Creator / Greggo

"You take a game show, plug 'Anime' in the title — it gets butts in seats! Because it's something that's recognizable."

Greg Wicker (or "Greggo", as he's fondly known) hosted and produced adaptations of various classic Game Shows at fandom conventions all over the world between 1999 and 2018. Initially, Greggo started out doing shows at Anime conventions, later branching out to conventions catering to other fandoms.

While at Project A-Kon in May 1998, Greggo watched games of Jeopardy! and Name That Tune that were being held there. While he enjoyed the shows, he felt he could do better, feeling that said productions were a bit lacking and the audiences were watching rather than doing. He submitted a proposal to Project A-Kon's con chair for a version of Match Game to give congoers a chance to do something other than the traditional Q&A panel typical of conventions. He was accepted (it helped that the con chair was a fan of the franchise), and he debuted Anime Match Game the following year. It went so well that he did it again the following year.

Greggo's shows typically had the same general feel of the shows on which they're based, complete with software he programmed himself and all the dollar figures converted to Yen (to fit with the anime motif, to ensure he stayed relatively within budget, and because announcing totals in thousands of Yen rather than tens of dollars sounds more impressive; toward the end, he changed from Yen to a fictional cryptocurrency called "Greggo Dollars"). On the occasion when he did a non-anime convention, some games (notably Jeopardy!) were played with points instead. Much of the software has since become available through Greggo's Etsy store.

If you've never seen any of his shows before, he regularly recorded and posted videos of many of his shows on his YouTube channel.

In addition to all the adaptations of the classic shows he's done, Greggo also came up with several formats of his own that found their way onto convention schedules. One of them very nearly became an actual television show.

In late 2018, Greggo suddenly announced he was retiring from all conventions and shows immediately. As it turned out, this announcement had come after he'd turned himself in to local police for strangling a foster cat while drunk. Soon after, he began getting a considerable amount of help with his long-time alcoholism and depression.

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Shows Greggo did:

Classic Game Shows

• All-Star Blitz
• @Midnight (only played once, in 2015, using software borrowed from Laugh Out Loud)
• Battlestars (based on the 1981-82 format, with the Battlestars Two endgame)
• Blockbusters (based on the Cullen version)
• Bullseye (only played a few times, in 2009 {once} and 2015 {twice})
• Chain Reaction (based on the 1980 format, with Instant Reaction based on its second payout structure)
• Concentration (based on the Classic format)
• Deal or No Deal (only played twice, in 2006 and 2012)
• Definition (used both the two-celeb and no-celeb formats)
• Fanboy Feud (based on the 1976-85 visuals and format)
• High Rollers (only played once, in 2010)
• Hit Man
• The Hollywood Squares, aka The AWA Squares and Anime Squares (retired for many years, although brought back out for a few appearances in 2016; based on the mid-1970s Marshall daytime format)
• Jeopardy! (based on the Trebek version, with Yen or points used for scoring depending on the convention {and sometimes dollars, mainly for Celebrity episodes}; anime version retired in 2017)
• The Joker's Wild (based on the later years of the 1977-86 era, with the payouts and goals doubled; a version based on the 1991 category format was planned, but eventually scrapped)
• Les Douze Coups de Midi (French game show localized for American conventions as The Hour of Reckoning)
• Line 'em Up (tweaked version of an obscure 1960s Canadian game show produced by Dan Enright)
• Match Game (based on the 1978-82 style; retired from 2003-04 and again in 2018)
• Name That Tune (only played once, in 2010)
• Now You See It (only played once, in 2009)
• Panel Quiz Attack 25
• Anime Password (based on Super, with its aesthetics and format)
• Play Your Cards Right (based on the British format, as another group had been doing Card Sharks for a while; reused the intro from a failed 2011 pilot)
• Pokémon Pointless (Pointless with all the questions being about Pokémon)
• Press Your Luck (based on the 1980s format)
• The Price Is Right (based on the Barker era into 2007, then the Carey era afterward)
• The ¥25,000 Pyramid (based on the 1980s Television City era, complete with 7-11 and Mystery 7, though from 2004-09 it was based on Donnymid)
• Sale of the Centur¥ (based on the American daytime format from about mid-1985)
• Scrabble (based on the 1986-90 format, using licensed software from Home Game Enterprises)
• Starcade (only played twice; was retired due to legal issues with JM Productions)
• Three on a Match (fuse of the first two formats: players match pictures, with one match winning the game and a prize)
• Tic-Tac-Dough (based on the later Martindale/Caldwell years)
• Spy Games (adaptation of the unsold 1988 show Top Secret, itself famous for Parker Brothers briefly releasing a tie-in board game)
• Wheel of Fortune
• Win Richard Kim's Pocky (only played once, in 2004, as a modification for Katsucon)
• Win, Lose or Draw (based on the Convy format)
• WinAdmission (only played once, in 2002)

Original Formats

• Face Off (debuted 2012; five-player visual quiz where players pick an anime face and answer a question regarding that character)
• Farkle (debuted 2010; two-player general-knowledge quiz based on the dice game)
• The G.R.I.D.D. (three-player general-knowledge quiz with a wacky scenario not unlike those of the Carmen Sandiego game shows; very nearly became an actual show on the Anime Network in 2004, before plans of it being a 24-hour cable channel were scrapped)
• Know Your Role (debuted 2015; three voice actors get clues {starting very vague and getting progressively more specific} and must identify whether they played that role or not)
• Majority Rules! (based on Would You Rather?, and used under that name for the entirety of 2014)
• The Pokémon Game Show (debuted 2013)
• Ponyville Derby (a My Little Pony-skinned Wheel of Fortune)
• Shut the TARDIS!! (debuted 2013; a Doctor Who-themed take on High Rollers)
• Stop the Music! (debuted 2011; somewhat a reworking of Name That Tune into an elimination-style game)
• Strikeout (debuted 2010; mashup of elements from several game shows {see X Meets Y}; known as Knockout, with a boxing motif, through 2013 - the version used from 2014 onward had a baseball motif)

