Trivial

How'd it become June already? I seem to have missed a whole month. Ah, well.

Greg Tannahill over on The Dust Forms Words just posted a mini review of TV Show King, a trivia game and one of the first games to be released on Nintendo's WiiWare service. It's not complimentary. I'm not that surprised. The quick flicking about I've done on just about any trivia game for any platform in the last decade has done nothing to encourage me. I love trivia, random interesting facts, and testing my brains against others. Why must I lament the lack of a quality trivia game?

The only ones who seem to get Trivia right are the demented minds at Jellyvision. Never heard of them? How about You Don't Know Jack? These people have been creating wonderful and irreverent trivia games that are LOADS of fun to play since the early nineties. Not only that, they have been pioneering interactive media for just as long. Episodic content, they did that too. In fact they are doing it again.

Someone needs to give them a large bag of money and set them up on console development. Each platform has a mechanism that would allow them to produce a Netshow-like product for the current gaming era. Imagine playing a fun trivia game, that's pretending to be a trivia TV show, from you TV. With friend, family, and people from across the internet. Each week you'd find a new episode waiting for you.

I'm glad that Jack is back, now twice a week, with 7 question episodes. I've been getting my trivia fix for over a year now that way. But I miss the social aspect the game used to have. Trivia needs to be brought back to the TV, dragged kicking and screaming into our living rooms, and Jellyvision represents the only ones who have ever gotten it right.

If I can't get You Don't Know Jack for my Wii, can I at least get more game developers to start following the Jack Principles?

Anyway, free trivia for anyone who wants it: