The Game Show Forum
The Game Show Forum => The Big Board => Topic started by: PYLdude on February 03, 2014, 09:53:28 PM
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So I just had this thought in my head regarding the Sega CD Retsupurae videos that have been posted here...
a lot of us have had game show video games we enjoyed, and home (read: board) games we enjoyed.
And I'm not sure if this was somehow asked before, but what about ones we DIDN'T like?
What do you think were some of the worst that you played? (BigJon games don't count. For all the criticism he has deservedly gotten for his bugginess, much of his work was at least somewhat decent especially his Wheel game. That plus I don't like to see a topic full of his biggest detractors, which inevitably leads to trouble if past mentions of his work are any indication.)
I'll start:
-the Tiger electronics editions of Wheel and Jeopardy!. The Jeopardy game wasn't TOO bad but it was annoying in the sense that it took too long to play, but when you're not doing research into your puzzles (as they did with Wheel, where some L's were replaced with K's)...that's not good.
-the NES version of Hollywood Squares. I don't know of really any good translation of HS that made the rounds in the consoles and smartphones (even the Ludia version, with Tom Bergeron, lacked in presentation)...but this one particularly sucked.
-the TPIR decades IOS game. The original two TPIR games from Ludia were at least somewhat decent, but this? You can tell they just phoned it in. Whatever effort they made to ensure there were enough things from the past to make the game interesting (the addition of Professor Price and Hurdles were plusses), it was cancelled out by the haphazard nature of the rest of the production.
-the Tic Tac Dough IOS game. Not enough material and no challenge whatsoever.
Where do you stand? How varied is your mileage?
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$100k or Million Dollar Pyramid should be on the medal podium. I never once got to the top of the pyramid in the Sierra game.
I never owned it, but if you go on Youtube and look for the Game Grumps playing of Nickelodeon GUTS, I think you'll agree it belongs in the basement as well. Interesting idea, lousy execution. (Your mileage might be different for American Gladiators as well.)
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$100k or Million Dollar Pyramid should be on the medal podium. I never once got to the top of the pyramid in the Sierra game.
I never owned it, but if you go on Youtube and look for the Game Grumps playing of Nickelodeon GUTS, I think you'll agree it belongs in the basement as well. Interesting idea, lousy execution. (Your mileage might be different for American Gladiators as well.)
The Million Dollar Pyramid Ludia game is up there. Way too easy to win.
Regarding the AG games, the NES game bugged me because they tried to make it too much like a sidescrolling adventure game. And although I think American Gladiators would have been even more entertaining if the TV show was anything like the NES game, it's just too radical a departure. The SNES game got it right for the most part but I thought there were some things lacking. The Eliminator I didn't like and Human Cannonball was a little too reliant on precision button pushing for my taste.
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I'll throw in another: The Hollywood Squares handheld game. You picked your square and the game gave you a number. You flipped to that number in the book and read the question, zinger and answer all in one go, then pushed agree/disagree. Family Feud did the same thing to much better effect (press the number of the answer; you were given twelve answers for a board of six or seven answers) and that was it. Jeopardy suffered this treatment, but Wheel of Fortune wasn't awful. I wouldn't choose it now over my iPad version, but at the time it was OK.
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From the video game side:
-NES and SNES, "American Gladiators": The NES version was too much unlike the TV show. The Wall in that game can bite me, by the way. As for the SNES version, it was much better, but the Eliminator was only worth 10 points to the winner, and the second place finisher got 5 points. This made most games forgone conclusions by the time you got to the event.
From the board game side:
-Tyco, "Jeopardy!" (1993, I think?): I thought they did a great job with the "Wheel of Fortune" game, but this...yeah. I will admit that I liked the mechanic of having everyone host a few categories instead of having to declare an MC, but having designated clues on certain cards be Daily Doubles meant that some games would have none, and, if that was the category you were hosting, well, better hope they miss!
Anthony
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You got to the Eliminator? Salud.
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I was going to mention it in the Sega CD WoF thread, but since THIS opened up, it was definitely something I *didn't* like...
