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3 Smileys - 1 Smiley Poor, 5 Smileys Excellent
Platforms: Mac OS, Windows 9x (Hasbro Interactive)
A: Broadcast in 43 countries to 32 million viewers every week, this popular television quiz show has ranked #1 in the Nielsen ratings since shortly after its syndicated debut in 1984. Q: What is . . . Jeopardy!?
Forward As part of its effort to target the growing family audience, Minnesota-based software publisher MacSoft released a Macintosh version of the perennial favorite Jeopardy! just in time for Christmas 2000. MacSoft, a division of Infogrames, Inc., has made a name for itself in the Macintosh community primarily by selecting programs already written for the PC platform and porting them to the Macintosh platform. In response to the shifting user demographics resulting from the huge success of the iMac, MacSoft has chosen to expand its target audience beyond what might traditionally be considered hard-core gamers. Initially, through a multi-title agreement with Infogrames' acquisition of Hasbro Interactive, MacSoft has been able to bring a series of family-oriented products to the Mac world. In addition to Jeopardy!, recently released titles include Scrabble, Wheel of Fortune, and Monopoly.
About Jeopardy!
It seems Jeopardy! has become so well entrenched in the American collective psyche that most people are already familiar with the basic game play. In case you need a brief refresher, though, let's review a few points. At its core, Jeopardy is a trivia game. The distinctive Jeopardy! format phrases the 'question' as an 'answer' and requires contestants to state their 'answers' as 'questions'. (While it has always bugged me that this rule is really just a matter of semantics, it is a source of fierce pride among loyal fans.) Play progresses through three rounds: Jeopardy!, Double Jeopardy! and Final Jeopardy! During the first two rounds, the game board consists of a grid containing thirty boxes each corresponding to a clue. The six columns are each randomly assigned a category at the beginning of the round. Within each category, the first rows of answers are generally the easiest with the level of difficulty increasing as one moves down the board. The points assigned to each box also correspondingly increase in value. Three players compete to be the first to buzz in and state the correct question in response to each answer. The Final Jeopardy! round consists of a single clue. Each contestant must place a bet based only on the category of the final answer and without knowing how much the other contestants are wagering. The player with the highest final score is the daily champion, obviously!
A: During its eighth season, Jeopardy! contestant Jerome Vered posted this single-day score which has yet to be surpassed. Q: What is $34,000?
Gameplay In this computer version of Jeopardy!, the user is presented with a choice of three modes of play. In Normal mode, play closely resembles the television show. Players enter their names and are assigned one of the following keyboard buzz-in keys: the space bar, the control key, or the shift key. If three human contestants are not available, additional computer-controlled players are added to round out the trio. Play proceeds through all three rounds of a regular game. As in the television version, Daily Doubles are hidden throughout the board with an occasional Video Daily Double. For Tournament mode, contestants compete in two complete games as they would in Normal mode. If the player with the highest combined score is a human player, that person moves on to the Tournament of Champions where they face two computer players. A third mode of play is available in the Hasbro adaptation: 'Speed Match'. Here you compete alone to top previous high scores using a single Double Jeopardy! board. At any point during play, you can save a game and reload it at a later time, including the current settings.
Contestants One of the more interesting features of this Jeopardy! game is the inclusion of the extra computer-controlled players. While the instruction manual refers to them as AI, we're definitely not talking The Matrix here! However, their presence significantly enhances the experience, especially for a lone player. Just as the humans they are attempting to mimic, the computer players do not always answer correctly. The Skill Level setting not only affects the difficulty of the questions, but also determines how quickly an AI player buzzes in and the probability that they will give a correct response. An additional setting, labeled Adaptive AI, forces any computer contestants to adapt their play in order to keep their score as close as possible to the leading human player. So if you miss a few questions, the computer will buzz in more slowly and or be more likely to give an incorrect response to allow you to catch up. Unfortunately, the AI players are only heard but never seen. Perhaps that spares us from the image of Lara Croft playing Jeopardy!
A: In addition to garnering two Daytime Emmy awards for his performance as the host of Jeopardy!, Alex Trebek received this prestigious honor in May of 1999. Q: What is a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame?
