#284 – Hollywood Squares

Squares beyond compare.

PLAYERS: 1-2 simultaneous

PUBLISHER: GameTek

DEVELOPER: Rare

GENRE: Game Show

RELEASE DATE: September 1989

Is there anything sadder than C-list celebrities helping out random strangers with quiz answers, while making jokes and pretending like their career hasn’t gone down the drainpipe? While you ponder that question for a moment, I’d like to rant about why the very existence of Hollywood Squares lacks all logic and taste.

As you may recall, I’ve voiced my opinions on game show video games before, but if you don’t want to skip back and read that hilarious, inspired review, allow me to summarize: much like video games for ages 2-4, game-show video games are pointless. One may enjoy answering questions correctly, but those are momentary thrills once you discover that – gasp! – this is a video game and you’ll never win prizes like you would in real life on the game show. It’s almost worse that game show games pretend like you win a prize. In Wheel of Fortune: Jr. Edition (many months away, thank God), if you win the game, you get to take a pick between several prizes, including a new car and a trip to Disneyland…. what? Why would a game ever entice and disappoint children like that? It’s insulting.

Hollywood Squares is even sillier than other game show video games. For starters, there are no celebrities in the squares; only faceless drones like Val, Daz, and other similarly titled vacuous names. Like the show, a question is asked, a “celebrity” answers (with random quips thrown out for good measure), and you either agree or disagree with the celebrity. If you’re right – regardless of whether the celebrity is right ot wrong – their square will light up with either ‘X’ or ‘O,’ depending on who you are. Yes, the entire game is essentially Tic Tac Toe, with egotistical ninnies acting as a go-between. Once you win three rounds (and the A.I. is quite stupid, so that shouldn’t be too big of a problem), you pick a key and a car and you hope the key unlocks the car. If it doesn’t, shucks, bad luck, you don’t get a car. But hey, at least you can play Hollywood Squares again, right? Right? It doesn’t matter if you win or lose. No really, it doesn’t matter. No fulfillment comes from either.

F