It’s more commenty than before, and the lack of percentages is deliberate. However, I will add them here in a short while so do check back.
Percentages under the cut. I recommend reading the report in full first before coming here to comment.
You Can’t Play Jack…
…or can you?
Doubtless you’ve gathered there’s a new You Don’t Know Jack! coming out in the States on February 8th – for the uninitiated, YDKJ is the mildly amusing outrageous trivia gameshow video game. You get asked a bunch of (in the main) quite clever questions of both high and pop cultures (frequently both at once) and get called a div if you get them wrong. There was a UK version with Paul Kaye (Dennis Pennis) hosting and written by popular studenty-comics at the time. It was nicely done and it was a cult success, although not as much as it was in Germany where they did several, and in the US this will be the seventh main game after a lengthy hiatus. There was even a TV show of it.
Well Alex Buzzerblog has a video of the new game in action which I can’t actually watch properly at the moment because my current computer is without sound, which removes a lot of the point. But what if you did want to play it in the UK? Culturally, you’d still be able to “get” about 70%-75% of the references in my experience (questions about US advertising and US sports may be lost on you), unfortunately it’s probably not going to be released over here.
But never fear, because if you did still want to play you probably still can – Amazon.com will export it over here for about $50 total.
Now, the PC and DS versions are going to be region free, of this I am 99% confident. Most PS3 games are also region free, so you could probably import that without worry. I’ve ordered the XBox 360 version as a large number (but not all) of XBox games are region free and I’ve got an XBox – fingers crossed, I will let you know when it arrives (the fact that Amazon will export it to our territory is probably a good sign). The Wii version almost certainly won’t be region free so import with caution.
This is only advice don’t take it as gospel although as ever I’m putting my money where my mouth is so if you can hold on wait for my copy to come through before committing yourselves.
Idle Question
Right, I notice from my logs I’m getting a lot of hits for Don’t Scare the Hare right now, and that is probably because my hilarious pilot review of it (9th September, let’s not forget) is the top result on Google at the moment. And I noted with some amusement that the original ticket listing for Don’t Scare the Hare reverted to ‘Saturday night game show’ on the BBC ticket site fairly quickly.
I do believe they are filming right around now, so has anyone been and how was the experience?
I’m meant to be going to at least two pilots in the next few weeks. FEAR ME.
Meanwhile, if you haven’t seen it yet, Buzzerblog has done an interview with executive producer of The Cube Adam Adler.
Show discussion: Perfection
This is on at 4:30pm on BBC2. I won’t be able to watch it until later, but feel free to leave your thoughts.
Edit: Watched it now. What do I think? (Here’s a link to Martyn’s recording review from July)
Well I think it’s alright actually. The game works on a technical level (although it’s interesting that short of attaining perfection, the single player’s best chance would appear to be getting precisely two right and two wrong as it makes working out the correct answers through elimination more difficult) and it moves at a fair old pace. The risky negotiation bit at the end feels quite unique and clever even if it’s a mishmash of other things. 45 minutes of it is probably a bit much – it’d probably work better as a slightly extended 30 minute game. I’m not entirely certain why the single player shouldn’t be allowed to go back and change answers within the time allowed. And there’s probably a better way of revealing the correct answers that logic already tells us are correct anyway.
The 12 Yard polish is probably to the show’s detriment, it lacks a certain warmth. Many shows work on a technical level, to actually be popular and well liked in daytime these days I think you need to be able to engage with it and I’m not sure what Perfection‘s “in” is. Still, it would make a good home game.
Poll of 2010 PREVIEW
Alright, I’ve just spent the last few hours collating all the votes. The full write-up will come along in the next few days. In the meantime here are some facts:
- One Endemol show has done very, very well.
- One Endemol show may have broken the record for highest percentage of votes cast in the Hall of Shame, beating The Colour of Money. BREAKING NEWS: I’ve jsut checked – it’s close, but it doesn’t quite manage it.
- If the blank and obvious protest votes in the Hall of Fame counted as their own entity, “2010 was a bit poor really” would place fourth.
- There have been some dramatic shift in fortunes in the Golden Five.
But can you guess which shows fit which facts?
Board of Excitement 16th-22nd January 2010
Well there’s not much on this week, so I’m first going to remind you that it’s the first event of The Bother Series of Poker 2011 this evening with another picture of some of the ‘great’ prizes on offer to the overall winners:
The fun starts at eight, although I think you’re allowed ten minutes of late registration should you forget then have a sudden realisation you should be somewhere at that time.
In other news:
- Perfection – Nick Knowles pops-up with the first episodes of troubled BBC2 true or false quiz. A Show Discussion box for this will be avaliable tomorrow. (4:30pm, Monday-Friday, BBC2)
- Only Connect – It’s the Crossworders vs Alex Guttenplan off of University Challenge +2. I saw Guttenplan walking through a college once. FACT. (8:30pm, Monday, BBC4)
- Total Winter Wipeout – I’m just going to merge the two shows here for now. Winter Wipeout is on Thursday on ABC in the US, Total Wipeout is on Saturday at 6pm on BBC1.
- Poll of 2010 – look out for the results for this sometime this week. Look out especially for the special statistic on how well “2010 was a really bad year” would have done if all the protest votes counted as one.
Also in the States, American Idol begins a Cowell-less run on Wednesday and Thursday and Fox are also holding back on ratings missile Million Dollar Money Drop as no new episode airs this week as it’s the President’s State of the Union address on Tuesday. Apparently. Edit: No I’m wrong about that, there’s an episode Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Endemol Joe has news of a new pilot being filmed:
Hello Bothers Bar readers. Please start applying for Endemol’s new ITV gameshow which is set to be a smash hit: http://www.itv.com/beontv/newgameshowpilot/default.html
It is similar to The Chase but better.
Anyone over the age of 18 and any gender will be eligible to enter.
So there we are. It also sounds like it’s only going to have six questions an episode which I can’t help but feel misses some of the attraction (or, HEH, the thrill) of The Chase. It’d be interesting to know which bit of Endemol is making this, I’d be much happier trusting the old Endemol West guys to make an entertaining show compared to the old Brighter Pictures lot.