GS home and video games: what you DIDN'T like.

[PYLdude]

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?

[TLEberle]

$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.)

[PYLdude]

$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.

[TLEberle]

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.

[beatlefreak84]

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

[TLEberle]

You got to the Eliminator? Salud.

[aaron sica]

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..

[Johnissoevil]

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.

[Mike Tennant]

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.

[Neumms]

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.

[pacdude]

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.

[Jay Temple]

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.

[snowpeck]

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.)

[Tony Peters]

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 ).

[JasonA1]

-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