I believe it was the first edition of WoF for the original PlayStation.....One of the many that had the degree of strength you could spin the wheel. It didn't take too long for me to hone in on a degree, where, once I happened to hit the top dollar value, I could hit it each and every time..
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I would have to go with the Ideal Tic Tac Dough game from 1978 and the Milton Bradley TJW games from the 70s. Only up to three questions per category. Nowadays you could look up material on the Internet to add more questions to the categories yourself, back then, you couldn't.
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I waited for months for the GameTek TPIR computer game to be released--far later than originally announced. Clearly the company was putting a lot of extra effort into this game to make it as much like the show as possible. Or not. (http://mstiescott.tripod.com/tpirgame/tpir.html)
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The MB versions of the Pyramid, those that used the main game for the Winners' Circle instead of "list of things that fit the subject." They even messed that up, with only six things to convey in the same 30 seconds. Even at the tender age of 8 or 9, I could tell it blew. One good thing that came out of Donnymid was a new home game.
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The Price is Right handheld game was about as good as you could get for that kind of translation, but it was still pretty disappointing. The tabletop version was slightly better, and the doodads attached to it were fun, but TPiR has too much going on to be a good electronic tabletop game, until they build some kind of super amazing LCD attachment to Travis' home game.
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I second what Neumms said about the Pyramid games. (I'm told they didn't use the WC-type categories because they didn't want to exhaust the game play. Whether it's true or not, it doesn't change my feeling.) The Family Feud games that I had, instead of giving you enough questions to play properly just went 1-1-2, with the top score winning. It had the same problem as Louie Anderson's televised version, which is that a team with a hefty lead had no incentive to build the bank on the last question. Also, Fast Money was multiple choice so that they didn't have to list the point value for a dozen answers.
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One thing I never liked about any of the Milton Bradley or Pressman Jeopardy games was the way you had to arbitrarily choose one of the $100/$1000/$2000 (depending on version) clues to be Final Jeopardy. That was one thing the Parker Bros. version got right in my opinion (that and it had six categories instead of five.)
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I never once got to the top of the pyramid in the Sierra game.
Quite far from my experience playing that game, if I remember right (it's been some years since losing the disc to a bad box-packing that soaked it in lamp oil - don't ask ;) ).
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-the NES version of Hollywood Squares. I don't know of really any good translation of HS that made the rounds in the consoles and smartphones (even the Ludia version, with Tom Bergeron, lacked in presentation)...but this one particularly sucked.
The NES game was probably the best one, IMO, which may be faint praise, but they did what they could to bring the experience home. Outside of the center square, the Ludia version asked straight trivia with no zingers, and didn't even bother with the charade of asking a question when the CPU played. At least the Nintendo game had questions/answers/jokes typical of the series and (8-bit) music from the show, as opposed to whatever music Ludia could get for their version.
-Jason
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I waited for months for the GameTek TPIR computer game to be released--far later than originally announced. Clearly the company was putting a lot of extra effort into this game to make it as much like the show as possible. Or not. (http://mstiescott.tripod.com/tpirgame/tpir.html)
I found most all of the GameTek versions of game shows to be fun and enjoyable...Up until this one. Playing "Card Game" (or whatever it might have been called in this version) for something that was $300 and losing on the first hand? No fun. Hated the way the prizes were haphazardly thrown into games that they didn't belong in.
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Did anybody start the car playing Hollywood Squares or complete the Double Dare Obstacle Course/800m sprint?
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Did anybody start the car playing Hollywood Squares or complete the Double Dare Obstacle Course/800m sprint?
On the Commodore 64 version of DD I did win the obstacle course, after many...many...MANY....tries.
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Did anybody start the car playing Hollywood Squares or complete the Double Dare Obstacle Course/800m sprint?
Assuming you mean the NES game, absolutely. I used to have a screencap of it on my old website.
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Did anybody start the car playing Hollywood Squares or complete the Double Dare Obstacle Course/800m sprint?
Hollywood Squares: Yes (sadly, you get the same fanfare as with the Secret Square)
Double Dare: No (the closest I ever got was I grabbed the flag on the 8th obstacle...once. But, it doesn't count unless you hand it off to your partner)
\could routinely get 7 obstacles, though
Anthony
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One I'm gonna mention before we forget is the Win Lose or Draw NES game.
