Elite Systems
£7.99/£11.99

Obviously, the questions are about music, but I'm not sure that opera and classical questions really fit into a pop quiz. Still.

There is a one- or two-player option, but the computer opponents aren't brilliant (I can beat them!), and the game improves a bit if you've got a friend who knows a lot about music (or, failing that, Nicko).

A game's divided into six rounds. There are two jukebox rounds, one at the beginning and one at the end, in which you have to pick one of twelve squares. Behind each square sits an icon representing one of the six subjects - each team member selects one in each round. If a player gets it wrong, or is too slow, it's passed to the other team for one point instead of two.

In the second section - spot the star - of Mikey gives you three clues to a star's identity; if you get it right on the first clue, that's three points, the second, two, and the third, one.

The third round, your scene, lets you choose a difficulty level. Easy is your player's specialist subject, Hard is a different one, for two points. If you get the question wrong, it gets passed over to the other team for one point.

Name the year is the fourth round - you get given a clue to a year, and round five is the quickfire round - answer up to nine questions in 45 seconds. Getting an answer wrong results in a two-second penalty. Then it's back to the jukebox again...

Pop Quiz is a really poor effort; the graphic presentation isn't bad, but there are only 1,000 questions in six blocks; each block doesn't take long before it starts repeating questions. It's very like A Question Of Sport in style, but despite, Elite's effort to make it rewarding and addictive, it turns out a bit of a turkey.

MIKE

If you want a review of Mike Read's Pop Ouiz, just read the review of A Question Of Sport, also from Elite. The only difference seems to be the questions and the graphics, everything else is identical. I'm not trying to put the game down, though. It's great fun to play in parts. The only things wrong are the time you have to spend waiting for the computer team to answer all their questions and the large amounts of blank space on the screen. Being a game about music you would think the sound would be pretty good wouldn't you? But no, it's pretty average.
NICK

Encore
£2.99 re-release


I really can't see the point of doing a pop quiz on a computer unless its music capabilities are really good. Mike Read's Pop Quiz on the radio relied on the players listening to pieces of music and answering questons on them, it's almost impossible to recreate this on the Spectrum!

The game is a straight forward quiz game with a digitized picture of Mike and the faces of the players you choose to be on your team. The screen is mainly blank most of the time with seemingly endless scrolling messages of Mike going on and on about points, and giving questions on bands you've never even heard of! I did get one question with the Pet Shop Boys in it though! Amazing.

After you've played through the game once it gets pretty boring. There's the option of loading in new question blocks but it doesn't take long to get through these. This type of quiz game has never appealed to me. It seems all the programmers do is change the questions and the main digitized picture of the presenter.

Playing with friends may enhance playability a little, but if you know what's good for you, you'll stick to the board game or the radio programme.

Elite
£7.99
Reviewer: Sean Kelly

Hi Pop Pickers!! Alan "Bum" Fluff here, bringing you the latest 'pick an old wrinkly and slap a licence on him' game from Elite. Yes, it's Mr Grooviness and Fabbiness himself, Miiike READ!!! (Squeals of 'Who?' and 'Didn't he used to be famous?') with his Pop Computer Quiz.

As you can guess, this is the computer version of the TV pop programme (so good they cancelled it years ago) hosted by his wrinkliness himself, Mike Read. On first loading, you're faced with a number of choices, the first being whether to play in one or two player mode. Two player mode is the limit though, 'cos the other four players are controlled by the computer, and consequently one of the most tedious aspects of the game is taking your turn, and waiting for the computer to have the next four or five turns. Boring!

Next you choose your fellow computer controlled team members from a nondescript selection of portraits of people too old to be in a pop band. Unless it's Genesis, of course. Your specialist area is chosen then, from six unlabelled icons, which makes it a case of guess the icon hope for the best as you can't tell what icon represents what. Sloppy programming already, and we haven't even started the game yet.

As in the TV Pop Quiz, there are six rounds. The first is a jukebox round, where each team member selects a box numbered from one to twelve, which will reveal on of the icons, and the area for the following question. Get it right and it's two points, wrong and it goes to the opposition for a try, and vice versa.

