Review by Raphie on 15 Oct 2012 (Rating: 3)
Remember A Question of Sport? Well this is pretty much the same game except for it being a music quiz rather than sport. It shares pretty much the same code as QoS and as a result probably has nothing to do with Mike Read's Pop Quiz whatsoever. Well done Elite, a fine good way to recycle game codes to make two different games so similar...still it's a bit of jolly good fun if it's your sort of thing.
I could choose to start this review with information about the show, but I won't for one reason, because this game is not even Pop Quiz.
For some reason Elite decided to make a game based on Pop Quiz but then decided to use the majority of code from A Question of Sport and use it for Mike Read's Pop Quiz even though despite their concepts being similar, one a quiz show based around sport and the other a quiz show based around music, they are very different in style. And so Mike Read's Pop Quiz has very little to do with Pop Quiz itself. And it's no wonder, because the game was released in 1989 and the original series of Pop Quiz was cancelled in 1984. It makes me wonder not only why they decide to make a game based of this but how did they obtain a licence?
So to the game itself and like A Question of Sport the first thing we get is a nice tune which doesn't replicate the show's theme tune, but it's still a nice tune. Here you again choose either one or two players, select your special subject which there only six this time around, and then select your teammates who also have digitised faces plus there's even a few taken from A Question of Sport as well.
Then it's question blocks again followed by the made up logo made especially for this game along with the credits and copyright info, then it's over to Mike Read who, like David Coleman before him, welcomes us to the game and introduces us to the players. I will say that this is quite accurate with the show as there was a captain and two teammates on each team. Unlike A Question of Sport where the captains were real sportsmen, Ian Botham and Bill Beaumont, our captains here are the fictional wannabe popstars Sharon and James transfered straight from A Question of Sport.
So with all the introductions out of the way, let's play what's supposed to be Pop Quiz. Round one is the Jukebox round and this is your Picture Board round from A Question of Sport. Pick a number, it reveals the subject, Mike gives you a question, you have four possible answers, pick one and if it's right you score two points, if not it passes onto the other team for one point. The round ends when each player picks a number and we'll be back here later. Familiar?
Spot the Star is round two, which is Mystery Personality with a musical theme. The same rules apply here too, three clues are given, three points for a correct answer after one clue, two for two and one for three, a wrong answer ends your turn and it passes onto the other team for one point.
Round three is Your Scene which is like Home and Away from Question of Sport only they are replaced with Easy for one point or Hard for two. Not only is this a lazy approach to recycling the Home and Away round to another game but it has the worst name of any of the rounds as Your Scene sounds like a Movie category rather than Music. Plus if you know little about music Easy questions will be hard anyway. Talk about not trying.
Round four is Guess the Year, which namewise is quite similar to the show as the opening round was Name the Year, but the round itself is very different. Mike gives you information about a song or a group/musician, an example being David Bowie and Elton John were born, all you have do is to guess the year, straightforward and it's basically another question but turned into a round. I think they ran out of ideas at this point.
Round 5 not only matches A Question of Sport's Quickfire round but it is called the Quickfire round. And the exact same rules apply, 45 seconds to answer nine questions, right answers are worth two points and incorrect answers cause a two second penalty. And Mike magically becomes a timer much like David Coleman before him.
And now it's back to the Picture Board, I mean Jukebox round for the final round. Same again here, the last six numbers are taken and then the game ends and the team with the highest score wins.
Don't get me wrong, this is a pretty nice game and can be enjoyable if you love music, but it's just A Question of Sport all over again and it isn't Pop Quiz. That's why as much as I like this game I can't score it more than 3 as it's simply a re-coding rather than an original title. Even the sound effects are the same. It just feels like a waste of licence to me.
