Jeopardy: I Played Jeopardy for SNES

Listen, I’m something of a Jeopardy-head. Every day at 1:30 PM at work, we change the TV to channel 8 to watch the greatest question and answer game show airing today, each of us hoping to impress with our general knowledge of various topics. You should have seen the day I swept the baseball category. My coworkers basically gave me a standing ovation.

It’s SNES month here at the SuperPod Network, so when I saw Jeopardy while scrolling through the list of games on my little Anbernic device, I knew I had to play it. And boy am I glad I did.

Released in 1992, two years after I was born, and developed by Imagineering, the box art proclaimed, “Over 3,500 All-New Questions.” With a period. It’s statement, not an exclamation. Jeopardy is serious business.

You can play the game solo alone, solo vs ai, or with up to three players if you’ve got a real party going on. Playing solo alone is bizarre. It’s just you alone with Alex Trebek and you get to answer all the questions with no competition. Imagine just saying “I don’t know” 35 times while Alex Trebek gets more and more disappointed in you. No thank you!

I picked solo vs ai. Surprisingly there was no difficulty option. You can only type in five letters for your name, which was perfect for me, and then there were five avatars to pick from. The game populated my opponents: Jim and Jenny. I hated them immediately.

The categories for the Jeopardy round were: Water Sports. Starts with “G”. American History. Middle East. Hunting. Country Crooners.

The game gives you the option to hit Select to reroll the categories, but that seemed like cheating, so I left it. After a dollar amount is picked, a one-second animation of Alex Trebek saying “The answer is:” would play. Over and over and over again: “The answer is:” with three frames of Trebek’s eyebrows and mouth moving. When submitting an answer, you have 60 seconds to type the answer in and the letter selection is one long row of letters. This is a terrible design! I went under 30 seconds multiple times.

Things started off rough for me. I was a little overconfident. I answered “Ram” instead of “Sheep” and then “Pittsburgh” instead of “Johnstown” and ended up pretty negative fairly early. Jim kept answering things right like some smart-ass piece of shit.

I answered “Gila,” which was incorrect, and then Jenny said, “Gila Monster,” which was correct, which is frankly bullshit. Ken Jennings would have given me the opportunity to correct myself, but Trebek is less forgiving.

Jenny then hit the double Jeopardy and got it right, putting me about $4,000 behind both of them, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t climb out of.

Much to my surprise, I hit a streak in Water Sports. “Skiing!” “Synchronized Swimming!” “Surfing!” I yelled out loud. I was back up into the positives at the end of the round, but still had a lot of work to do.

The Double Jeopardy Categories were: Sweets, 50s TV, Quotes, Snakes, Medicine, and Leftovers.

I wasn’t very confident in any of those categories.

I tried starting out in Sweets, but didn’t want to risk losing the little money I had. When I did answer in other categories, I was wrong. I said “E plurubus unum” instead of “In God we trust” and “Walnut” instead of “Pecan” like a complete dipshit.

But then I hit a hot streak. “Mosquitos” in Medicine. “Diamondbacks,” “Eyes,” and “Sidewinder” in Snakes. “Miss Congeniality” in Leftovers. At the same time, Jim and Jenny both missed TWO $1,000 questions! Suddenly, I WAS IN THE LEAD.

Shortly after, Jenny correctly answered the second Daily Double in 50s TV to jump up to $4,000.

Jim and I battled back and forth to catch up. With only four questions left, Jenny hit her third Daily Double of the day, wagered her $4,000…AND GOT IT WRONG LIKE AN IDIOT. She got one more $1,000 question right to make it anyone’s game.

Heading into Final Jeopardy Jenny was at $1,000, I was at $3,600 and Jim was at $4,700. Then things got weird.

The screen showed “OUR FINAL CATEGORY IS: COLONIAL AMERICA” “JIM IT IS YOUR TURN FOR FINAL JEOPARDY”. It then SHOWED ME HOW MUCH JIM WAGERED ($3,700) and showed him submitting an answer. Then it was my turn?

I was flustered, confused. I didn’t have time to think. I should have done the math and wagered enough to leave me more than $1,000 in case Jim and I both got it wrong. Instead, I wagered it all.

“This state was the furthest south of the original 13 colonies.” FUCK IF I KNOW. Vermont? No. New Hampshire? No. Maybe Rhode Island? Yeah. Yeah! No one thinks of Rhode Island. I submitted Rhode Island.

Jenny wagered all of her money.

The screen flashed “Georgia.”

Wait, was that Jenny’s answer or the correct answer? The game said Jenny was incorrect. The game then said I was incorrect. Jim? That son of a bitch nailed it. Was it Georgia? A quick Google search reveals that yes, Georgia was the furthest south of the 13 colonies. Wow. Fuck you, Jim. I had no idea the colonies went that far South.

Then the Jeopardy theme just plays on repeat until you hit the Start button to go back to the main menu.

All in all, it was a pretty good representation of Jeopardy. It took about 30 minutes to play a game, surprisingly accurate to the real show. There definitely could have been a bit more pizzazz in the animations and there could have been a better way to input answers. Final Jeopardy was an absolute mess though. I don’t know what the hell that was.

Is this supposed to be a review? 3 outta 5.