ZX Computing
1st October 1986Trivial Pursuit
The only potential problem with converting a phenomally successful board game like Trivial Pursuit to the home micro would seem to be tampering with a winning formula.
Few would have thought that the flaunting of irrelevant knowledge would exert such a hold over people but as trivial pursuit addicts know, when the cheeses are down, knowing whether frozen peas float or not assumes huge importance.
The Trivial Pursuit craze shows no signs of abating and Domark have produced a package faithful to the original but with several useful additions that add to the fun.
There are 3,000 questions, loaded in blocks ready to tax your memory for facts you would rather have forgotten before Trivial Pursuit came along. It's a two cassette pack. One being the game itself and the first batch of questions, the second an additional "Uniload" question pack which can be loaded into a Spectrum, Commodore or Amstrad.
One enhancement over the original is the inclusion of musical and graphics questions, so that for instance you can be confronted by the map of a country and asked to identify it.
Another inclusion is an animated question master called TP who bounds around the question screen in a number of guises. He's destined to become a "love him or hate him" figure. Some may feel he's a cute bonus while the purists will argue the original game got along just fine without him. Wisely Domark have added a cut off switch so you're not stuck with him.
You can fix a time limit for answering questions - anything from five seconds to nine minutes. A very useful feature for strategists is the inclusion of a score chart which keeps an up to the minute record of all the players' performances. The breakdown is for each category of questions so when a player is going for the final winning question, you can knobble him by confidently choosing his weakest subject.
Graphically the game is pleasing to the eye and the board layout is very clear. Most importantly perhaps it's very easy to play and you can find your way around the game and all you can do in next to no time.
Trivial Pursuit is bound to sell well on the strength of the board game and if you enjoyed that, you won't be disappointed with its computer game counterpart.