'Spot The Star' follows, where three clues to the identity of a star are presented. Get it right after one clue for three points, after two for two, and three for one point. Get it wrong and it's over to the opposition again. 'Your Scene' is next, which for anyone under 25 means 'the area of music in which you are specifically interested.' Again, one question per team member, selected from 'easy' or 'hard.' Answer incorrectly and guess what? Yup. the opposition get a go at it.

Round four is the self explanatory 'Guess The Year' and round five the 'Quick Fire' round, in which you must answer as many questions as possible in 45 seconds. Finally, it's back to the (yawn) jukebox for the last round.

The major component of any game like this is, of course the questions, and unfortunately they just don't measure up. In a attempt to make this 'family' game the questions go back as far as the early fifties. This is fine if you can drag your parents to the computer occasionally, but let's face it, the SDLP has got more chance of being elected than this ever happening.

There is also an incredible amount of metal questions. Presumably some muthah type person was in charge of question selection, and for every question about David Bowie, a major chart musician, there seemed to be about about ten on obscure metal bands who have probably never hit the Top 50. Hardly a representative selection, methinks. Not to mention the tons of classical questions which appear to have been chosen indiscriminately from some dictionary of classical music. Well, d'you know who wrote 'The London Symphony, or Les Sylphides?' Exactly.

Similarly, the gameplay is also not half as interesting or well thought out as it could be, firstly because you are limited to two players, and secondly because the attempt at faithful reproduction of the television version has been made at the expense of playability. It is, in effect, just an endless stream of similar questions, with little variety in form.

Sloppy design, uninspiring graphics, plus badly thought out and ill-researched questions let this game down. Not Elite's finest moment, and not something the programmers or designers can be particularly proud of.

Label: Elite
Author: In-house
Price: £8.99
Memory: 48K/128K
Joystick: various
Reviewer: Jim Douglas

Not arf! Oh, that's the wrong DJ. What does Mike Read say? Well, what does Mike Read say? I'll be blowed if I can remember. Perhaps this is the problem with Elite's conversion of the board game of the TV series of Mike Read's radio show. Mike Read himself isn't especially interesting.

So, the bonus factors which most licence game rack up by being associated with fab movies or coin-ops or TV shows are largely absent. Instead, it's more down to the fact that the questions are bloody tough that makes Pop Quiz a smashing game.

Just as playing those Trivial Pursuit machines in pubs is far more exciting when you're with a roomful of lager frenzied dribbling idiots. Pop Quiz certainly comes into its own once you've reached hilarity level.

First up is the Jukebox round. Each member of each team in turn is asked to select an icon indicating which musical style they want to answer questions on. Now the fun really begins. Uncle Mike's scrolling speech bubble presents the brain tinglingly tricky question. Usually something like "Who could be found in the Imperial Bedroom in 1983?" You're then shown four possible candidates, one of whom it's certain even your parents will never have heard of. Using all your skill and judgement (hem) you've got to "plump" in best TV quiz style for an answer. A correct answer incurs points. An incorrect means it's passed over to the opposing team. Ooh.

And so the game goes on. While there are different rounds, the principles remain the same. Each round has a slightly new twist; allowing you to choose hard or easy questions and gambling for bigger bonuses. There's a race-against-the-clock round too, which is actually bloody exciting, though maybe for the panic involved in trying to highlight the correct answer than the interest in the question itself.

Pop Quiz is presented completely satisfactorily. There are semi-digitised pics of Mike Read (phurgh!) as well as members of the teams. Alas you can't digitise yourself and you have to suffer the insane grins of the Elite team. The questions seem to be alternately easy as pie and totally impossible, while some were simply so remarkably dull they weren't worth answering.

It's pretty fab. Of course, if you're not into "pop" or "quizzes" you'll think it's hopeless. Me? I reckon it's the best game Elite has done in ages.

Label: Encore
Price: £2.99
Reviewer: Chris Jenkins

When Mike Reed's Pop Quiz first appeared we quite liked it - gave it 79 or something, which is quite generous considering that Mike himself is one of the most nauseating media personalities in the universe, but so it goes. Now here it is on budget, and has the fact that it's two years old changed our opinion at all?

