As a millennial born in 1988, I considered myself a pretty hardcore Nickelodeon kid, though I watched a fair amount of Cartoon Network too, just not much Disney Channel. Legends of the Hidden Temple was one of the greatest game shows on that network and, honestly, one of my all-time favorites. Now that I’m a grown-up, I find myself gravitating more toward trivia-based game shows.

Man, I really wanted to be on that show as a kid. Apparently, it was filmed in Orlando, Florida, roughly an 8-hour drive from me, but since my dad was battling cancer right around the age I would’ve been eligible, that dream was never happening. And honestly, even with two healthy parents, they probably wouldn’t have had the faintest idea how to apply, and my brothers would’ve almost certainly been considered the stronger audition picks anyway. If I ever became a billionaire, I’d be seriously tempted to bankroll my own version of the show, stack the competition with the worst possible contestants, and just win the whole thing myself, because I genuinely think I could.

Kirk Fogg made for a fantastic host, even though he eventually left showbiz and apparently works in real estate now. He had this cool-uncle energy about him, and he played off the talking Aztec head Olmec really well.

The show mixed in a variety of challenges, starting with a physical round that gave some unlucky kids roughly two minutes before elimination. It obviously varied from episode to episode, but it was always entertaining watching one team blaze through it while another team fell hopelessly behind.

There were mental challenges too, usually educational trivia centered on history or similar topics. I typically groaned whenever TV shows tried sneaking education into kids’ programming, but much like Captain Planet, I happily overlooked the obvious attempt to make us smarter and just enjoyed the ride. Funny enough, now that I’ve got a son, I actually appreciate when shows try to slip in a little learning.

But the best part of the show was always the finale, when the winning team got to run through the Temple itself, essentially a massive indoor playground packed with hidden rooms and secret traps, including Aztec temple guards who would physically grab a contestant and yank them out of the competition. Even thinking back on it now, that part low-key spooked me a bit.

The most notorious challenge, hands down, was the Shrine of the Silver Monkey. It’s wild how many kids struggled with it, considering it only had three fairly simple parts. But looking back, they only got three minutes to finish it, and while that felt like an eternity on screen, three minutes evaporates fast when you’re actually fumbling through real tasks under pressure.

And while the prizes were never anything extravagant, I always felt a pang of envy toward the winners. Some kids got sent to space camp, which for a while I genuinely believed was some kind of exclusive reward reserved only for game show champions. Nickelodeon had its share of hits and misses over the years, but for a show that was fairly low-budget and repeated the same basic formula constantly, I was always thrilled whenever it popped up on TV.