Overview

Illinois Instant Riches is a lottery game show airing in the state of Illinois, as well as nationally on Chicago-based Superstation WGN-TV. The show was hosted by former MTV VJ Mark Goodman, with Linda Kollmeyer as his co-host and Bill Barber as announcer. The show was produced by Mark Goodson Productions, and premiered on July 9, 1994. The show was renamed Illinois' Luckiest in 1998 and aired until 2000. For contestants to appear on the show, they must have bought an Illinois Instant Riches/Illinois' Luckiest scratch-off ticket from an Illinois Lottery retailer. If they uncover three TVs, then the ticket is sent in to the given address. Players were randomly chosen from those tickets to be in the show's contestant pool, but only a certain number of them would be selected to play an on-stage game. Several of the games on this show were transported to and from some other lottery game shows, most notable, Flamingo Fortune, Bonus Bonanza, and NY Wired; the differences are mentioned in this article. Elements from these games also carried over to the current quarterly-based Michigan Lottery game show Make Me Rich.