Most temple games lasted for a maximum of 60 seconds but some were untimed. Several different types of temple games were featured, with the episode's legend serving as a theme for each. The temple games featured the two remaining teams competing in three physical challenges to earn Pendants of Life which the winning team used in the final round. The first two teams to answer three questions correctly and thereby reach the bottom level advanced to the next round. If a team answered incorrectly or ran out of time (three seconds after being called upon), the other teams were given a chance to answer.
A team who answered correctly moved down to the next level. A team attempting to answer signaled by stomping on a button on their step, causing the front of the step to illuminate (if Olmec was still in the middle of asking a question, he stopped talking immediately). Each multiple-choice question had three possible answers.
#Legends of the hidden temple challenge series
After finishing, he asked the teams a series of questions to test their memory.
At the end of the legend, Olmec told the teams the room in which the artifact could be found. The legend centered on an artifact which the winning team searched for in the final round.
Olmec began the round by telling the remaining teams the episode's legend of the featured artifact, which became the theme for the remainder of the episode. The four remaining teams stood on the topmost of the four levels of the Steps of Knowledge. The first four teams to cross the moat and ring their gongs advanced to the second round. All six teams attempted to get both members across according to the rules and push a button on a pedestal to ring a gong. For example, in one episode, teams were required to swing out to a rope net in the middle of the moat, climb it, and then swim to the other side. In the first round of the show, the six teams attempted to cross a narrow swimming pool known as "the moat" in a prescribed manner. Each team was identified with a color and an animal, indicated on their uniform shirts: the Red Jaguars, Blue Barracudas, Green Monkeys, Orange Iguanas, Purple Parrots, and Silver Snakes. In each episode, six teams of two contestants began a three-round competition to determine which team earned the right to enter the temple. In addition to providing an artifact, the legend also was important to other aspects of the show: the Steps of Knowledge used questions based on the historical legend, and the theme of the temple games was also loosely based on the legend. Some artifacts included "Lawrence of Arabia's Headdress", "The Electrified Key of Benjamin Franklin", "The Jewel-Encrusted Egg of Catherine the Great", and "The Broken Wing of Icarus". Each episode centered on a particular legend regarding an artifact (real or fictional) from around the world that found its way to the temple. Olmec narrated the stories told in the steps of knowledge and temple game challenges (although in the first season, Fogg narrated the temple game challenges). At the temple's gate was a talking Olmec head simply named Olmec (voiced by Dee Bradley Baker). It included areas for different types of physical challenges: a broad but shallow pool of water (the moat), a set of steps (the Steps of Knowledge), and a large, two-and-a-half-floor vertical labyrinth (the "hidden temple"). The set design has been described as Mayan. The set design of Legends of the Hidden Temple was based on the Indiana Jones movies, and Marianne Arneberg of the Orlando Sentinel described the program as "a combination of Jeopardy and Raiders of the Lost Ark".