nintendo revisited: jeopardy 25th anniversary
written by daroff on 02/05/08

my parents thought buying me game show nintendo games would educate me instead of melting my brain. this makes sense, except for the fact that they also bought me wheel of fortune, which for anyone who has watched the show realizes it takes a very basic education to be over qualified to be a contestant. wow, was that a run on sentence.

i loved this game as a kid, and i dedicated myself to memorizing all the questions, leading to an encyclopedic knowledge of nothing. while i still love playing this game, i wouldn’t recommend it. (1) the pre-designed characters become white then mullato then black as you scroll through them, which in the ’80s was progressive, but now it creeps me out. (2) the answers are severely outdated. did you know west germany is the world’s third largest auto manufacturer? (3) with a scant three buttons and no keyboard, you have to seek out letter-by-letter to spell a word. it’s not much of a problem when you’re spelling “yale” but can hurt your hand when you’re trying to spell out “electromagnetism” in under 40 seconds. there are, however, many computer versions that don’t feature offensive characters, can grow with time, and you can use a damned keyboard.

8 comments


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8 comments

  1. HexenDarkside Feb 5

    Dont get me started on Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune on the NES. Always the same questions, makeing it not hard to memorize. On top of that, there are diffrent versions. LOTS. Theres Jeopardy, Jeopardy 25th Anniversary, Jeopardy Jr., Super Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, Wheel of Fortune Family, Wheel of Fortune Jr., and Wheel of Fortune With Vanna White. Thats 4 per show. Do I play them? Once was enough. Why do I own them? Cause I need to collect all the got-dang games. DO I have all of them? All but 1.
    Guess which one I don’t own and you’ll get you’re name on the imaginary Hexen website sidebar of fame. Only one answer per person. Don’t be discouraged if someone else answers first; there’s a good chance that person is wrong.

    Of course, I have many other gameshow games (Remote Control, Hollywood Squares, Family Fued, Double Dare, etc.) but i’ll talk about that antoher time.

    FYI: Every contestent in every NES game show game looks like a special kind of mongoloid.

  2. geoffrey Feb 5

    i’ll guess “jeopardy - sports edition”

  3. daroff Feb 5

    you better believe i’ll be revisiting wheel of fortune some time in the near future. i’ve got too many brain cells as is.

  4. Alex Feb 5

    Huh. I wish the real Jeopardy was played in an eerie, dark studio.

    Also, judging by the responses of the two players on the right, I’d guess they were relatives of Q*Bert.

  5. Celeste Feb 5

    For the record, not that it matters at all really, but I love NES Jeopardy. I used to force my ex-boyfriend to play it with me all the time. Yeah, we both had the answers memorized but that didn’t stop me from being over-competitive; when you play it every day, you definitely find plenty of ways to make it more entertaining. Now back to my pancake coma…

  6. HexenDarkside Feb 5

    Well Geoffrey, techniclly you are correct. I dont have Jeopardy Sports for the NES. Thats, however, because that one is an SNES title.

  7. geoffrey Feb 5

    “you are correct” - thank you. those are beautiful, beautiful words. so what game is it?

  8. HexenDarkside Feb 5

    I don’t have Wheel of Fortune W/ Vanna White. Curse her. She has never uncovered a common phrase on my NES.

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