten metal nuts on a wooden board in the ''other'' hand). But the real head of the beast is ''Supercoin'', the Million Dollar game. You have to bounce a quarter off of a table into a water jug 15 feet away, with the hole being a mere 1.75 inches wide (barely larger than the quarter itself). Needless to say, it's basically a LuckBasedMission, and of the eight people who have tried it (only one of whom got there the "legitimate" way, mind you), all have failed. You know something's wrong when [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPdcroF-Fwc#t=34 only the host of the Turkish version can actually beat it in less than 60 seconds]]. And ''he was only demonstrating it to a contestant.'' It got so bad that the audience started groaning upon hearing the game's name. That's how stupidly hard it is.

** In a different vein, the unrelated UK quiz show ''Wipeout'' (a port from the U.S., which had Peter Tomarken as host), which had a fairly standard setup of picking the correct answers from the false ones, all displayed on a big screen. But picking an incorrect answer zeroed your entire winnings so far, each round continued until either all the correct answers or all the 'wipeouts' were found, and the prizes weren't much anyway. Players would usually pass after a correct answer rather than risk another one, and you'd frequently see two players going home with nothing and the third with a hundred quid or so.

* ''Series/DealOrNoDeal'', at least in the US version, brought down scores of contestants who failed to win the top prize of $1,000,000. Many of them had children who needed college funding, and as soon as the banker slapped a tempting offer on the board, they were done. Other playthroughs saw contestants knock out all of top dollar amounts and leave with as little as ''five dollars''. Worse, contestants have picked the suitcase with the top prize, and even some cases where the top dollar amount was ''doubled'' or ''tripled'' because of a special event (Thanksgiving, season 2 premiere promotional event). But the worst failing of all was the total disappointment of a great big publicity stunt with a '''$6,000,000''' top prize that needed an ''armored car with a police escort'' to get the money in safely. The top dollar amount was promptly revealed really early, and viewers fled the channel in the wake of another another mediocre playing of the show. The first time they put in multiple million-dollar cases, no one hit (In the last program of that particular run, contestant at least got a good deal out of it and bailed out just before revealing the last million case. His case? ''One cent!''). It took the second attempt and ''five'' million-dollar cases to get their first millionaire (she felt it worth the gamble since she was down to the last million and $200,000--either way she would walk away with major money). The second and ''last'' millionaire got lucky and ended the game early by knocking out all the non-million cases with ''three'' to spare. Yes, the show offered sextuple its top prize and struggled to give away the normal amount, with nobody taking away more than six figures even when there were even multiple seven-figure increments on the board. In the end, the series was demoted from a primetime show to a syndicated show and the top prize got slashed to $500,000 because it wasn't delivering results. Which also stalled out and led to complete cancellation.

* ''Series/WinBenSteinsMoney'' saw Stein enter the game against the remaining contestants after the second round, with $5,000 of Stein's money up for grabs. However, ''very'' rarely did any of the contestants win that money, because Stein's massive intelligence meant he hardly ever got a question wrong.
* ''Series/DealOrNoDeal'', at least in the US version, brought down scores of contestants who failed to win the top prize of $1,000,000. Many of them had children who needed college funding, and as soon as the banker slapped a tempting offer on the board, they were done. Other playthroughs saw contestants knock out all of top dollar amounts and leave with as little as ''five dollars''. Worse, contestants have picked the suitcase with the top prize, and even some cases where the top dollar amount was ''doubled'' or ''tripled'' because of a special event (Thanksgiving, season 2 premiere promotional event). But the worst failing of all was the total disappointment of a great big publicity stunt with a '''$6,000,000''' top prize that needed an ''armored car with a police escort'' to get the money in safely. The top dollar amount was promptly revealed really early, and viewers fled the channel in the wake of another another mediocre playing of the show. It wasn't until '''''HALF''''' of the 26 cases were loaded with the million that ''one'' contestant in the US version's entire history won. Yes, the show offered sextuple its top prize and struggled to give away the normal amount, with nobody taking away more than six figures even when there were even multiple seven-figure increments on the board. In the end, the series was demoted from a primetime show to a syndicated show and the top prize got slashed to $500,000 because it wasn't delivering results. Which also stalled out and led to complete cancellation.

