What Was The Adventure Game

Long before celebrities were doing weird things in the jungle, they were being sent to another planet!

The Adventure Game was a game show in which three celebrity contestants travelled by space ship to the planet Arg.  Their tasks varied throughout the 4 series that were shown over 6 years from 1980 until 1986, but basically involved solving a series of challenges that would allow them to get back home again.  

The planel Arg was inhabited by Argons who were shapeshifting dragons.  Almost all the names used in the series were anagrams of the word "dragon" including the word "Argon" itself (well almost).  One of the characters from series1 was called "Darcing" and was played by Moria Stewart, in the days before she was famous as a BBC newsreader.  The Argons transformed themselves into humans for the benefit of their visitors, although one of them preferred to be an Aspidistra plant for some reason.

Other actors who played characters included Lesley Judd who pretended to be a regular contestant but was actually working against them (hence she was known as "The Mole".  Actor Bill Homewood played Rongad in series 3 – he only talked backwards and would only communicate with the contestants if they did the same.

Many of the tasks that the contestants had to solve involved winning Drogna (the currency).  

The value of a drogna was based on colours and shapes – the colour's numbered position in the visible spectrum multiplied by the number of sides of the figure.  A red circle was worth 1 drogna, a blue pentagon was worth 25.

Tasks included a simple computer game where a mouse had to be guided around a maze, the Drogna Game, which was played by two players, one a contestant and the other the Red Salamander of Drazil.  This game was so popular that it was released for home computers.

The final task of each game was the vortex where the contestants had to jump between a grid of points, taking it in turns with another "player" which was a computer generated flashing column operated by an Argon.  The contestant couldn't see this and if they jumped into it, they were evaporated, which meant a long trip back to earth on foot.

Sometimes they could buy food with their drogna, which they could use to throw onto a grid point to test the position.

This show comes from an era of challenge shows like The Great Egg Race and Now Get Out of That, the difference with this one was that it showed celebrities actually having to think for once!

Some were better at it than others.  Richard Stilgoe and Greame Garden for example showed no problem with things like rescuing eggs from tubes by inflating balloons and talking to the Argons in backwards talk.  But there were plenty of not so clever ones as well who provided much interesting viewing when trying to work out tasks like these, and that complicated currency system.

Contestants who took part in the show included James Burke, Paul McDowell, Maggie Philbin, Noel Edmonds, John Craven, Lesley Judd, Paul Darrow, Bonnie Langford, Fern Britton, Johnny Ball, and Sue Nicholls.