The Joker's Wild

"Nice game-show sim"

The Joker's Wild

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, player memory used to prevent repetition of questions, good interface.

CONS: Questions are a bit easy.

It's ironic that a game show not seen on American TV for years should become one of the finer CD-i titles, but that's exactly what's happened with ''The Joker's Wild,'' a well-produced and eminently playable disc.

The game goes all out to emulate a TV game show, complete with theme song, audience applause, a cheesy announcer, and most appropriately, a digitized Wink Martindale as your host. Of course, Martindale did NOT host the recent TV revival of ''Joker's Wild'', the version which chucked the original rules and only lasted a year, but that's beside the point.

Once the intro ends, the CD-i asks for the number and names of players. The names are selected by clicking on the first initial, then selecting from a seemingly exhaustive list of names that start with that initial. For those who want to remain anonymous, a selection of nicknames is available (including ''Tex'', ''Spock'', and happy happy joy joy: ''Ren'' and ''Stimpy''). When you pick your name, Wink repeats them to you to make sure they're right. Throughout the game, players are addressed by name, a nice touch that increases the vividness of the game show simulation.

''Joker's Wild'' is a game show that incorporates a giant slot machine into the traditional question-and-answer system. In the first round, players spin the wheel and categories show up in the slot's three windows. Players may opt to get a question from any of the categories that show up, and get more money for a right answer if their category appears twice or three times in the windows. There are five categories in a game, and a ''joker'', which can be used as any category.

In the second round, players select a category to use for the entire round, and spin a slot machine with dollar amounts in the windows. They can continue answering questions for those total amounts until they either stop, get one wrong, or hit a ''devil'', which erases their second-round winnings. The player with the most money at the end of round 2 wins the game, and gets to answer a ''Joker's Challenge'' question.

The questions in each round are read aloud by Wink, while an onscreen graphic shows the question (and Wink's thumb!) in text form. Multiple- choice answers are presented on screen, and the player has 10 seconds to choose the right one.

The advantage of multiple-choice is that the interface is extremely easy- to-use, and speeds up gameplay (as opposed to games like ''Jeopardy'' for the Genesis, which requires the tedious spelling out of answers with the controller). The system is also superior to the kludgey ''honor system'' of CD-i's ''Name That Tune'', which requires players to say their answer out loud, then click if they were right or wrong after the CD-i reveals the answer -- IMHO, if the players have to arbitrate right and wrong answers for themselves, they might as well save $30 and buy the board-game instead of a computer version!

Multiple-choice has one disadvantage: it makes some easy questions easier. While ''Joker's Wild'' is a bit easier overall than it probably ought to be, this is not a fatal flaw. Better to have a fast-moving playable game where contestants get most of the answers right, than a slow-moving one where they're usually wrong (e.g., playing ''Trivial Pursuit'' with the Canadian cards).

Another major success of the CD-i version of ''Joker's Wild'' is its avoidance of repetition, the bane of any video-game-show. Once questions begin to reappear and players remember the right answers, the game becomes unplayable. This is not a problem for Joker's Wild. First off, the distraction of spinning the wheel greatly reduces the speed at which the database is consumed. Whereas a full game of ''Jeopardy'' will use 61 questions -- 30 in each of two rounds and one for Final Jeopardy -- a 3- player game of Joker's Wild will usually use around 25, and 2 players sometimes use only a dozen.

Secondly, I've noticed the ''Jokers_Wild'' entry in my player memory is updated, even if I quit a game before reaching the high-score list. This suggests to me (and it has been confirmed by a Philips rep on America Online) that the game uses your player's memory to keep track of which questions have been used and avoids using them again. A few rare duplicate questions do pop up, and there are only a couple dozen categories in the game, but after 5 months of twice-a-week play, I still find the game largely repetition-free.

''Joker's Wild'' is one of the best social games for adults for the CD-i, and until Jeopardy comes out, it should be high on the list of anyone who wants multiplayer games for their system.
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(c) 1995 Chris Adamson

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 04/01/01, Updated 04/01/01