Best Quiz Machine In World Found
It’s in well-known Freaky Trigger stamping ground the Blue Posts on Newman Street, never in general an exciting pub but a very robust one that has played host to all sorts of shenanigans. In the corner stands its quiz machine – in times past this has been a Millionaire cabinet. But with that franchise on the wane a new quizzer has stepped up, this one a multi-game machine stuffed with unfamiliar pleasures. Lead game seems to be the South Park quiz – a little late on that particular brand too, methinks. But after that unpromising start a wealth of possibilities awaits. Our top three included:
3. SPACE QUEST: Bizarre and complex game where you have to drop a space bomb on some balls, which behave pool-style and bounce off one another. Any that fall to the bottom of the screen can earn you points, but hit the wrong one and you lose lives. After each go you have to answer a question, too. It is hard to win on this, but satisfying.
2. LORD OF THE BLINGS: From one bad pun a masterpiece is born! This is the cheapest quiz game I have ever seen – no graphics to speak of, just a grid of boxes, each of which contains either points or a True/False question. No question subjects, no questions other than true or false, just a points chase. It would fit on a ZX Spectrum but it’s horribly compelling, mostly because of its congratulatory message after each right question: “YOU GOT DA BLING BLING!”. If you lose you get a curt “TOO BAD” or “SUCKER”. Its other clever mechanism is a counter listing how many TRUE and FALSE answers have shown up so far, in case you fancy playing the percentage game (you would indeed be a “SUCKER” however.)
1. WORD UP: This is the best thing I have seen on a UK quiz machine ever. It is a sort of combination of Windows timewasting favourite Wordzap, a wordsearch, and that game where you have to break down a grid of different coloured gems by finding matching patterns. Each word you find on the grid gives you some points, if you get a certain amount of points you win money. This machine is fantastic because of how it appeals to the vanity of swots like your publog correspondents: it has not only an overall high score table, but also a table for the longest word and highest scoring word. We had to top all three – even if it meant throwing a prize away! It’s quite a rich and strategic game, packed with choices – go for the difficult letters (Q, Z, X) that offer time bonuses, or hammer in the three-letter words to rack up points? How to accomodate two or three players, each of whom is spotting a different word? And then of course the base satisfaction that comes from spotting an opportunity for smut. We never managed a single six letter word in many games – but we will be back. Oh yes, we will be back.