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Greggo's shows provide examples of:

• All or Nothing: Round 2 of Know Your Role had each celebrity contestant holding a Joker. If they knew that the role Greggo was talking about absolutely was or was not theirs, they could play the Joker when they rung in. If right, they scored double the value they rang in at...but if wrong, their score went down to zero.
• Celebrity Edition: Parodied with Celebrity Jeopardy! and Celebrity Match Game, which had fictional characters as the guests, although the first such Jeopardy! show had Uncle Yo as (somewhat) himself.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • Farkle originally had numerical digits for the "dice", which were changed to dice pips sometime during the show's first month in the rotation.
  • Match Game originally used physical set pieces, with no Flash at all. The physical Super-Match board was dropped in 2001 or 2002, replaced by a board run in Flash (also used for the show's intro).
  • Press Your Luck originally had physical Whammy cards, which the contestants could keep. This was removed by the ninth episode.
• Fan Edit: Of a sense. In January 2013, YouTube user tpirman1982 took the intro of Greggo's first Anime Price Is Right and added the then (2004)-current light border and opening titles plus a second, more accurate version of the Price logo at its proper spot (the one used in the original 2004 edit appears shortly into the intro).
• Fan Remake: Pretty much half of Greggo's bread-and-butter, ranging from well-established franchises to cult classics (such as Three On A Match) to outright obscurities (such as Line 'em Up).
• Four Is Death: Four Whammies on Press Your Luck, unsurprisingly.
• Obvious Rule Patch: Not surprisingly, quite a few.
  • Concentration originally offered admission to one of eight conventions, mimicking Classic's eight-car bonus round (even using "you could win admission to one of these eight fabulous cons" during the intro spiel). However, some winners couldn't get to the con they'd won admission to, making the prize somewhat meaningless as a result (unlike Press Your Luck, where con badges at least added to your score). In April 2015, this was changed to a six-month or one-year Crunchyroll subscription with the player now having to match anime titles.
  • Face Off's debut show had a penalty in the elimination portion: miss a question, and your opponent got a point. This discouraged buzzing in, and hence was dropped.
  • Farkle had a few rule changes over time:
    • Originally, each player could earn up to three Reroll tokens (obtained by clearing the board in the front game). This was dropped in late 2012 to just one per player.
    • Originally, rolling a triple 2, 3, 4, or 6 in the front game after claiming that number's associated prize was considered a bad roll. In late 2012, this was changed to add the number multiplied by ¥100 to the Bank.
    • Games could run as many questions as necessary in order to be completed. In early 2013, this was altered to limit each game to 20 questions, with the last one being a Tiebreaker Round.
  • Knockout/Strikeout had several changes to its bonus round:
    • Originally, the prize was ¥15,000 and finding any of the top seven answers removed that many thousand Yen (along with removing one of the three players). Finding all five Knockouts awarded whatever remained in the pot.
    • By mid-April 2011, this was changed to start the pot at ¥500 and keep doubling for each Knockout found, up to ¥16,000; the team could quit at any time, as picking one of the top seven answers halved the current pot along with removing a player.
    • Sometime between mid-August 2011 and late January 2012, the penalty for picking one of the top seven answers was altered to restarting the pot at ¥500 (along with removing a player).
  • Match Game originally didn't award anything for winning the game. A ¥1,000 prize was added in September 2012.
  • The Pokémon Game Show had several, which are noted on that show's page.
  • Press Your Luck had several changes to its Big Board, but this was more owing to budget and/or accuracy to the show's board layouts.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: For budget, time, and other reasons, some games didn't have elements or props used in the originals.
  • On All-Star Blitz, the Blitz Bonanza was played with a randomizer and a buzzer. The original show had the player spinning a wheel.
• Recycled Soundtrack: Several of the themes used on Greggo's original games should be familiar to game show fans.
  • Definition used the mid-1970s Concentration theme ("Fast Break" by Edd Kalehoff) so Quincy Jones couldn't sue (the original show initially used Jones' "Soul Bossa Nova", which later gained fame as the Austin Powers theme, though later years used electronic soundalikes).
  • Face Off used the Fort Boyard theme.
  • Farkle used the 1990s Joker's Wild theme. Two prize cues from The Price Is Right were used here as well.
  • Know Your Role used the 1980s Tattletales theme.
  • Line 'em Up used the second 1960s Password theme. The cue used while rapidly showing the facts for each game was the "category shuffle" piece from the 1950s Tic-Tac-Dough.
• Rule of Three: So much. For example:
  • Three contestants played on The G.R.I.D.D., Jeopardy!, Knockout/Strikeout (per team), Ponyville Derby, Press Your Luck, and Wheel of Fortune.
  • On Farkle, triples (three-of-a-kind) were the only scoring method shared by the front game and bonus round. Also, getting three Strikes ended the front game, and until late 2012 players could get up to three Reroll tokens.
  • On Knockout/Strikeout, the game ended if a team found three Knockouts/Strikeouts (or, in the bonus round, three of the top seven answers).
  • On The Pokémon Game Show, winning three times in the Elite Four round let you play the Championship Round. In the latter, both sides had three Pokémon, and as such finding three "K.O." squares sent you packing.
  • The Price Is Right had 3 Strikes and Secret X (get three X's in a row).
  • And, of course, a whole lot of Three On A Match.
• Whammy:
  • Obviously for Press Your Luck.
  • For Know Your Role, a wrong ring-in when playing a Joker caused that player to lose all of his/her points.

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