I could imagine this working on let's say the DS (and that's only because of the stylus incorporated into the system) or maybe the Wii, but considering the controls of the 8 bit NES and it's like trying to play Pictionary on an Etch-a-Sketch...not so much.
I'll throw a bone for one that wasn't bad but at the same time was horribly lacking- the Remote Control NES game. I didn't have an issue with the gameplay or the fact that for the most part it stayed true to the source material. What I did have an issue with was that the game just...ended. There wasn't a bonus, there wasn't anything that was remotely captivating about it and made you want to play it more than the inital time out of curiosity.
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Someone at MB told me they went with the Pyramid end game matching the front game because "who would judge the clues?". In one sense, it's understandable. Who wants to end the game with a big argument over whether or not you won the $10,000 with illegal clues? But I agree. It was lousy. Glad Cardinal/Endless went the right way.
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Someone at MB told me they went with the Pyramid end game matching the front game because "who would judge the clues?". In one sense, it's understandable. Who wants to end the game with a big argument over whether or not you won the $10,000 with illegal clues?
And you could say the same thing about the main game. "It was 'sixty,' and you said 'fifty.' They both end in 'ty'!" (I'm making that one up, but it's not so different from "Saturday/sundae.")
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I remember playing SNES version of Nickelodeon's Guts only once, and I absolutely hated it.
The NES version of Double Dare was okay, but the controls were really tedious, especially on the obstacle course. British-based Rare Ltd. made plenty of great games for GameTek, but this wasn't one of them.
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It's prolly been close to 25 years since I played it, but I seem to remember finding the home version of Finders Keepers pretty crummy. From what I recall, the "rooms" of the house were tiny individual cardboard boxes (about the size of a jewelry box), but the "Finders" part of the game seemed nonexistent.
Was never a big fan of board games that didn't incorporate the bonus game into the box, and instead went with the "most money after three rounds wins!" format.
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Was never a big fan of board games that didn't incorporate the bonus game into the box, and instead went with the "most money after three rounds wins!" format.
The most ludicrous of that was from $1M Chance...: To become a millionaire you had to solve all three puzzles in the game.
Yee-haw.
The box game solved a problem that Sale of the Century has when played "for funnies"--you play (some number of) games and whoever has the most loot all up wins. The instant bargains may pale in comparison to the winner's prize cards but at least they're points to an end and not just vaporloot.
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Have to bump with a warning for anybody who has an Android device (I don't know if it's on IOS)...
you know how some of us weren't too fond of the Ludia PYL game?
There's one out there that's worse than you could've ever imagined. It's what I believe is a homebrew game, of questionable quality, no whammy effects (the only sound effect you get when you hit a whammy sounds like the buzzer when nobody rings in in the question rounds), the slides I don't think change, the sound effects aren't even from the right show (the guy programmed the board sound from Whammy), and the maker ripped Gary Kroeger's intro from Whammy to begin it.
The sad part is that I believe that I just downloaded the free edition. There's a pay edition for $1.99.
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One I'm gonna mention before we forget is the Win Lose or Draw NES game.
I could imagine this working on let's say the DS (and that's only because of the stylus incorporated into the system) or maybe the Wii, but considering the controls of the 8 bit NES and it's like trying to play Pictionary on an Etch-a-Sketch...not so much.
If programmed right, this could work perfectly with the Wii U since it has a separate touchscreen someone could draw on.
Most of you have outlined my problems with video/computer games, but one I wanted to point out was the lack of returning champs on NES. I started out on computer adaptations, so I always liked the fact that the game saved my winnings (and deleted them when I was defeated). For me, it gave the game a higher replay value.
As an aside, I often complained on here when a Jeopardy game used a multiple choice response format, but in retrospect, it really speeds the game up. Looking at the 8/16 bit versions, those games (depending on who you played with) could take a really long time to finish.
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Did anybody start the car playing Hollywood Squares or complete the Double Dare Obstacle Course/800m sprint?
Yes to both questions. I have been able to complete the DD obstacle course by not making any mistakes.
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Did anybody start the car playing Hollywood Squares or complete the Double Dare Obstacle Course/800m sprint?
