Best and worst home game question materials…

[geno57]

Best materials: the original 1960s "Match Game" home game. They all came with a slew of material and because of the nature of the game, virtually all of it is still usable. "Eye Guess" has aged almost as gracefully. You have to cherry-pick a LITTLE bit with games involving famous names, but I've gone to board game conventions, and the same thing keeps happening when I bring "Eye Guess." Teenagers have a tendency to get intrigued by the gameplay, then get totally hooked on it.

I found that to be true, too, a few years ago when I had a couple of young coworkers play a few rounds.  They had a total blast.

I still think Eye Guess would be ripe for a remake.

[SamJ93]

I recently got a "Jackpot" home game on eBay and was amazed by the sheer number of riddles the game included and how crappy most of them were. My guess is the riddles were taken straight from the show, but to maximize the number they could print, they edited the riddles down to the point that many of them are ridiculously vague and unguessable.

Dear God, yes.  I was going to mention "Jackpot!" myself until you did.  Both that game and HR were by MB and were released in 1974...certainly not a coincidence.  Obviously they cared more about quantity over quality back in those days...

[Kevin Prather]

For what it's worth, the most recent Jeopardy box games feature material from old shows,

I was playing "Super Jeopardy!" for the Nintendo Entertainment System (the game is dated 1990) and was able to find some of the questions on j-archive.com, verbatim from 1984 episodes. So I reckon they did the same thing there.

The Jeopardy 2003 computer game did the same thing. My only gripe about an otherwise great game.

[JasonA1]

I was playing "Super Jeopardy!" for the Nintendo Entertainment System (the game is dated 1990) and was able to find some of the questions on j-archive.com, verbatim from 1984 episodes. So I reckon they did the same thing there.

The Jeopardy 2003 computer game did the same thing. My only gripe about an otherwise great game.

Not trying to be a jerk, but - that's a problem?

-Jason

[Kevin Prather]

Not trying to be a jerk, but - that's a problem?

Not a huge problem, but when you're sweeping categories just because you saw them on the GSN reruns earlier that day, it's takes a tiny bit out.

[DjohnsonCB]

 
-The 80’s “Sale” question booklet had a lot of material—around 20-25 questions per game, about 50 games in all—but the only really good part of them was the Fame Game questions, IMHO.  They were well-written and very similar to the ones used on the show itself.  The other straight-ahead questions were full of typos, often ridiculously easy (sample question: “In what Olympic sport do you ‘put the shot?’”) and again, dated.

Sounds like a question more suited to It Pays To Be Ignorant.