Bonus Game

Bonus Game is a pricing game on the American television game show The Price Is Right. It is played for a prize worth at least $3,000 and uses small prizes.
Bonus Game is the second of Prices original five pricing games, debuting on the show's first episode on September 4, 1972.
Gameplay
Bonus Game is played on a board with four windows, each of which is associated with one small prize and one of which conceals the word "bonus". While the game uses small prizes, which the contestant can win, the real goal of the game is to win the "bonus prize", which is of much greater value.
The contestant is shown each of the four small prizes, one at a time, each with an incorrect price. They must determine whether the actual price is higher or lower than the one shown. A correct decision wins that prize, and a marker on the board is moved to mark the corresponding window. If the contestant is wrong, the small prize is lost and the marker is removed from the board.
After all four prizes have been played, all four windows are lighted. If the window that lights "bonus" has been marked, the contestant also wins the bonus prize. If the contestant does not win any of the small prizes, the game ends immediately.
Contestants who correctly price all four smaller prizes automatically win the bonus prize, since they mark all four windows. However, unlike in Shell Game, there is no additional bonus awarded for this situation.
History
For the first three taped episodes, the windows were yellow. They were changed to blue beginning on September 11, 1972, on the sixth episode.
In June 1974, the show's staff decided to retire Bonus Game and created Shell Game to replace it. After the latter's debut, Bonus Game was not played on the daytime show for over a year. It was played two times in July 1975, appeared sporadically in September, and finally returned to the rotation permanently on November 6 of that year after the show's expansion to one hour.
Nighttime appearances
On the Dennis James version, Bonus Game was played alongside Shell Game during the third season, although Bonus Game had been removed from rotation on the daytime show.
Episodes featuring Bonus Game while James was hosting have not been rerun, although a monochrome promotional picture from some point after the name was added to the board (showing James next to a playing in progress without a contestant visible in the shot) was shown during the A&E Biography "TV Game Shows".
Versions outside the U.S.
In Australia, during the Ian Turpie era, when a contestant got all four decisions correct, not only did they win the bonus prize, they also got a chance to win $50 by finding the "bonus" window in one guess. A similar bonus format is used in Shell Game on the American version of Price.
On Italy's Ok, Il Prezzo E Giusto, Bonus Game was played under the name "Jolly," which, coincidentally, translates into English as "Joker", the name of a different pricing game on the American version.
Bonus Game was also played in Canada under the name "La Case Mystère".

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See Also

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