** Pay the Rent is an extremely difficult game to win. The player has to put a pair of grocery items at each tier (except for the the top tier) and following pair has to be more expensive than the pair before it, and then the single item at the very top has to be more expensive than the last pair of items. The player can either quit and take what they won ($1000, $5000, or $10,000) or keep going and risk losing everything should they screw up. If you use most of the expensive items too early, you're pretty much boned. To date, only ''one'' person had won the $100,000 in the history of the game.

* ''MillionDollarMoneyDrop''. The premise is that you start with a million, and you put how much you want to bet on the 4 answers given for a question, but you have to leave one answer with no money on it. If there is any money on an incorrect answer, you lose that money. Round 3 reduces the answers to three, but you must still leave one with no money. But in the final round, you have two answers, and you must still leave one answer with no money (turning it into an AllOrNothing question).

* UK show ''TheCrystalMaze'' was won by only a few teams in its entire run. The individual challenges to earn crystals ranged from dead simple to unfair, but what ultimately decided the difference between winning an adventure holiday or going home with only a souvenir paperweight was the Crystal Dome, a giant hollow wind chamber in the shape of a crystal in which the team would have a period of five seconds per crystal to grab at slips of foil, hoping to collect 100 more gold ones than silver ones.

* ''ThePriceIsRight'' post-Roger Dobkowitz (season 37-present) has been accused by longtime fans of being Nintendo Hard - from brutal pricing game setups to impossible to bid showcases, especially killing Double Showcase Winners. On the week of January 11-15, 2010, only three games were won.

* UK kids GameShow ''{{Raven}}'' contains The Way Of The Warrior, an assault course played 3 times a week over each season's four week run. It's played by the contestant currently in last place, and it keeps being played until it's defeated. Over the first 8 seasons, it's been attempted 101 times, and won just four, and each time it's come back harder the next year... Not that no-one defeating it stops them upping the difficulty between seasons, it simply isn't guaranteed to be increased in difficulty unless someone beats it.

* ''Series/DealOrNoDeal'', at least in the US version, brought down scores of contestants who failed to win the top prize of $1,000,000. Many of them had children who needed college funding, and as soon as the banker slapped a tempting offer on the board, they were done. Other playthroughs saw contestants knock out all of top dollar amounts and leave with as little as ''five dollars''. Worse, contestants have picked the suitcase with the top prize, and even some cases where the top dollar amount was ''doubled'' or ''tripled'' because of a special event (Thanksgiving, season 2 premiere promotional event). But the worst failing of all was the total disappointment of a great big publicity stunt with a '''$6,000,000''' top prize that needed an ''armored car with a police escort'' to get the money in safely. The top dollar amount was promptly revealed really early, and viewers fled the channel in the wake of another another mediocre playing of the show. It wasn't until '''''HALF''''' of the 26 cases were loaded with the million that ''one'' contestant in the US version's entire history won. Yes, the show offered sextuple its top prize and struggled to give away the normal amount, with nobody taking away more than six figures even when there were even multiple seven-figure increments on the board. In the end, the series was demoted from a primetime show to a syndicated show and the top prize got slashed to $500,000 because it wasn't delivering results.

* ''Series/DealOrNoDeal'' brought down scores of contestants who failed to win the top prize of $1,000,000. Many of them had children who needed college funding, and as soon as the banker slapped a tempting offer on the board, they were done. Other playthroughs saw contestants knock out all of top dollar amounts and leave with as little as ''five dollars''. Worse, contestants have picked the suitcase with the top prize, and even some cases where the top dollar amount was ''doubled'' or ''tripled'' because of a special event (Thanksgiving, season 2 premiere promotional event). But the worst failing of all was the total disappointment of a great big publicity stunt with a '''$6,000,000''' top prize that needed an ''armored car with a police escort'' to get the money in safely. The top dollar amount was promptly revealed really early, and viewers fled the channel in the wake of another another mediocre playing of the show. It wasn't until '''''HALF''''' of the 26 cases were loaded with the million that ''one'' contestant in the show's entire history won. Yes, the show offered sextuple its top prize and struggled to give away the normal amount. In the end, the series was demoted from a primetime show to a syndicated show and the top prize got slashed to $500,000 because it wasn't delivering results.