Yes to both questions. I have been able to complete the DD obstacle course by not making any mistakes.
It really does require you to be mistake free. One missed flag grab and it's basically over.
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Did anybody own the game and get directions from the instruction booklet. Whenever I played it was via rental and therefore it was sixty seconds of guesswork. (Seriously, in what universe do you propel your guy forward by alternating left-right-left-right? I thought GameTek made the game, not Konami.)
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Seriously, in what universe do you propel your guy forward by alternating left-right-left-right? I thought GameTek made the game, not Konami.)
I cannot tell you how many joysticks I broke playing this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Activision_Decathlon). Konami wasn't the only offender. :)
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Seriously, in what universe do you propel your guy forward by alternating left-right-left-right? I thought GameTek made the game, not Konami.)
I cannot tell you how many joysticks I broke playing this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Activision_Decathlon). Konami wasn't the only offender. :)
Also the NES version of Winter Games.
Track & Field II had issues too. I found the hammer throw particularly frustrating.
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Also the NES version of Winter Games.
That was more rhythmic than frantic, though, wasn't it? (I'm thinking biathalon specifically.) Was there a jiggle event in Winter Games? (I played it on my Apple II.)
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Also the NES version of Winter Games.
That was more rhythmic than frantic, though, wasn't it? (I'm thinking biathalon specifically.) Was there a jiggle event in Winter Games? (I played it on my Apple II.)
The speed skating event. The NES didn't have all the events that other versions did apparently either.
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(Seriously, in what universe do you propel your guy forward by alternating left-right-left-right? I thought GameTek made the game, not Konami.)
Try walking down the street only using your right foot and tell me how far you get.
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Try walking down the street only using your right foot and tell me how far you get.
Super Mario Brothers (and all games after it) have your guy move in the direction you enter on the keypad. As does Contra. And Mega Man. And Legend of Zelda. Just about every game uses a sensible means to direct your guy because to do something that's more realistic (and if you want realism I point you to QWOP, a game where you run a 100m "sprint," and each key press exercises a thigh or foot muscle) would detract very much from the game-playing experience.
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(Seriously, in what universe do you propel your guy forward by alternating left-right-left-right? I thought GameTek made the game, not Konami.)
Try walking down the street only using your right foot and tell me how far you get.
You're shitting us, right? Jesus Christ, standard video game trope: hit the button in the direction you want to go to. Pac-Man does it, Mario does it, Madden does it. When games don't do it (Resident Evil) people bitch.
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The point of jiggle-to-run (or pound-the-buttons-to-run in the case of Track & Field in the arcade) in these games isn't meant to simulate actual movement; it's meant to simulate the *fatigue* of actual movement. To that end, it succeeds pretty fantastically. The first time I got the "SPRINT!!!" message after pacing myself for 1300 meters at the end of Activision Decathalon was a pretty good gaming moment in my formative years simply because it fairly accurately portrayed the dig-deep-now-dig-deeper feeling that I would imagine an elite athlete has at the end of a long competition.
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The point of jiggle-to-run (or pound-the-buttons-to-run in the case of Track & Field in the arcade) in these games isn't meant to simulate actual movement; it's meant to simulate the *fatigue* of actual movement. To that end, it succeeds pretty fantastically.
Absolutely agree, and the distinction should be made clear.
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Track & Field II had issues too. I found the hammer throw particularly frustrating.
Thinking about it, Track & Field II was relatively unplayable unless you had a controller with an autofire function, at which point the records started falling like distance runners near Zola Budd.
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Track & Field II had issues too. I found the hammer throw particularly frustrating.
Thinking about it, Track & Field II was relatively unplayable unless you had a controller with an autofire function, at which point the records started falling like distance runners near Zola Budd.
The main problem with Track & Field II, to me, was the completely out of whack control scheme. I understand that kind of was the point, considering the varied amount of events they had (from track to gymnastics to shooting to fencing). But I think what it boiled down to was two basic control schemes that worked- impossible tasks with the D-pad or overreliance on button mashing. The diving and highbar events were really notorious for that IMO.
I didn't mind it when I was seven but now that I'm 31 I like to think I know better.