The popular quiz show featuring Chris Tarrant made a bee line for the gaming world back in 2000 (September 29th on Dreamcast) thanks to developers Hothouse Creations and publishers Eidos Interactive. The game is exactly the same as the television show and will be instantly familiar with anyone who was/is a fan.
Answer 15 questions of ever increasing difficulty, in order to move up the board to reach one million smackeroonies. To help you along are 3 lifelines; Ask The Audience, Phone A Friend and 50/50. Its all here in exact replica for budding quiz masters of the games world. Visually its all rather nice; granted there is little more to look at than the famous leather chair and moneyboard but it all looks polished like its just walked straight off the tv screen. Tarrant himself is on hand to provide the voice overs, and apart from the rather dense 'friends' you get to phone (Molly from Scotland? Who she?), its a pretty good title.
However there is a most obvious FAIL to this title. You see in reality, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire the quiz show is all about turning egg heads into REAL millionaires. On your way to the top of the board there are REAL cheques to be won for REAL coinage. On the videogame version of course, this is not the case so in the end all you have is a spin off from a hugely successful quiz show, that has all the flashing lights and authentic voices, but without those lovely spondoolicks. Basically without the money incentive it all boils down to a game of who can answer the most questions correctly, and be honest, you can play that with any old quiz book. The cash prizes gives ITV's show a genuine thrill factor, take them away and its an empty game, no matter how cool it looks.
Still, fans of the show won't be disappointed and even without the moolah this title is a great way to spend half hour to show off your general knowledge skills. And this goes for £3 on auction sites so its a worthwhile purchase if a quiz game is what you crave. I still play it for a fun blast to dust off the grey matter, it beats those Wii 'brain' games.
Just imagine if it DID hand out REAL money from the Dreamcasts luscious shell??
On 9th September 1999, Sega released a new console to an excited public, the now legendary Dreamcast. Many would argue the first in Next Gen visuals, and online gaming, the Dreamcast was overtaken by Playstation2 but never forgotten. To this day, a decade on, it is still a powerful force in the gaming world. This is my tribute to the console and games, where a poet becomes fanboy.
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