* ''Series/DealOrNoDeal'' brought down scores of contestants who failed to win the top prize of $1,000,000. Many of them had children who needed college funding, and as soon as the banker slapped a tempting offer on the board, they were done. Other playthroughs saw contestants knock out all of top dollar amounts and leave with as little as ''five dollars''. Worse was the even bigger disappointment of a great big publicity stunt with a '''$6,000,000''' top prize which ended in another mediocre playing of the show. It wasn't until '''''HALF''''' of the 26 cases were loaded with the million that ''one'' contestant in the show's entire history won. Yes, the show offered sextuple its top prize and struggled to give away the normal amount. In the end, the series was demoted from a primetime show to a syndicated show and the top prize got slashed to $500,000 because it wasn't delivering results.

* ''Series/DealOrNoDeal'' brought down scores of contestants who failed to win the top prize of $1,000,000. Many of them had children who needed college funding, and as soon as the banker slapped a tempting offer on the board, they were done. Other playthroughs saw contestants knock out all of top dollar amounts and leave with as little as ''five dollars''. Worse was the even bigger disappointment of a great big publicity stunt with a '''$6,000,000''' top prize which ended in another mediocre playing of the show. It wasn't until '''''HALF'''' of the 26 cases were loaded with the million that ''one'' contestant in the show's entire history won. Yes, the show offered sextuple its top prize and struggled to give away the normal amount. In the end, the series was demoted from a primetime show to a syndicated show and the top prize got slashed to $500,000 because it wasn't delivering results.

* MillionDollarMoneyDrop. The premise is that you start with a million, and you put how much you want to bet on the 4 answers given for a question, but you have to leave one answer with no money on it. If there is any money on an incorrect answer, you lose that money. Round 3 reduces the answers to three, but you must still leave one with no money. But in the final round, you have two answers, and you must still leave one answer with no money (turning it into an AllOrNothing question).
* The Nickelodeon kids show ''Series/LegendsOfTheHiddenTemple'' had a really low success rate (less than 25%). The locked doors guaranteed that you would have to go all the way to the far end of the temple and double back to retrieve the artifact (making Olmec's slogan "The Choices are Yours and Yours Alone" BlatantLies,) and you had to perform tasks and solve puzzles in up to 12 rooms before you found it (some were simple, like the Throne of the Pretender, but others, like the Shrine of the Silver Monkey, messed EVERYONE up.) Adding to that were Temple Guards, who would "kidnap" you and would cause your teammate to have to start over from the beginning. Throw in [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking darkness, shadows, music, fog, Kirk Fogg]], and you'll see why more than one kid ended up walking in circles with confused looks on their faces.
** There were also some technical problems with the temple; namely, it appeared to have been designed, built, and tested with adults, meaning that some of the child contestants simply '''were not tall enough to complete the tasks.'' The two worst rooms for this were the Shrine of the Silver Monkey (the three pieces of the monkey puzzle were overhead and shorter contestants had to jump to reach them) and the Jester's Court (contestants had to line up with a wall painting and hit three buttons on the hands, feet, etc., and again, some kids just were not tall enough to reach.)

* ''Series/MinuteToWinIt'' is a prime example of this trope. The first few levels are usually simple, but once you hit around Level 6, they truly start getting Nintendo Hard (try bouncing six marbles into tiny thimbles, or keeping three marbles on a slanted table with the back of a spoon for a full minute, or using a chopstick in one hand to make a stable tower of ten metal nuts on a wooden board in the ''other'' hand). But the real head of the beast is ''Supercoin'', the Million Dollar game. You have to bounce a quarter off of a table into a water jug 15 feet away, with the hole being a mere 1.75 inches wide (barely larger than the quarter itself). Needless to say, it's basically a LuckBasedMission, and of the eight people who have tried it (only one of whom got there the "legitimate" way, mind you), all have failed. You know something's wrong when [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPdcroF-Fwc#t=34 only the host of the Turkish version can actually beat it in less than 60 seconds]]. And ''he was only demonstrating it to a contestant''
** It's getting so bad that now the audience even groans upon hearing the game's name. That's how stupidly hard it is.
* ''ThePriceIsRight'' post-Roger Dobkowitz (season 37-present) has been accused by longtime fans of being ''Nintendo Hard'' - from brutal pricing game setups to impossible to bid showcases, especially killing Double Showcase Winners. On the week of January 11-15, 2010, only three games were won.

** Pay the Rent is an extremely difficult game to win at. The player has to put a pair of grocery items at each tier (except for the the top tier) and following pair has to be more expensive than the pair before it, and then the single item at the very top has to be more expensive than the last pair of items. The player can either quit and take what they won ($1000, $5000, or $10,000) or keep going and risk losing everything should they screw up. If you use most of the expensive items too early, you're pretty much boned. To date, only ''one'' person had won the $100,000 in the history of the game.

