
When Legends Of The Hidden Temple first premiered in 1993, Nickelodeon was just coming off the genre-bending success of Double Dare and seemed anxious to find a new anchor game show. Legends was, as Entertainment Weekly put it a few years later, “American Gladiators meets Young Indiana Jones Chronicles,” but kids loved its blend of quasi-educational historical trivia and big-ass obstacle course.
The latter, the titular temple, was the show’s exhilarating—and frustrating—conclusion. Throughout the show’s 120 episode run, only 33 teams actually conquered the temple’s challenges, and four of those did it with only one second left on the three minute clock.
For viewers at home, it could be equally strenuous, as they were challenged to watch kids struggle to find actuators that were just right there and to assemble the dreaded silver monkey (as in: The Shrine Of The…), only to never get the bottom on exactly right. It could feel like torture—but what sweet torture it was.
With the original show now streaming on Paramount+ and a recent Cristela Alonzo-hosted reboot launched on The CW, we thought it was time to revisit the temple for ourselves, determining once and for all which obstacles were a gift from Olmec and which were a curse sent down from the network gods. Here are all of the classic Legends Of The Hidden Temple rooms, ranked from easiest to hardest.