Bonus round

This article is about a game show bonus round. For a video game bonus stage, see Bonus stage.

A bonus round or bonus game, known in the industry as an end game, is a special round in a game show or similar contest. The bonus round usually follows a main game (also called a front game in the industry) as a bonus to the winner of that game. In the bonus round, the stakes are higher and the game is considered to be tougher.

The game play of a bonus round usually varies from the standard game play of the front game, although there are often borrowed or related elements of the main game in the bonus round in order to ensure the entire show has a unified premise. Though some end games are referred to as "bonus rounds", many are not specifically referred to as such in games, though they fit the same general role.

Format

There is no one formula for the format of a bonus round. There are differences in almost every bonus round, though there are many recurring elements from show to show. The bonus round is often played for the show's top prize.

Origin

Until the 1960s, most game shows did not offer a bonus round. In traditional two-player formats, the winner — if a game show's rules provided for this — became the champion and simply played a new challenger either on the next show or after the commercial break.

One of the earliest forms of bonus rounds was the Jackpot Round of the original series Beat the Clock. After two rounds of performing stunts, the wife of the contestant couple would perform at a jackpot board for a jackpot prize. Here, the contestant was shown a famous quotation or common phrase, and the words were scrambled. To win the announced bonus, the contestant had to unscramble the words within a time limit (20 seconds). The contestant received a consolation gift worth over $200 if she was unsuccessful.

Another early bonus round ended each episode of You Bet Your Life with the team who won the most money answering one final question for a jackpot which started at $1,000 and increased $500 a week.

Another early example was the Lightning Round on the word game Password, starting in 1961. Here, the contestant who had met the objective of the front game played a quick-fire series of passwords within 60 seconds, netting $50 per correctly guessed word (for a maximum bonus prize of $250).

The bonus round came about after game show producer Mark Goodson was first presented Password, contending that it was not enough to merely guess passwords during the show. "We needed something more, and that's how the Lightning Round was invited," said Howard Felsher, who produced Password and Family Feud. "From that point on every game show had to have an end round. You'd bring a show to a network and they'd say, 'What's the endgame?' as if they had thought of it themselves."

At least one bonus round — the end game of Match Game — has served as the impetus for a completely new game show. The first part of Match Game's bonus round, called Audience Match, asked contestants to guess how a studio audience responded to a question. In 1975, Goodson decided that this line of questioning would make a good game show of its own. The concept eventually became Family Feud.