Let's have a party! Bring on the trivia!

User Rating: 9.7 | You Don't Know Jack PC
By SabotFox | Review Date:
You Don't Know Jack is trivia gameplay at its finest, and this is the Sierra title that started the madcap series. Granted, most of the questions (and humor) is dated, since it's been over a decade since this title was released, but some people are hanging on to the first edition of Trivial Pursuit, so why not play a classic software title every now and then? If you've never heard of YDKJ, these games may be a little harder to come by nowadays, but some of the titles are worth picking up on eBay if you can find them for under $10.

Since this is the first game in the series, it's definitely missing all the bells and whistles of the later versions, but this is the raw template the others are based on. Forget about flashy graphics and insane backgrounds; YDKJ is beautiful in its simplicity. There's a huge assortment of questions to go through in this game from a wide variety of topics, so you'll never have the same game experience. Each time you start it up, the host will have his own assortment of witty comments and cutting remarks, and the ending credits have mockery commercials playing in the background, which also change every time. At some point in the game, you'll run across a bonus type game called the Gibberish Question, which is a crazy phrase that sounds like a real phrase, if you can untangle it in time. At the end of the game you'll fall victim to the Jack Attack, which is a fast-paced matching game where you have to choose the right pair of phrases based on a clue.

This is a pretty basic game, and almost extinct in the shelves, but here's my breakdown anyway:

Gameplay - Nothing could be simpler! Each player (there can be up to three) is assigned a button to buzz in answers to the questions. Choose from the four options, occassionally there's typing involved, and boom, you've got yourself a game! YDKJ is designed to feel like a gameshow, and they definitely pull this effect off very well.

Graphics - Nothing flashy, but as I said before, it's beautiful in its simplicity. You can't look like crap if you don't have anything to look at.

Sound - Solid. The voice acting is superb, as it should be, because that is what the game is relying on.

Value - The questions are a little dated nowadays, and you may not get the humor at times, but the mass amount of questions will keep you playing this over and over again. Bottom line: This is a good game to pop in and play if you've got a buddy or two over that have a hankering for good trivia.

Tilt - Lots of fun. Not much more I can say about it than this. Watch this one skew the rating scale.

Other Helpful Reviews for You Don't Know Jack

  • Rating:8.4

    The only video game my parents ever opted to play with me.

    By mikromouse | Review Date: Feb 10, 2005 | PC

    I have to say way, way back when I was a kid I had a crappy Pentium 1. 100 MHz, with maybe 32 mb RAM. Yehaw. That sucker could only play a few games and when I found them my parents had to approve them. Then came... Read Full Review

    3 of 3 users found the following review helpful
  • Rating:8.5

    Hilarious. Awesome game to play with friends.

    By syk_gutt | Review Date: Aug 23, 2007 | PC

    Although this game is over 10 years old, this game doesn't seem to lose any of it's quality as gaming has progressed. You Don't Know Jack takes on the layout of a television game show, and you play as a contestant. Y... Read Full Review

    1 of 1 users found the following review helpful
Load Comments (0)