| Hosts | |
| Christopher Knight & Beth McLeod | |
| Broadcast | |
 | |
| Packager | |
| Jonathan Goodson Productions | |
Make Me Rich! (not to be confused with Make Me Famous, Make Me Rich) was a lottery game show for the state of Michigan which aired quarterly.
Games
This show had games similar to other lottery game shows from Jonathan Goodson.
Race to the Car (First & Third Shows)
Three contestants stood at the starting line of a race track. They each had their own lanes divided into three spaces, but it took four moves for one to win a brand new car. Players would take turns picking off numbers from a 12-square game board. Behind those numbers were the names of the contestants (four of each). The player in control picked a number and elected how many spaces to move (either 1 or 2). Whoever's name appeared, that player would move the elected number of spaces.
The first player to cross the finish line won the car (a Ford Mustang on the first show, a Chevy Traverse on the third).
Wrecking Ball
Two towers (Knight referred to them as targets) were placed on a combination lock-like turntable. Three contestants competing in the game, taking turns turns pulling a lever to release the golden ball. The ball would swing only once and as long as it didn't knocked over either of the targets, the player pulling the lever stayed in the game; but if one of the targets was knocked over, the player pulling the lever was eliminated from the game. When one player was out, the two surviving players played the next round with one extra target added just to make things a little tougher. Whoever was eliminated, the other player won the game and the big money.
Both players took an equal number of turns, so if the first player was eliminated, then the second player had to avoid knocking a tower to win the big money; but a tower was knocked down, the first player was back in the game, and the game continued. The game continued until there was one player left, and that player was declared the winner. The winner of the game won $500,000 ($1,000,000 on the first and third shows).
Aces High
Two contestants played a game of virtual 4-card poker for $1,000,000. The cards they used ranged from a Jack to an Ace (no number cards and no suits). Players each took two turns making a choice of two cards (one shown face up, the other shown face down) and after each choice, the "unknown" was revealed and given to the player that owned it. With four cards, the players could make one pair, two pair, three of a kind and four of a kind. The player with the best hand won the million.
The Eliminator
Before Aces High (and also Wrecking Ball in the first show), three contestants (in the premiere, there were four before the third game, and five before the second game) faced a giant pachinko machine with numbers one to eight down below. Each contestant pulled a lever to release a ball which made a trip down the bottom of the board, and whatever numbered slot the number fell into was the number that player in control now owned. The players with the highest number(s) moved on to play the next game.
Other lottery games had used a pachinko machine before, but those were used to award or take away money rather than to determine contestants.
Bar Code
This was the final game of the evening. Before the game began, the audience was told to leave the studio, for "security in our studio is very tight" said host Knight.
Five contestants played a numbers game for $2,000,000. Each contestant one at a time faced a spinning cube with 100 secret bar code cards containing numbers from 1 to 100. McLeod spun the cube, and the player in control stopped it to choose a bar code, and then placed the card onto a bar code reader to reveal the secret number. If the player thought that the number was not high enough to win the grand prize, then that player could choose another bar code in hopes of choosing a higher number. For the remaining four players, the leading player's number was not revealed until after the current player in control decided to keep the number or try again. But on the final player, the rules were changed; after the final player selected a number, the audience returned to the studio and then the final contestant wrote down his/her decision in a notebook, and even the audience would be asked.
In the second show and beyond, the rules for the final player were mostly the same as the other contestants. The player with the highest number won the $2,000,000.
Trivia
Some of the games on this show had similaritis to mini-games on other Goodson lottery game shows including:
- Race to the Car – Variants were also used on Illinois Instant Riches (as "Home Run", "Touchdown", "Fast Break", and "Home Stretch", using motifs for baseball, football, basketball, and horse racing respectively, depending on the season), Flamingo Fortune (as "Grand Prix", with an auto-racing motif), the unsold pilot Cash Tornado which spawned all of the subsequent Mark Goodson/Jonathan Goodson lottery games (also as "Grand Prix", using the auto-racing motif), and NY Wired (which used the IIR horse racing variant as "Saratoga").
- Wrecking Ball – Variants were played on Flamingo Fortune (as "Beach Ball", using 12 sandcastles instead of two towers and six swings of the ball rather than just one) and Illinois Instant Riches (as "Wrecking Ball", with skyscrapers instead of sandcastles).
- Aces High – This had previously been used on The Big Spin using similar rules, only it was to determine who spun the wheel for a cash prize. Jacks were not used, and the cards were spun with no "face up-face down" rule.
Contestants who won nothing on the show would still earn a trip to Mackinaw Island plus $5,000 in spending money.
Throughout the show, home players (Michigan only) could win $1,000 by playing a text game similar to Deal or No Deal and 1 vs. 100.
Unlike all the other lottery shows, Make Me Rich was not a weekly show; it was quarterly. Also unlike other lottery games, there were no commercials.
The show appears to have been cancelled quietly, with all traces removed from the Lottery's website during the day of April 2, 2012. On September 13 of that year, Make Me Rich was essentially replaced by Play It Again, a three-minute annual game show also hosted by Knight where three contestants who won a second-chance drawing rolled virtual dice for $1,000,000.[1]
Rating
References
Links
YouTube Links
An audience warmup by David Taylor
A full episode from October 1, 2010