The Old Days

    As an old-time player and NTN historian , I can unquestionably state the following:

    The old La Cage 1 in Montreal had NTN in 1987, and maybe even 1986. Therefore, the Peel Pub is NOT the first Canadian bar to have NTN. As far as I know, the Canadian title belongs to the defunct Sammy's in Town of Mount Royal. They had it in 1986 or even before.

    I still know people who played there in 1987. They were members of my old Showdown team OBERON at La Cage 1. I started playing in March 1988. In those days, I used SCHIZO when playing solo. I changed to LASHER after the release of Anne Rice's Witching Hour in 1990.

    But here's the real reason I am writing. After being asked, I have been thinking about the real old days of NTN. Now, how many out there remember...

  1. When the NTN programming day only began at 5 pm and 15-question games took 45 minutes to play?

    When I first started playing, the games only started at 5 pm EST. Games lasted 45 minutes long so we have more time to do a pit stop in the can between questions. Thursdays was even weirder because the 6:30 and 7:30 pm games were hour long games and had 20 questions. This was to fit in the sports game at 8:30.

    Nobody believes me about this now. Sigh! In my early thirties and already a NTN relic. :-) In 1989/90, the games started at 2 pm EST. In 1994, they extended the NTN day to start at 11 am.

  2. Showdown started at 8:30 pm and lasted 90 minutes until 10 pm EST?

    All the specialty games started at 8:30.

  3. That lame game 50-50?

    Yes. Two choices. Woo-hoo!! You had either "Yes/No" or "True/False". The secret to this game was telling yourself "They wouldn't be asking us if it wasn't true" no matter how silly the question was.

  4. That game whose name eludes me where they would ask a question then give you blanks in the answers. As time and the points decreased, more and more letters would appeared.

    I loved this game!!! You had to know the answers to figure out how many letters were in the right answer. Of course, this game lasted maybe 2 months, at best. Too hard for the average player, I guess.

  5. That lame hockey game POWERPLAY. Talk about the most stupid concept for a sports game.

    I played it once in 1988. The way to get points was thus. You had 15 scoring opportunities for team per period. If you use a chance, you got 100 points if your team got a shot on goal and 200 points if your team scored. YAWN! And you got bonus points if you punched in the right jersey number of the player you think would score during a power play or correctly choosing the 3 stars at the end of the game. Double YAWN! Can DIAMONDBALL be any worse?

    Anyways, here was my 2 cents on the old days

LASHER

Still trying to think of the name of that game...after all these years

I will add more to this page when I find the time to do so. Enjoy!
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