Video Game Review #507: Jeopardy!

Jeopardy!

PC

Nostalgia Factor:

Back in the 1990s, my family had a home computer with a very limited number of games on it. One of those games was Jeopardy! I was always a big fan of the show, catching it on TV every day after I would get home from school. I never knew most of the answers, but I still enjoyed watching the show and playing along at home. Of course, I naturally gravitated towards this game as soon as we got it.

While I wouldn't say I was an expert or anything, I played the game enough to become pretty decent at it. I'd beat the computer more often than not. Sometimes I'd play against family and friends, and I would usually win there, too (unless I was playing my stepbrother Joe). One category I excelled at was anything to do with the Bible, as I was in Christian grade school at the time. Nowadays, it is one of my worst categories, but back then, I would sweep the entire category. Helpful for building a giant lead, considering my knowledge of most of the other categories was severely lacking.

Eventually I moved on from the game as I became more heavily invested in home consoles. Why play Jeopardy when I had a massive library of Saturn, N64, and PS1 games to play instead? I'd say that a good 30 years have passed since I've even given this game a second thought. How would I feel revisiting it in the year 2024? Let's dive in!

Story:

This game has no story. You control a character who is playing Jeopardy. The game does allow for returning champions, however, so I guess if you wanted to go on a Ken Jennings-like winning streak and make up a story in your head about it that way, nothing would be stopping you. Just don't expect a plot or anything from this game. This game gets right down to business: playing Jeopardy. And that's it.

Gameplay:

I started replaying Jeopardy on my RetroPie, using a regular game controller. It's a little awkward using this controller. You have to press select to bring up a virtual keyboard, and then make your selection or type in your answer that way. Yeah, yeah. Answer/question, whatever you want to call it. For simplicity's sake, I am just going to say "answer" from here on out, even though it is not technically correct. My point is: it's a little tedious, pecking away at this digital keyboard one letter at a time. Makes things go very slowly.

When I was a kid, I had played the game using a keyboard, and I thought everything worked great. Your experience will definitely suffer using a controller. Just for shits and giggles, I hooked up a USB keyboard to my RetroPie to see if it would improve the experience... and it did! I thought it would be just a minor improvement, but it made a world of difference. Moral of the story: use a keyboard for this game, if you can.

This game works exactly as a round of Jeopardy would work. You have a board of six categories, each one containing five different questions worth varying dollar amounts. You make your pick. The question comes up on the screen. You have to buzz in and type your answer in. If you are correct, you earn the dollar amount of the question. If you are wrong, you lose that much money. The game is played in two rounds, with the second round being worth more money. After the rounds are complete, you take part in Final Jeopardy, where you make a wager. Whoever finishes the game with the most money wins.

Playing against friends is truly great fun. Playing against the computer can be an up and down affair. Keep in mind that I played against the computer for review purposes. I've played with friends in the past, but not this time around.

Why is it so irritating to play against the computer? A number of reasons. The first being that the computer buzzes in ridiculously fast sometimes. You barely get to read a word or two on the screen before they buzz in. It feels completely unfair at times. The good news is that they are often incorrect, so that's cool. Another thing that makes it annoying is that when they don't buzz in quickly, they buzz in too slowly. There is nothing more frustrating than when a question comes up that you don't know the answer to, so you decide to let the timer run out. Nearly every time, the computer will buzz in with one or two ticks left on the timer. If they are incorrect, the timer resets. Oftentimes the OTHER computer controlled character will then buzz in when the timer is almost down to zero. It is very annoying. Makes some of these games drag on and on forever.

Something I have to question is the algorithm for putting in a correct response. I'll give an example. The question was "the number of sides on a rectangle." Obviously, the number is four. I type in four. Nope! Incorrect. The computer buzzes in and answers 4. They are awarded the points. Seriously, WTF? You couldn't figure out that "four" was the same thing as "4"? I wish I had written down some more examples, but I got screwed a number of times on things where I felt I had put in the correct answer, but the computer decided not to give it to me.

Those are my main complaints with the game. My last complaint is of no fault of the game itself. The trivia questions are very outdated. There was one game I played where I didn't know a single thing on an entire game board. Absolutely none of the trivia was relevant here in 2024. Like I said, this is of no fault of the game itself. This title was released in 1987. It is nearly 40 years old. Of course the questions are going to be old. 

Graphics:

This game doesn't look good by today's standards, but does it really matter? This is a trivia game. You aren't playing for pretty graphics. The game board looks fine. I always liked how you have a choice of multiple character models to pick from when creating a contestant. Does the game look special, or even particularly good? No. But it doesn't need to be.

Sound:

Take exactly what I said about the graphics and apply it to the music, too. Does the game sound great? No, but it doesn't really need to. You don't play trivia games for fancy graphics and sound effects. I appreciate how they attempted to recreate the Jeopardy theme with late 80s beeps and bloops. Doesn't really sound good, but it is still quite charming.

Overall:

I'm glad I decided to revisit this game. It is still quite fun, faults and all. I'm sure there are bigger and better Jeopardy games that have been released since this first came out, but I haven't played them. So for now, this game stands out as the definitive Jeopardy title in my mind. Emphasis on for now. I do plan to play some other versions of this game someday. But considering this came out in 1987, when I was five years old, it's quite impressive that this game is still as good as it is.

If you've never played it, it is definitely worth a look. Unless you hate Jeopardy. Then I'd avoid it. It does have some very annoying things about it. It kept me from enjoying this title in the same way I did with Wheel of Fortune for the PC, which I also grew up playing. But I still like it.

THE GRADE:

B-

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