15 Facts About Match Game

Match Game is an American television panel game show that premiered on NBC in 1962 and has been revived several times over the course of the last six decades.

Concurrently with the weekday run, from 1975 to 1981, a once-a-week fringe time version, Match Game PM, was offered in syndication for airing just before prime time hours.

Match Game returned to NBC in 1983 as part of a 60-minute hybrid series with Hollywood Squares, then saw a daytime run on ABC in 1990 and another for syndication in 1998; each of these series lasted one season.

Since 2010, Match Game has been parodied by drag artist RuPaul in his hit series RuPaul's Drag Race, as "Snatch Game", where the contestants each impersonate a different celebrity for comedic effect.

Soon, the tone of Rayburn's questions changed notably, leaving behind the staid topics that The Match Game had first disposed of in 1963 for more risque humor.

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Episodes of Match Game PM were self-contained, with two new contestants appearing each week.

Every New Year's Eve, when the two-digit year designation in the Match Game sign was updated, there was a New Year's party with the cast and studio audience.

Meanwhile, Match Game kept its high standing in the ratings despite a short-lived move ahead one half-hour from August to December 1975.

The newly designed Match Game sign meant that a whole new sign no longer had to be built each year as had been done previously.

Match Game PM was the first version of the game with self-contained episodes.

Each contestant on this version of Match Game played a two-game match against another contestant, and the Super Match was played after each game.

The winner of the Match Game segment played the returning champion in the Hollywood Squares segment with the eventual winner of Squares playing the Super Match.

Unlike any previous version, the audience match portion of the Super Match Game is not played for a payoff, but simply to determine the value of the head-to-head match.

Match Game featured several theme songs throughout its various runs.

DVD set called The Best of Match Game featuring a collection of more than 30 episodes of the 1970s version including the original 1962 pilot episode was released in 2006.