Jeopardy! (Sega CD) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
376A playthrough of Sony Imagesoft's 1994 game show game for the Sega CD, Jeopardy!
In order to show off all six of those hilariously corny blue-screened FMV contestant avatars, this video shows two separate rounds played.. The second begins at 41:50.
This one's for you, Alex. We'll miss you. You seemed like one helluva nice guy, and you rocked that mustache like a boss.
Jeopardy! is a staple of American television. That much is indisputable. Really, is there anyone out there that has not seen the show? Loved by gradeschoolers and grandmas (and let's not kid ourselves, pretty much everyone else, too!) the nation over, Jeopardy! is one of those few shows that have endured for generations, and its host, Alex Trebek - quite arguably one of America's most beloved Canadians (I'd wager far more so than even the absurdly likable Ryan Reynolds) - is just as iconic as the show that made him a household name.
Jeopardy! has been faithfully represented in video game form for more three decades now, so I thought it'd be a nice idea to celebrate Alex Trebek's legacy with a playthrough of one of my favorite console games based on the TV series - the excellent FMV-laden Sega CD game, released back in 1994.
It follows the format we all know and love. Given clues in the form of answers to questions that you, the contestant, are expected to provide, Jeopardy! challenges to put your money where your mouth is. Being the first to buzz in doesn't give you a free pass to blurt out whatever random thing comes to mind. Whatever you stand to win if you answer correctly, you risk losing you're wrong.
The Sega CD game doesn't do much mechanically that the series' games released in the 80s hadn't already done well enough. That is to say, it gets the show right. But this one had a lot of glitzy window-dressing that made it feel so much more like the show than the earlier games had. It had a much larger question bank, you got your choice of six charmingly overacted player characters, and best of all, the game featured footage of Trebek recorded specifically for the game (and its sibling Windows 3.1 version: https://youtu.be/BSKGHTtC1v8).
The graphics look fantastic, especially when you take into account the limitations of the Sega CD. It seems that Imagineering took the system's strengths and limitations into account here, and it doesn't feel like a low-rent remake of a Genesis game. The FMV clips look super clean, the audio is clear and features the staple show tunes, the load times are snappy, and most importantly, it has charm and personality.
Those two qualities were sorely lacking in the Jeopardy! games that followed in the wake of Rare's excellent trio of NES games, but the Sega CD game manages to rekindle that super likable vibe.
In terms of difficulty, the questions are balanced well. They're neither too hard nor too easy, and the game still holds up well in 2020 thanks to its questions' general tendency to avoid leaning on players' familiarity with early 90s pop culture. The questions also nicely adhere to the show's tendency to embed clues within the "answers" themselves: even if you'd be otherwise clueless, the way the prompts are written gives you a fair shot at inferring the correct response so long as you're well enough read to connect the dots.
Who would've thought that a game show would've been such an excellent representative of the Sega CD's abilities? Or that the Sega CD version would've been the best one of its generation? Or even that such a thing would have been the product of a company like Imagineering?
It certainly beats the pants off of the likes of Home Alone and Barbie!
And keep an eye out this week for more playthroughs of classic Jeopardy! adaptations. With all of the bad juju in the public sphere right now, I thought that a fond look back memories of days long past (through the eyes of a simulated live studio audience) might be nice. I'm confident that my trivia-grandmaster namesake would get a kick out of knowing he's remembered in such nerdy ways.
And if you are chomping at the bit for more electronic Jeopardy!, check out my Game Show Games playlist where you'll find videos I've made of a some of its other adaptations: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3gSj_kh1fHuLMVXOfvMwP2sGInrngunU
(I posted a video of this game years ago, but a 240p recording hardly seemed fitting. This is a brand new playthrough to correct that problem)
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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