Crash


Mike Read's Pop Quiz

Categories: Review: Software
Author: Nick Roberts
Publisher: Elite
Machine: Spectrum 48K/128K

 
Published in Crash #65

Mike Read's Computer Pop Quiz

Obviously, the questions are about music, but I'm not sure that opera and classical questions really fit into a pop quiz. Still.

There is a one- or two-player option, but the computer opponents aren't brilliant (I can beat them!), and the game improves a bit if you've got a friend who knows a lot about music (or, failing that, Nicko).

A game's divided into six rounds. There are two jukebox rounds, one at the beginning and one at the end, in which you have to pick one of twelve squares. Behind each square sits an icon representing one of the six subjects - each team member selects one in each round. If a player gets it wrong, or is too slow, it's passed to the other team for one point instead of two.

Mike Read's Computer Pop Quiz

In the second section - spot the star - of Mikey gives you three clues to a star's identity; if you get it right on the first clue, that's three points, the second, two, and the third, one.

The third round, your scene, lets you choose a difficulty level. Easy is your player's specialist subject, Hard is a different one, for two points. If you get the question wrong, it gets passed over to the other team for one point.

Name the year is the fourth round - you get given a clue to a year, and round five is the quickfire round - answer up to nine questions in 45 seconds. Getting an answer wrong results in a two-second penalty. Then it's back to the jukebox again...

Pop Quiz is a really poor effort; the graphic presentation isn't bad, but there are only 1,000 questions in six blocks; each block doesn't take long before it starts repeating questions. It's very like A Question Of Sport in style, but despite Elite's effort to make it rewarding and addictive, it turns out a bit of a turkey.

MIKE

Nick

'If you want a review of Mike Read's Pop Quiz, just read the review of A Question Of Sport, also from Elite. The only difference seems to be the questions and the graphics, everything else is identical. I'm not trying to put the game down, though. It's great fun to play in parts. The only things wrong are the time you have to spend waiting for the computer team to answer all their questions and the large amounts of blank space on the screen. Being a game about music you would think the sound would be pretty good wouldn't you? But no, it's pretty average.'

Nick RobertsMike Dunn

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