Graphics and Sound Jeopardy! just would not be quite the same without the contributions of announcer Johnny Gilbert and host Alex Trebek. The Mac developers at Westlake Interactive were able to include both important personalities in this version partly through a series of video clips. At appropriate points in the game, Alex will materialize to direct play, offer words of encouragement or condolence and, of course, pronounce judgment on your response. These little takes of Alex have got to be simultaneously one of the best features of the game and one of the worst! While they certainly add an element of authenticity and can actually be a source of amusement, there are just so many times that one can hear "That's it exactly!" (276k) or "Right you are!" (216k) without developing a nervous tick. An optional setting is available, intended primarily for systems with limited resources, to toggle off display of the videos. However, this solution only eliminates the visual rendition; the audio still comes through loud and clear. Reducing the inevitable annoyance factor is only one of several reasons it would be nice to have further control of the audio and visual output of the game. As in the televised version, the clues are both shown visually and also read aloud. If no one answers a particular clue correctly the appropriate response is displayed on the screen. However, if a computer player responds correctly to a clue, only his or her audio response is provided. There is no corresponding visual output. The same holds true for determining the correctness of a response, though in this case it is easy enough to tell from Alex's facial expressions alone whether one is right or wrong. Incorporating additional visual indicators directly into the game play would permit one to simply mute the volume and still effectively participate in the game. In addition to increasing the game's ADA-compliance level, this relatively minor modification would not only make it easier to play at work but allow for more casual play, say while also watching Mister... Bill... O'Reilly on FoxNews. In anticipation of the purists complaining that this is not how the original game works, I would suggest making such visual displays optional or alternatively providing a Closed Captioned window just like on TV.
A: Created along with Wheel of Fortune by this man, the original Jeopardy! television show was hosted by Art Fleming and was in production from March 1964 through January 1975. Q: Who is Merv Griffin?
Interface Admittedly, when attempting to recreate a 3-D real-world experience in the 2-D world of the computer, certain actions are more difficult to capture than others. For a game of Jeopardy!, even the most basic function of responding to a clue can present a challenge. Until voice-recognition software advances sufficiently, we mortals are still stuck with the keyboard as our cheapest and most readily available interface with computers. However, now not only must you know the answer to the clue, you must also know how to spell it. (Have you used "Mikhail Baryshnikov" in any recent e-mail correspondence?) Additionally, you must decide how you are going to spell it within the amount of time fixed for a response. And making matters worse, especially for hunt-and-peck players, neither the keyboard arrow keys nor the mouse may be used to reposition the cursor if a typing error is made while entering a question.
Fortunately, the developers included several features that attempt to ease the trauma. To reduce the amount of typing required, the appropriate question syntax is provided by the computer and the contestant must only enter the key words of the response. The Buzz-In Time and the Response Time are independently variable. The Spell Tolerance option adjusts how close you must be for your entry to be accepted. Under the loosest setting, only the first four consonants must be typed in the correct order. Capitalization is not supposed to matter, though my "thomas edison" was rejected for "Thomas A. Edison". The shortcomings of the computer world virtual game are even more glaring when playing the Final Jeopardy round. Here, if there is more than one human contestant involved in the round, the other contestants are kindly asked to "turn away from the screen" while each player in turn enters his wager and then again his final question. Somehow, being forced to rely on the honor of one's fellow players doesn't leave me warm and fuzzy: Jeopardy! contestants are cutthroat as we all know! Perhaps one day we'll all be able to enter our responses to our Palm handheld devices and beam them to the computer? How about a network version as each plays on an AirPort enabled Pismo?
Other Drawbacks
Several other more minor drawbacks deserve a quick mention. While the advertising boasts "more than 3500 challenging answers", it didn't take me long to start repeating entire categories of clues. Moreover, there is no capability to import additional questions from either MacSoft or other users. They might want to allow some means of letting people submit their own categories, or update them periodically at the site. Data is periodically retrieved off the CD-ROM throughout the game, causing an occasional noticeable pause. As mentioned above, the lack of support for playing over a network or via the Internet is a disappointment. Alternative buzz-in keys or devices, even the mouse, might help ease the congestion around one keyboard and perhaps save you from pounding the poor space bar to death. And finally the #1 single most annoying attribute of this version of Jeopardy! (yes, even more than Alex): The darn game board keeps moving around! After play has completed for each clue but prior to selection of the next clue, the answer grid changes position, alternating among three different viewing angles. Even when you know it is going to behave this way, you still find yourself consistently clicking too early and ultimately selecting the wrong box. (I think this was probably done on purpose to force you to let Alex finish his sentences.) Just pick a view and leave it there already!
A: Prior to launching his broadcasting career, Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek graduated from the University of Ottawa with a degree in this branch of the humanities. Q: What is Philosophy? (Ya' know, I wonder that myself all the time, and I'm married to a philosopher!)
Conclusion Despite several limitations of this computer version, Jeopardy! is still quite an addictive game (to which my malnourished, naked husband will testify). This CD-ROM version can be enjoyed either by a single player or with a friend or two. While it irks me to always pay more for the same software as PC users, MacSoft's commitment to Macintosh gaming is greatly appreciated and worth supporting. If you are even a casual fan of this game genre, you can count on many hours of entertainment for your relatively small investment in Jeopardy!. Xanthippe - xanthippe@applelust.com
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