Who Wants To Be A Millionaire

It doesn't take much to get the general public foaming at the mouth. A futuristic studio set, a TV presenter with the unique talent of making people soil themselves by raising his eyebrow, lights that dim on demand and a million pound prize that no one will ever win because the questions get unreasonably difficult as soon as the money starts to get serious. "You're three questions away from a million pounds Geoff. Now, what colour underpants was Queen Victoria wearing on the 6th August 1869? Remember, you can still ask the audience." The game itself needs little explanation. It's basically a pub quiz where the questions get harder as you progress towards the elusive key that unlocks the door to the millionaires club. So there's already one big problem with a PC conversion: pay your $30 for this and you're just adding to Celador's already well-stocked coffers without being given the opportunity to make a withdrawal.

Still, as a parlour game it does the job very nicely. You can only play with a maximum of four players, which seems a bit odd, but then you can choose to play the traditional way, through the rigmarole of Fastest Finger First (the four choices are randomly shuffled and you have to press your buzzer when the correct combination is flashed), with the winner going up to the hotseat on his own. Or, you can play head-to-head, whereby everyone gets a turn, including your more elderly senile relatives.

Boneheads

All the lifelines are programmed into the game. The audience responses have been taken from various sources, including the combined brainpower of the ZONE office. Don't feel too confident about trusting the answers though, as our main rival was also tapped tor knowledge, despite the fact that it's obviously a limited resource down their way. Phone A Friend is amusing as the developers seem to have rounded up the stupidest (and most regionally cliched) people they could find in a desperate bid to keep you away from the top prize. In one round I got a high-pitched Welsh woman, who proceeded to give me the wrong answer before turning up again a few minutes later to torture Richie.

Money, Money, Money

And that's about all I can say. It's hard to review a game like this because there isn't really much of a game here. It replicates the Millionaire formula, but that's not exactly hard. What hacked me off, and it's likely to do the same to you, is that you can't skip any of the animations, or any of Tarrant's annoying pleasantries. Celador insisted on this in the contract. It also sent out a page of instructions telling us how to spell and style the different elements of the game. Who do they think they are? You'd think they'd just won the race to complete the Human Genome Project, when all they've done is taken a pub quiz, added a pay phone line as an entry fee and splashed it all over our TV screens. Funny how pots of money can make people think they're important.

As a PC quiz, WWTBAM is not as funny as You Don't Know Jack, and to be honest, despite all the multimedia dribblings that come on the CD you're probably better off finding a cheapo copy of the paperback that was a bestseller last Christmas. Even better, phone the number that flashes up at the end of the TV program. Why play it on your PC when you can play it for real cash? Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? Celador does. A million times over.