Jeopardy!

"Marred by witless questions, ring-in problems"

Jeopardy!

Philips & Accent Media Productions, for CD-i, does not require digital- video card

PROS: TV-quality production values, good game-play for groups of adults, good interface

CONS: Can only play 35 games before exhausting database, interface allows some ''cheating'', dull questions

With yet another game show title for the CD-i, the designers may have finally solved the dilemma of how to answer a question with a joystick and not go nuts.

The clever ''fill-out'' system of CD-i's ''Jeopardy!'' is far and away the game's most significant feature, and will almost certainly be ripped off by game show titles on other systems.

Good thing too, because it makes an otherwise torturous game much more playable.

For those who change the channel after ''Wheel of Fortune'' is over (you fools!), ''Jeopardy'' is a question-and-answer game where the rules are backwards. A player is read the answer ''It touches four Great Lakes, more than any other state,'' and should reply with a question, e.g. ''What is Michigan?''

Questions are selected from a board, 6 columns across by 5 rows tall, with dollar amounts in each space. The columns are categories, and dollar values increase from top to bottom, $100 to $500 in the first round, $200 to $1000 in the second round, aka ''Double Jeopardy''. Get the question right, win that amount -- blow it and you lose that much. A few ''Daily Double'' spaces on the board allow players to wager any amount, potentially doubling their score... or wiping it out entirely. A ''Final Jeopardy'' round puts everyone in that situation, meaning players with close scores have to bet big and answer the question correctly.

What's wretched about most videogame versions of Jeopardy is the process of answering questions. On the Genesis, for example, a window appears with the letters A-Z and the numbers 0-9 in a row. The player has 60 seconds to spell out his or her answer, pressing button ''A'' to select a letter, ''B'' to backspace, and ''C'' to enter it. It slows the game to a crawl, and my family continues to press ''C'' inadvertantly, thus losing money on half-complete responses.

The CD-i could have duplicated the system used in ''Name That Tune'', in which players call out their answers, wait for the CD-i to reveal the correct answer, and then click ''right'' or ''wrong'' to indicate if they got the question. I think that system makes the limitations of the system too obvious; if you have to ajudicate the game yourself, you might well save $20 and buy the board game instead.

Instead, CD-i ''Jeopardy'' system most closely resembles the title-finder in ''Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia''. A player who buzzes in sees the question at the top-left of the screen and a large grid of letters on the right. If he or she clicks on ''M'', all the words starting with ''M'' appear at left in alphabetical order. Click ''i'' and the words starting with ''MI'' appear. In most cases, the desired response can be brought up after only 3 letters are entered. Once it's visible, the player moves over to that side of the screen and selects it. A ''delete'' button is available to correct mispellings. Players also have a button to ''give up''.

This system makes it much easier to type out lengthy responses, and speeds the game up tremendously... although it's still a bit tedious and the home game is nowhere near as fast-paced as the television show.

A few drawbacks though -- if a player's response is really wrong, it probably won't be in the database and thus won't appear on the list. If he or she clicks fast enough, it's possible to realize the intended response is wrong and hastily improvise another.

On the other hand, if you delete too quickly, I have noticed you can either end up with a half-complete list on the left of the screen, or crash the game altogether. Use delete with some caution!

Another ''cheat'' could have been fixed with better writing. If a player needs to come up with multiple responses, he or she really only needs to type the first in and the rest will reveal themselves on the answer list. For example, if you're asked to name the Benelux countries, simply punching ''bel'' will reveal ''Belgium, Lux., Netherlands'', while punching ''lux'' brings up ''Luxembourg, Belg., Neth.'' Too bad the producers didn't think to drop multiple-response questions -- the upshot for players is that you're asked for 2 or 3 things and you know at least one, ring in!

That brings up the issue of signalling. Unlike AMP's Joker's Wild CD-i, in which players took turns, ''Jeopardy'' allows players to ring in when they think they know the answer. Because few CD-i's have enough controls to give one button to each player, several options are available. The first gives the control to one person, a game-master if you will -- players then yell out when they want to ring in and the person with the control selects their name from the bottom of the screen. If you have only one or two players, or have two controls, you can also assign an action button to each player and have them ring in themselves, although this often requires sharing a control between two people. In all, the flexibility of the game in this regard is a nice feature.

[A possible problem though -- I swear the game scans controller 1 before controller 2. If both players start hitting their buttons halfway through the question, a player on controller 1 will always win. Not completely sure of this, but it sure looks like it gives an unfair advantage to players signalling in on that controller]

One design mistake worth noting -- the ''Daily Double'' can appear anywhere on the board. In the TV show, it's usually in one of the more difficult questions ($300 or more in the first round, $600 - $1000 in the second). On the CD-i, the Daily Double can appear in the top-most row. Hitting it allows a player to wager all his or her money, offering the chance to double the score on a single turn. It's frustrating to other players when someone doubles their score with the easiest question on the board. And for some strange reason, the game only allows Daily Double bets to be in even intervals of $100.

As in ''Joker's Wild'', questions are read aloud and players are addressed by name... a nice touch that will appeal to Jeopardy viewers who wouldn't otherwise be drawn to a video-game. Strangely though, while game mechanics, help, and responses are voiced by Alex Trebek, the answers that pop up in the board are done by announcer Charlie O'Donell! Why?

In another similarity to ''Joker's Wild'', the game uses the CD-i's memory to note which questions you've already been asked. This is vital in a game show, since repetition is terribly boring and gives repeat players a huge advantage. It's particularly useful here, since the CD-i version has 2,100 questions, about enough for 35 games. To me, that seems like too few -- the Super Nintendo version of Jeopardy has 3,500 questions, and it's not on a CD!

Finally, the questions seem to have been written straight out of an almanac or an encyclopedia. In other words, they're dull. You'll still get a powerful test of your knowledge of useless information, but you don't often get that ''oh that's interesting'' kind of reaction that characterizes the TV show.

Still, this is a classy version of a classy game, a title that I've seen really amuse a room-ful of adults (even my videogame-loathing parents!). It's not as fast-paced as the TV show, but it's still a good test of your trivia skills.
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(c) 1995 Chris Adamson

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 04/01/01, Updated 04/01/01