* The earlier UK kids GameShow ''Series/{{Knightmare}}'' had a similar record- 80 teams challenged the Dungeon of Deceit over the course of 8 series. 72 of them failed. The first and third series didn't have a single winner.

* The Winner's Big Money Game from ''Series/SaleOfTheCentury''. Here, [[TimedMission you have to solve a series of six-clue puzzles within the time limit]]. It was originally five in 25 seconds, later changed to 4 in 20 seconds--either way, you have to get each subject within five seconds on average. There is virtually no margin for error in this bonus round. If you miss twice, it's game over, and even though you're still allowed to pass, you have to be pretty lucky in order to get the rest of them. What makes it worse is that each clue takes slightly more than one second to appear on the screen, and there's also the dreaded "You must stop the clock before it hits double zero." Because the clock counts in single seconds as opposed to tenths-of-a-second as seen on its sister show ''Series/{{Scrabble}}'', contestants can be, and often are, screwed at the very last second, because even if they buzz in just microseconds before the bell rings, it still counts as a loss because the clock reads 00. Worse, if a champion was playing for the car, and they lost, they had to retire as an "[[BlatantLies undefeated champion]]". BTW, of the 64 Winner's Big Money Games that were a part of the initial package from [[Creator/{{GSN}} GSN]], only 22 were won, with numerous losing streaks along the way.

** In fact, Website/{{Cracked}} wrote an article on strategies to beat various game shows, and their strategy to win Wipeout was to deliberately fail every obstacle course so that you wouldn't waste time trying to (and mostly likely failing to) clear them.

* ''[[Series/{{Wipeout 2008}} Wipeout]]'' imported the Japanese obstacle course show concept to the US... though they're nice enough to let you finish the course after you inevitably fall off the Big Balls. In fact, they play Nintendo Hardness for fun!

** ''NinjaWarrior'' is just pure obstacle course hell, with the obstacles becoming more and more difficult with each season. In all of its 23+ seasons of running, only ''three'' people have successfully completed all four levels of the competition. In fact, the show's design team have admitted that they try each tournament to make the ''first round'' so tough that ''no one'' could beat it.

** ''UnbeatableBanzuke'' mostly involves either getting through an insanely complicated obstacle course using an unusual method of travel (like walking on one's hands, on stilts, with a wheelbarrow, etc.), completing an oversized children's game, or performing as many exercise feats as possible within a time limit. Out of the hundreds that try their luck, only 2 or 3 on average manage to succeed, with the record before the show's cancellation being 7 wins.

* The earlier UK kids GameShow ''{{Knightmare}}'' had a similar record- 80 teams challenged the Dungeon of Deceit over the course of 8 series. 72 of them failed. The first and third series didn't have a single winner.

* ''Series/WinBenSteinsMoney'' saw Stein enter the game against the remaining contestants after the second round, with $5,000 of Stein's money up for grabs. However, ''very'' rarely did any of the contestants win that money, because Stein's massive intelligence meant he hardly ever got a question wrong.

* ''Series/MinuteToWinIt'' is a prime example of this trope. The first few levels are usually simple, but once you hit around Level 6, they truly start getting Nintendo Hard (try bouncing six marbles into tiny thimbles, or keeping three marbles on a slanted table with the back of a spoon for a full minute, or using a chopstick in one hand to make a stable tower of ten metal nuts on a wooden board in the ''other'' hand). But the real head of the beast is ''Supercoin'', the Million Dollar game. You have to bounce a quarter off of a table into a water jug 15 feet away, with the hole being a mere 1.75 inches wide (barely larger than the quarter itself). Needless to say, it's basically a LuckBasedMission, and of the eight people who have tried it (only one of whom got there the "legitimate" way, mind you), all have failed.

* The Nickelodeon kids show ''Series/LegendsOfTheHiddenTemple'' had a really low success rate (less than 25%). The locked doors guaranteed that the artifact you need to find was in the LAST room you'd enter, and you had to perform tasks and solve puzzles in up to 12 rooms before you found it (some were simple, like the Throne of the Pretender, but others, like the Shrine of the Silver Monkey, messed EVERYONE up.) Adding to that were Temple Guards, who would "kidnap" you and would cause your teammate to have to start over from the beginning. Throw in [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking darkness, shadows, music, fog and Kirk Fogg]], and you'll see why more than one kid ended up walking in circles with confused looks on their faces.

