Jeopardy! was published by GameTek in 1988 for the NES. It is based on the long-running game show of the same name. Despite this game only being released in North America and being based on an American game show, it was developed by the British company Rare.
Naturally, I have no memories of this game, but I do have many nostalgic memories of the Swedish version of this game show, which began broadcasting in 1991. Famous Swedish comedian Magnus Härenstam was the host from the start until 2005, and after that the popularity faded and the Swedish version got cancelled in 2007.
You can choose to play this game alone, against computer opponents, or against up to two other players. Playing with three players require two of the players to share one controller though. There are also three difficulty settings for the computer opponents. Since there wasn’t enough memory on the cartridge to program wrong answers, the computer will sometimes answer with just a scrambled mess, with some correct letters.
Just like the TV show, you get to choose from a number of categories, with questions being worth different sums of money. Get a correct answer and you gain that amount of money, but get a wrong answer and you will lose that amount.
There’s supposedly 2000 “questions” built into this game, so it should take a while until it starts to repeat too much. To be clear, in Jeopardy, you get the answers and must answer with a question, although you never have to write “what is” before answering, as that is automatically filled in.
When you get an “answer” you get 10 seconds to buzz in, unless a computer opponent does it before you. If you buzz in first, you get to write your “question”. You have to enter the letters manually but you do get a fair time limit to do so. Just make sure that you know how to spell, since this game is not very forgiving when it comes to spelling mistakes. Funnily enough, the guys at Rare included quite a lot of questions about British things.
Sometimes you will come across special “answers” where you get to bet an amount of money, and write the “question” without having to worry about the opponents. The second round is “Double Jeopardy” where the prize money doubles, and when that round is done you get to play “Final Jeopardy” where everyone bets a set amount of money and everyone gets to write a “question” for an “answer”. If you play multiplayer you will literally have to ask the others to look away from the screen when doing this.
There isn’t much to say about the graphics in this game. It looks quite primitive, but it still does the job. The same goes for the music, since that basically just is the Jeopardy theme (which is not the same as the Swedish Jeopardy theme). It does sound good and there’s nothing to complain about.
Overall, Jeopardy! is a perfectly fine game for what it is. For a game show game for the NES it does what it is supposed to. Playing through one game will take around 25 minutes which is a good length. Playing against the computer does get a bit old after a while though, but for a multiplayer experience it would be more fun.
Is it worth Playing?
It really depends, how appealing does it sound playing Jeopardy on your NES? Playing it against the computer will just get old, but if you have some friends who are up for some 8-bit quiz game, this is a good one to play. Just remember, this is from the 1980s and is quite America-centric and therefore some questions can be really hard for some people like myself. There’s probably much better quiz games released more recently, so most people will see no reason to play this today. But if you want to feel like it is 1988 all over again, check this game out.
Final score: 7/10
Screenshots via MobyGames: http://www.mobygames.com
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