The grand prize for winning the bonus wrong was always a $250 shopping spree for the Sharper Image store in Beverly Hills - this was long before Sharper Image went mainstream and opened stores nationwide.
The second season made several changes. The basic format/appearance of the show changed, the maze itself retained the same general design in most places but got a total makeover in its appearance, and the Honeycomb Maze was replaced by an ice cave. Also, the second season did not feature a bonus round.
The second season added in a trivia gate in which a player had to answer three trivia questions to answer three gates, from guardians who covered a variety of subjects. The subjects included history, science, nature, and innovation.
In one taping of Season 1, a contestant (LaToya) who opted to go to the maze 1st, had been stalling in the maze, whose time was 4:33.0, for three reasons. 1) She was having trouble finding the powersticks --- 2) She got lost in the maze and 3) In the Chamber of Knowledge, she answered both questions incorrectly, before getting all the rest right. Also, despite playing the game right, she did not seem to understand the rules. When, at anytime, she approached "The Mirror Man" --- "The Mirror Man," blocked her path, she had to answer the question posed by J.D. Roth, when she got very upset, and she came up with both incorrect answers, before she came up with the last one.
J.D. Roth's was Richard S. Kline's first choice as host, of the show, because of Roth's experience with video games and of his popularity with Fox's Fun House (1988). He once said in an interview about the game's early technology that he didn't know it even existed.