* The final round in ''WhereInTheWorldIsCarmenSandiego?'' wasn't too bad if you knew about geography, but the final round of ''WhereInTimeIsCarmenSandiego?'' was painful. In theory, The Trail of Time wasn't too bad. There were six gates you had to pass through. Carmen asked a history question with two answers (EXAMPLE: It's 1960. The song "We Shall Overcome" is dedicated to which US protest movement? Civil Rights or Anti-War?) Get the answer right, the gate opens automatically; Get it wrong, however, and you have to perform some time-consuming task like pulling up a rock with a rope or spinning a wheel. This wouldn't be too bad, except fot the fact that they didn't put the gates in order. They were generally scattered around, and all the kids had to work with were a few blinking lights and the Engine Crew leading them around with airport flashlights. It was confusing enough to fuel the theory that they made the Trail of Time deliberately confusing so they wouldn't have to pay out the grand prize as often (Since ''Time'' was created after ''World's'' budget was cut down.)

* The Nickelodeon kids show ''LegendsOfTheHiddenTemple'' had a really low success rate (less than 25%). The locked doors guaranteed that the artifact you need to find was in the LAST room you'd enter, and you had to perform tasks and solve puzzles in up to 12 rooms before you found it (some were simple, like the Throne of the Pretender, but others, like the Shrine of the Silver Monkey, messed EVERYONE up.) Adding to that were Temple Guards, who would "kidnap" you and would cause your teammate to have to start over from the beginning. Throw in [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking darkness, shadows, music, fog and Kirk Fogg]], and you'll see why more than one kid ended up walking in circles with confused looks on their faces.

** ''TakeshisCastle'' is Nintendo Hard in TV game show form. It ran for four years, each episode had 100-140 (possibly even more) starting contestants; only nine people ever won (this isn't including a the two occasions in which Takeshi took his castle back from Tani (Although they were 90 minute specials, however they still didn't count), an episode where a contestant stabbed the paper ring on Takeshi's cart with his gun, effectly disqualifing him, and an episode where his cart got stuck on long grass, in which it was declared a draw).

* ''MinuteToWinIt'' is a prime example of this trope. The first few levels are usually simple, but once you hit around Level 6, they truly start getting Nintendo Hard (try bouncing six marbles into tiny thimbles, or keeping three marbles on a slanted table with the back of a spoon for a full minute, or using a chopstick in one hand to make a stable tower of ten metal nuts on a wooden board in the ''other'' hand). But the real head of the beast is ''Supercoin'', the Million Dollar game. You have to bounce a quarter off of a table into a water jug 15 feet away, with the hole being a mere 1.75 inches wide (barely larger than the quarter itself). Needless to say, it's basically a LuckBasedMission, and of the eight people who have tried it (only one of whom got there the "legitimate" way, mind you), all have failed.

* The Winner's Big Money Game from [[Series/SaleOfTheCentury Sale of the Century]]. Here, [[TimedMission you have to solve a series of six-clue puzzles within the time limit]]. It was originally five in 25 seconds, later changed to 4 in 20 seconds--either way, you have to get each subject within five seconds on average. There is virtually no margin for error in this bonus round. If you miss twice, it's game over, and even though you're still allowed to pass, you have to be pretty lucky in order to get the rest of them. What makes it worse is that each clue takes slightly more than one second to appear on the screen, and there's also the dreaded "You must stop the clock before it hits double zero." Because the clock counts in single seconds as opposed to tenths-of-a-second as seen on its sister show Series/{{Scrabble}}, contestants can be, and often are, screwed at the very last second, because even if they buzz in just microseconds before the bell rings, it still counts as a loss because the clock reads 00. Worse, if a champion was playing for the car, and they lost, they had to retire as an "[[BlatantLies undefeated champion]]". BTW, of the 64 Winner's Big Money Games that were a part of the initial package from [[Creator/{{GSN}} GSN]], only 22 were won, with numerous losing streaks along the way.
* ''WinBenSteinsMoney'' saw Stein enter the game against the remaining contestants after the second round, with $5,000 of Stein's money up for grabs. However, ''very'' rarely did any of the contestants win that money, because Stein's massive intelligence meant he hardly ever got a question wrong.