#135: Jeopardy! Featuring Alex Trebek

THIS... IS... JEOPARDY!

Jeopardy! opens with an actual speech sample that sounds an awful lot like the actual intro to the show. I'm really not expecting any surprises from this game. Trivia questions that you have to answer in the form of a question. From 22 years ago.

I'm featured!

Alex Trebek is featured in this game. They have a pretty good likeness of him that has some animation going for him. And they have his voice! He says something to introduce the categories (not the categories themselves, but the lead in to them) and he says 'The answer is' before every single question. Just like the show, really.

THUMPER!

The input screen is a little annoying because of how slow it is. The alphabet is in one long line. I figured out that I could hit up to go to the numbers and then down to go to the letter I (or up then left then down to get to R) which helped, but it sure would have been nice to have a better interface. An alphabet grid or something?

Despite the questions being 22 years old I was able to answer a fair number of them. I smoked the computer! Because I was able to get the Final Jeopardy question which asked about a talk show host. It was Oprah!

I had a surprising amount of fun playing this game. I know I liked it as a kid too. And now I want to see if I can't find a more recent Jeopardy! game.

Rating: A+

#87: Wheel of Fortune: Featuring Vanna White

DUUU DU DUUUUUU

I always liked watching Wheel of Fortune when I was a kid because it made me feel really smart. Of course it turns out the show was set up that way so being better at Wheel than the people on the show didn't actually mean I was very smart at all. If the producers actually thought you were reasonably smart and had a sufficient personality for TV they put you on Jeopardy instead.

YAAAAAAUS!

My avatar is _really_ excited about spinning something that wasn't bankrupt. I like how they actually got the right look onto Kim beside me. She's clapping because they told her she had to but she's really not very happy. She wants me to spin bankrupt.

What's in the box? IT COULD BE A BOAT!

This game actually did a pretty fair representation of Wheel of Fortune, complete with all the banal wastes of time. When the AI was taking their turn they'd sit there with the 'spin power' meter moving just like how people on the show would get a big wind up. Then I'd get to watch the wheel spin around and around and around. Slowly move to pick a letter... Then watch Vanna slowly sashay across the stage turning letters. There was no way to speed things up.

This game definitely featured Vanna White as she took over Pat Sajak's role of asking people for letters. They actually used speech to do it, which was a nice touch.

I had to reset at the start because the game made player selection options in a weird order. It asked me how many players, and then how many computer players. I picked 1 of each and it turns out that meant the game was played with just 1 person, controlled by the AI. I didn't get to play at all. Though in retrospect maybe that's a good feature. You could get the real TV show experience by setting up 3 AIs against each other and then shout at the screen and be better than them!

I feel like this game was too slow to be fun and way too easy to be challenging. But it really is what it says it is. This is Wheel of Fortune featuring Vanna White. There's no bait and switch going on. They even had a picture of her with an autograph and everything on one of the title screens.

They even had a really bad midi version of the theme song. If I didn't know how awesome a game like Final Fantasy VI could sound I'd think that was the fault of the SNES. No, I'm pretty sure Gametek's sound engineers just weren't very good.

Rating: C+