The Game Show Forum > The Big Board

Game Changing GS Computer/Video Games

(1/7) > >>

Jeremy Nelson:
All the video game sites periodically talk about the impact that one game had on their belief around the capability of video games, so I’ll ask the question here for our genre specifically. Did any of you have a game show video/home game that made you go “Wow” at the possibilities of what could come next?

I’ve got three major ones, but I’ll only share one and leave the others for someone else: the ‘95 Jeopardy CD-Rom game. I remember seeing it in action for the first time in one of the PBS World of Knowledge stores, and coming from a Sega Genesis, the accurate set, full motion video and the ability to use a joystick as a signaling device was such a huge upgrade. I remember thinking that it couldn’t have gotten much better..and then it did, at least for a while.

EDIT: I couldn’t stop myself. Giving Jellyvision the license to make Millionaire games was a masterstroke and it is a shame and a half that no other developer sought to use them to make other home  games.

BrandonFG:
Talking Vanna in the mid-90s Wheel PC game kinda blew my mind at 13. Up to that point I only had 8-bit versions on Commodore 64 or NES.

Loved that the J! PC game gave you the contestant’s POV.

MSTieScott:

--- Quote from: Jeremy Nelson on August 15, 2025, 02:50:47 PM ---EDIT: I couldn’t stop myself. Giving Jellyvision the license to make Millionaire games was a masterstroke and it is a shame and a half that no other developer sought to use them to make other home  games.

--- End quote ---

It's funny... as I read the first part of your post, my immediate thought was You Don't Know Jack, but that's just an example of a well-executed computer game, not a game show home game.

But I disagree fairly strongly with you about Millionaire. The adaptation of Fastest Finger was clever, but enough other aspects missed the mark that it didn't feel enough like playing the show. (I acknowledge they were probably under a tight deadline to capitalize on the show's popularity.) The scripted Phone-a-Friends weren't great -- supposedly a savvy player was supposed to be able to discern from what the friend said whether their answer could be trusted, but I was never able to pick up on any tells. The much larger problem, though, was that the questions were simply organized as first tier questions, middle tier questions, and final tier questions. As we all know, there's a big difference between a $2,000 question and a $32,000 question, but in the computer game, the difficulty of those middle tier questions bounced all over the place as the game randomly drew from the pile.

BillCullen1:
The Weakest Link for the PS1 made my jaw drop. Getting Anne Robinson to host and do the "putdowns" made it an awesome game. Millionaire comes in second, IMHO.

Hastin:

--- Quote from: MSTieScott on August 15, 2025, 03:34:46 PM ---(I acknowledge they were probably under a tight deadline to capitalize on the show's popularity.)

--- End quote ---

Take a look at this article, where Harry Gottlieb says they were giving like 2.5 months from concept to game. I mean, even if you look at the code and the Jellyengine those first 2 versions ran under, this was a barely reskinned YDKJ game, using much of the code for the planned 5th Dementia that was released in 2000.

Why they didn't go with Hothouse's release like the rest of the world probably came down to Disney wanting to distribute it themselves instead of Eidos.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page