Double Dare is a video game based on the Nickelodeon

Nickelodeon (TV channel)

Nickelodeon, often simply called Nick and originally named Pinwheel, is an American children's channel owned by MTV Networks, a subsidiary of Viacom International. The channel is primarily aimed at children ages 7–17, with the exception of their weekday morning program block aimed at preschoolers...

 game show

Game show

A game show is a type of radio or television program in which members of the public, television personalities or celebrities, sometimes as part of a team, play a game which involves answering questions or solving puzzles usually for money and/or prizes...

 Double Dare. It was released by GameTek

GameTek

GameTek was a video game publisher based in North Miami Beach, Florida well known for publishing video game adaptations of game shows in the early 1990s. GameTek was a trade name for IJE, the owner of electronic publishing rights to Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune...

 for the Nintendo Entertainment System

Nintendo Entertainment System

The Nintendo Entertainment System is an 8-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America during 1985, in Europe during 1986 and Australia in 1987...

 in 1990, and ported to the NES by Rare.

Game options

Double Dare could be played by one or two players; single players competed against the computer.

Before gameplay starts, players enter their team names and select an avatar

Avatar (virtual reality)

In computing, an avatar is the graphical representation of the user or the user's alter ego or character. It may take either a three-dimensional form, as in games or virtual worlds, or a two-dimensional form as an icon in Internet forums and other online communities. It can also refer to a text...

. Team names could be up to nine characters long and contain only letters

Letter (alphabet)

A letter is a grapheme in an alphabetic system of writing, such as the Greek alphabet and its descendants. Letters compose phonemes and each phoneme represents a phone in the spoken form of the language....

, number

Number

A number is a mathematical object used to count and measure. In mathematics, the definition of number has been extended over the years to include such numbers as zero, negative numbers, rational numbers, irrational numbers, and complex numbers....

s, spaces

Space (punctuation)

In writing, a space is a blank area devoid of content, serving to separate words, letters, numbers, and punctuation. Conventions for interword and intersentence spaces vary among languages, and in some cases the spacing rules are quite complex....

, and periods

Full stop

A full stop is the punctuation mark commonly placed at the end of sentences. In American English, the term used for this punctuation is period. In the 21st century, it is often also called a dot by young people...

. The game offered eight different avatars: four male and four female. Whichever avatar the player picked, his teammate would be of the opposite gender

Gender

Gender is a range of characteristics used to distinguish between males and females, particularly in the cases of men and women and the masculine and feminine attributes assigned to them. Depending on the context, the discriminating characteristics vary from sex to social role to gender identity...

.

The game could also be set for one of three levels of difficulty:

• Easy: Gave players 20 seconds to answer questions; single players could beat the computer in toss-up challenges.
• Medium: Gave 15 seconds to answer; beating the computer was more difficult.
• Hard: Gave only 10 seconds to answer; the computer was extremely difficult to beat in toss-up challenges.

Gameplay

The video game version of Double Dare played exactly like its television counterpart. Rounds one and two were 10-question trivia

Trivia

The trivia are the three lower Artes Liberales, i.e. grammar, rhetoric and logic. These were the topics of basic education, foundational to the quadrivia of higher education, and hence the material of basic education, of interest only to undergraduates...

 rounds, each of which started with a toss-up challenge. Round three – the obstacle course – featured eight stages to be completed within 60 seconds.

Toss-up challenges determined which team got initial control of the trivia round. To complete a toss-up, each player had to determine the precise speed and angle of whatever object they were throwing to hit a target. Physical challenges were played the same way.

All questions were multiple choice, and each player could use the up or down arrows on the controller to make his selection. Three possible answers and either a dare, double dare, or physical challenge option were offered. The player confirmed his selection by pressing the A button. Confirming a dare doubled the base dollar value of the question; a double dare quadrupled the base dollar value.

The player with the most money at the end of round two went on to the obstacle course. In order to move through an obstacle, the player had to repeatedly alternate between pressing either the left and right or up and down arrows on the controller's D-pad

D-pad

A D-pad is a flat, usually thumb-operated directional control with one button on each point, found on nearly all modern video game console gamepads, game controllers, on the remote control units of some television and DVD players, and smart phones...

. In order to grab the flag, the player had to position the on-screen contestant in just the right spot and then press the A button to jump and retrieve it. Some found it easier to get through the course by using the NES Advantage

NES Advantage

The NES Advantage is an arcade style controller released by Nintendo for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1987. The device is meant to rest on a flat surface at a comfortable level, such as a tabletop or the floor, with the player seated behind it...

, a joystick controller, rather than the NES' standard controller.

The Obstacles are all based on real obstacles from the show (with one exception) and are randomized before a game. They include The Tank, The 1-Ton Human Hamster Wheel, The Fireman's Flagpole, The Monkey Bars, "Dallas", Mount St. Double Dare, Moonwalk, and an original obstacle designed like a triangular jungle gym.

"Prizes" for beating the obstacle course included a BMX

BMX

Bicycle motocross or BMX refers to the sport in which the main goal is extreme racing on bicycles in motocross style on tracks with inline start and expressive obstacles, and it is also the term that refers to the bicycle itself that is designed for dirt and motocross cycling.- History :BMX started...

bicycle, television set, an NES console, and several other gifts, ending with a exotic vacation -- though it can prove very difficult to get the best "ending" by completing the last obstacle.

The obstacle course's flag colour depended on which team was playing, if blue, the flags were blue, and if red, the flags were red.