C&VG


Trivial Pursuit II
By Domark
Spectrum 48K

 
Published in Computer & Video Games #87

Trivial Pursuit II

Last year was a good time for re-hashes and re-runs. Lost In Space made it onto the nation's TV screens, and in the pop world, Kylie Minogue squeezed a little more life out of The Locomotion while The Christians did a similar job on Harvest For The World... in fact, the list is almost endless.

The company which by far takes the biscuit in the re-release stakes is Domark, who followed up a new stab at Star Wars with a second attempt at a Spitting Image licence (Anyone remember Splitting Images?). Domark is obviously doing well with this police, so here we have the next 'F Reg' revival of one of its classic games Trivial Pursuit.

To be fair, this is an imaginative and entertaining attempt at modernising the Trivial Pursuit concept. A space exploration scenario has been added and a great deal of the company's sense of humour has been incorporated.

Trivial Pursuit: Genus Edition

The story involves a dying earth and the quest for new life on far-off Genus II. The object is to journey through space, collecting bric-a-brac that will help you out in your new life.

To get started, each player is asked a question - answer correctly and it's off to the rocket to begin your exploration.

Each galaxy contains an item that's necessary for your quest - you may not think that a tennis racquet or a microscope are essential items, but you'd better not ignore them if you want to survive.

Anyway, back to the game. Explore each planet in the galaxy by landing on it and answering the question that's put to you by the native lifeform's equivalent of Bob Holness. Answer the question correctly and one of two things will happen: if you've picked correctly, you'll be awarded a piece of rubbish, if not the planet will disappear from view and it'll be off to search the next one in line.

When all six pieces have been collected, you get a chance to fly to Genus II to test your general knowledge against that planet's elders.

Well, that's the theory, but what is the practice like? Actually, it's not quite as good as it could have been. For a start there are far too few questions in the game's repertoire... even with the extra question pack. When questions begin to repeat themselves on the second play, you know that you're in for a rough ride.

Probably the worst fault though is that you've seen it all before - it's absolutely no advance on the original computer version. If you really want to know what country has the nearest territory to Japan then by all means give it a try, but don't expect too much.

Ciaran Brennan

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