Previous Next

Described as the ultimate test of information and knowledge, Mind Pursuit is Datasoft's game for trivia fans.

The game can be played in three distinct ways by one to four players. Either answering questions to reach a target score or to gain the biggest score in a set time limit, or thirdly, play a board style of game.

Either way the questions that are asked fall into five categories (science and nature, history and geography, tv and film, sports and games and culture) that are randomly allocated by throwing a 'dice'. There is also a sixth category called grab bag which asks a random question. Get it right and you get a bonus turn.

Each question can be asked in three different ways. A straight true/false 'guess' is worth only 25 points whereas a multiple choice (four choices) question is worth 50. If you're brave enough, you can go for the straight answer and win 100 points. Unfortunately, you only see the category and not the question before you decide which way you want to answer it.

In the text question quizzes (aiming for a score or beat a time limit) wrong answers are heavily penalised by deducting the point value from your score. Because of this, it can take some time to even reach the lowest score of 500, never mind 2,000 points.

In the board game version, each player moves a character along a track from the start to the finish. Each square contains a 25, 50 or 100 which controls the question styles you can use.

Mind Pursuit is a disk-based game and so it doesn't suffer from a question shortage like many cassette-based trivia games as it regularly accesses the disk to get some more.

There is, however, a significant number of American biased questions that will leave most Brits floundering, but if you steer clear of the 100 point questions you can cut your losses. This doesn't make the game unplayable, as in the awful Monster Trivia (the game US Gold are trying to forget) but means that it is definitely more suitable for older players.

Finally, one big plus in its favour over some of the other trivia games. Firstly, it clearly defines what it requires from an answer (e.g. a person's surname only) and secondly it quite often ignores mis-spellings if it thinks it's "close enough".