The Crystal Maze was a game show that was shown on Channel Four between 1990 and 1995 and the first four series were presented by Richard O'Brien and the final two by Ed Tudor-Pole. In my opinion I thought the former was the better host as he seemed to add a bit more excitement and energy to proceedings. Each show was about an hour long in total and I always found it was immense fun when I watched it. I know it sounds bad but I must admit I quite often found myself watching this show and found it more enjoyable when the players got locked in to the rooms when the time limit ran out as it made it more fun to watch.

The format of the show was the same each week and the set was divided up into four distinct zones. I always remember from watching this show the Aztec zone, futuristic zone, medieval zone and industrial zone. At the centre of the maze was the Crystal Dome which was where the final game was played to win the game.

Each week a team consisting of three men and three women would take on the challenge of the maze. They would play three of four different games in each zone before entering the crystal dome. The idea of the game was to collect as many crystals as possible as these would give them more time in the final game. To win the crystals they would have to take on varying challenges in different rooms within the zones. Each challenge was interesting and different and might be a mental or physical challenge. The physical ones were always my favourite when viewing as they were more exciting.

In each room they would only get a few minutes to complete the challenge set and if they didn't complete it they would need to get out before the door was locked. If a player got locked in they would either have to be bought out using a crystal that had been won or left in there.

Once they had amassed the crystals it was on to the crystal dome. Each crystal won would give them five more seconds to the time allowed. They would need to collect as many gold tokens as possible in the time limit and needed 100 or more to win. However, there was a catch and the first was that they were in the dome when the wind machines were turned on the the tokens would swirl about everywhere. As well as this there were silver tokens and if you collected these you would lose a gold token.

So the show was interesting and challenging and very entertaining. You can't ask much more from a game show really and I really loved it in the days this used to be on.