Wipeout "1989"

[Hawkee]

After Press Your Luck ended it's run in 1986 it would take four years before we saw Peter Tomarken return to game shows with Wipeout in 1989 which made it's debut in syndication. In Wipeout two contestants had to win money by answering questions from categories on a Jeopardy style gameboard but hidden in each category were wipeouts which were false answers and if a contestant chose a wipeout the money amount was taken away but right answers won contestants money and in the second round the gameplay was the same but the money was doubled and at the end of the round the contestant with the highest winnings won the game and got to play a bonus round. Wipeout's bonus round seemed to have gotten inspiration from The Price Is Right's Race Game but instead of putting correct price tags on products Wipeout's bonus round consisted of the contestant trying to find the right answers to various categories full of questions by pressing the correct answers while avoiding wipeouts in 60 seconds and if he/she found and pressed the correct answers before time was up he/she won the game. Though Wipeout was short-lived reruns of Wipeout were seen on USA's Lucky Day game show block. I often wondered if Merv Griffin ever wanted to sue the creators of Wipeout for copying Jeopardy which is probably why this game was short-lived