Welcome To Your Dystopia: A Chuck E. Cheese Game Show With Squid Game Vibes Is Coming
At the end of 2023, it was announced that Chuck E. Cheese would be ditching their trademark animatronics, which allegedly had absolutely nothing to do with the massive success of "Five Nights at Freddy's," a franchise about playful animatronics coming to life possessed by the souls and corpses of dead children. Fans of subpar pizza, cheap novelty prizes, ball pits with unknown horrors at the bottom of the vinyl, and arcade games that are always coated in a layer of sticky kid slime worried that this marked the end of Charles Entertainment Cheese's empire.
But according to a recent newsbreak from The Hollywood Reporter, it certainly sounds like the corporation that gave us similarly brilliant ideas like "Putting Pasqually's Pizza on DoorDash and UberEats during the quarantine era of the pandemic so people don't realize they're ordering Chuck E. Cheese birthday party pizza" is getting into the reality game show business. Magical Elves, the production company behind shows like "Top Chef," the binge-worthy "Nailed It!," and the show that makes your mom feel like she has street cred, "Snoop & Martha's Very Tasty Halloween," are developing a competition series loosely inspired by "Squid Game" but set in the deliciously dystopian world of Chuck E. Cheese. Here's the show's official description:
"The format will feature stand-alone comedic physical challenges where duos of 'big kids' (a.k.a. adults) will compete over supersized arcade games — including pinball, air hockey, alley roller, and the human claw. The top ticket-earning duo will get the chance to exchange their tickets for prizes off the massive version of the iconic Chuck E. Cheese prize wall."
Doesn't sound like the losers would be killed like in "Squid Game," probably because then the company would definitely never beat those "Five Nights at Freddy's" allegations.
Where a kid can be a kid and adults can suck at skeeball
With the description of "supersized arcade games," the show will likely resemble the Netflix reality competition show "The Floor is Lava," which utilizes oversized items as platforms. Personally, I'm hoping that supersized air hockey means people will have to actually play hockey with their bodies, and oversized alley roller (aka skeeball) will include those gigantic exercise balls everyone buys to use for three months and then lets collect dust in the corner of a home office.
"Chuck E. Cheese is the place where a kid can be a kid – but as grown adults, we still have dreams of ruling the arcade, taking on the iconic games we love!" Magical Elves co-CEOs Jo Sharon and Casey Kriley told THR. "We're excited to celebrate these legendary arcade games plus the best of today, all with a super-sized twist." No word yet on whether or not the contestants will have to cart around oversized reels of tickets or insert gigantic coins, but I'm hoping they go all-in on the gimmick.
Easily the best game description is "the human claw," which certainly sounds like replacing the rigged-as-hell mechanical claw arm with a human being grabbing a prize with their entire body before being dropped from the sky. Honestly, this sounds a lot more like a Nickelodeon game show like "Double Dare" than it does "Squid Game," which tracks because the target audience for this show is probably people who have nostalgia for Chuck E. Cheese, aka '90s kids. Sure, this is just the latest in cheap IP mining choking out the entertainment industry, but I'm honest enough with myself to know I'm definitely part of the problem and I'll be watching every episode as soon as it drops.