Jeopardy!

The first Jeopardy! video game was released by Coleco in 1984 in versions for four different systems: Coleco Adam, Apple II, Commodore-64 and IBM PC/PCjr. It was distinguished by a carefully designed spelling interpreter that could accept some misspellings or typos, thereby not punishing players for their lack of spelling or typing skills. After Coleco's demise, successor companies which distributed the game erroneously referred the acceptance of misspelled or mistyped answers as a bug.

Review Re-written on June 15th, 2025.

Going back in time to look upon things I feel nostalgic for is a favorite pastime for me, and going back to play a jeopardy video game from the 90's is no exception. Jeopardy is one of those shows that makes one wonder why it's still on TV, only because it's been on TV for over 40 years now and for some reason it's still on TV. Everyone born before 1999 is going to have a nostalgic memory of watching it with their grandparents or family growing up back in the day. And if you were a 90's kid like me, you definitely rented it along with Wheel of Fortune once or twice from Blockbuster or whatever video rental place was in your town. That also meant you got to know about a little gaming company in Florida called GameTek, who had been programming and releasing Wheel of Fortune & Jeopardy games since the 1980s.

GameTek seemed like they had a bright future making games in the 90s. After all, in the 1980's they had a shoestring budget for making games based upon televised gameshows, so they couldn't just get Vanna White, Pat Sajak and Alex Trebek's likenesses for the games without paying them a significant amount of money, and the budgets often went to simply paying for the rights to make the games themselves so the original games were simply there if fans simply wanted to play. By the 90's Gametek was getting better budgets so they could finally get the celebrity likenesses of Alex Trebek and Vanna White (Pat Sajak probably wanted too much money) but by the late 90's GameTek couldn't stay in business, so their swansong was Jeopardy on the N64.

And like my 2008 review, I stand by what I said. The game is terrible.

Oh sure, if you want to play a game of jeopardy on the N64 with anyone who will actually play a game of jeopardy on the N64 with you, you can and if you could care less about the little details you'll have fun. But, to an avid fan who's been watching since the early to mid 90's since I was 3 years old i'm disappointed in the N64 game's presentation.

One of the things you can do first is write your name in and choose a sprite. First problem; The sprites are all one-dimensional cutouts that have no animations or movement of any kind. Not even facial reactions, which have always been standard on GameTek games, dating back to the 1980's when they were cartoonishly funny. I don't know all the Jeopardy & Wheel of Fortune GameTek games by heart but I noticed at least one of the sprites in game is recycled from the SNES Wheel of Fortune games. When you start the game up, you get an FMV of Alex Trebek doing a basic introduction, then you're introduced to the game board, in which lies the second problem; The dollar amount fonts are inaccurate. This is a minor thing, after all the dollar fonts are inaccurate for a lot of games before 1993 but after that almost every game has accurate dollar amount fonts, until this one. Playing the game you'll find the clues fonts are also generic, it isn't in the standard Korinna font in all caps like most games are and like the clues on the show are. The option to switch categories if you don't like them is also not included which can be a royal pain if you're playing with normal people who don't know about art, or classical music, or history or the 1700's as well as others might. Finally, the AI. They are predictable in their wagers and if you play on easy difficulty you're going to win almost every time.

At the time of this game's release, GameTek was only weeks from declaring bankruptcy. They had to rush this game out the door to hopefully make money on it. One can tell that this was a rushed game, with little afterthought to longevity. It was simply "Hey, you wanna play Jeopardy on the N64? Here you go."

There's plenty of other Jeopardy video games which have aged better in terms of presentation and some of them, like Super Jeopardy on the NES allow for 4 players to play simultaneously, but the N64 version is arguably the worst one ever developed. There's plenty of good GameTek jeopardy games, but this one was not one of them.

Thank you, GameTek. Hope you're all doing awesome, wherever you are now.