Well, yes and no - it's hard to get enthusiastic about trivia quizzes any more, and this is a fairly typical game of the sort, featuring one and two-player options and a database of 1000 questions divided into six banks, loaded separately from tape. Once you've gone through these that's yer lot really, so there won't be any further incentive to play.

The worst part of the game is the horrid digitised faces which represent the members of the teams; I suppose they're meant to be typical pop fans, but they look like a real selection of mutants including Vincent Price, Shakin' Stevens and James Anderton. Even worse, Mike himself pops up every so often, leering hideously and posing the questions. You could always stick a piece of brown paper over the spot where his face appears.

The format of the game is basically the same throughout; a question scrolls across the screen, three alternative answers appear, and you have a short time to use the joystick or control keys to select the correct answer. If you get it wrong or run out of time, the question passes to the other team; if they get it wrong too, the game goes on to the next question, without telling you the correct answer.

There are, though, five different rounds, in which the questions appear in slightly different ways; Jukebox, where you pick a numbered question from a flashing grid on the screen; Spot the Star, where the challenge is to identify the hidden artist; Your Scene, which presents questions on particular subjects such as Heavy Metal, Country and Western, and so on; Name the Year, in which you have to, er, name the year; and the Quick Fire Round, in which the first to get his finger on the knob scores, oo-er.

The screen displays, scrolling captions, scorelines and so on are presented entertainingly, but while MRPQ is as good a way to waste your time as any other, it's nothing to get excited about (especially if you're expecting questions on anything that's happened in the last two years).

ELITE ask the same old question.

So who cares about clones? So what if Alien Death Blaster From Zarg looks just like any other blaster? It might still be a good game. At least it lies on a rock solid tried and tested idea. But this one? To say that Mike Read's Pop Quiz is similar to A Question of Sport can only be described as the understatement of the year.

Right from the start, when you pick your team members (presumably staff members at Elite) you can feel Mike oozing his "charm" all over the place. The one thing you have to look out for when choosing your team is each person's specialist subject. After all, you don't want to end up with a team full of (supposed) classical music experts.

So, you've chosen your three ugly mugs and which of the five question blocks to load. Then you spot the familiar layout of A Question Of Sport; three team members on either side, Mike in the middle, and a speech bubble above Mike's head containing an almost endless scrolling message.

The format is the same all the way through the game. The question is printed on screen, and then you are shown four possible answers. You have five seconds to answer, but if you get it wrong or if you fail to answer in time, the question goes to the other team for a bonus point.

The interesting thing about Mike Read's Pop Quiz is that, not only does it look like A Question of.... and have the same format of game, but that the rounds are the same too.

You know, round one is the scoreboard thingy with all the photographs on it, then you have sport, the star/sporting personality, home or away/easy or hard, guess the year...the whole shooting match. Are Elite perhaps taking the mickey just a little bit?

Mike Read's Pop Quiz is dull as a one player game, and even as two player doesn't contain much of a challenge. It's nearly, but not quite, accurate - after all, everybody knows that 'Nuthin But A Good Time' was by Poison, not the Quireboys.

Reviewer: Tony Dillon

RELEASE BOX
Atari ST, £19.99dk, Imminent
Amiga, £19.99dk, Out Now
Spec 128 £7.99cs,£11.99dk, Out Now
Amstrad £9.99cs, £11.99dk, Imminent
C64/128 £9.99cs, £11.99dk, Imminent
IBM PC £24.99dk, Imminent

Spectrum 48/128 Cassette: £7.99, Diskette: £11.99
Commodore 64/128 Cassette: £9.99, Diskette: £11.99
Amiga: £19.99

LET'S TWIST AGAIN, LIKE WE DID LAST SUMMER

Though Mike Read's extensive knowledge of music hasn't personally been tapped to supply the questions in the game, it's designed to test your melodic mastery from A-ha to Yazoo. (First person to write in with the name of a band beginning with Z wins a free cornflake.)

Two players, or one versus the computer, select three team members from a board of portraits. Each face has an area of music associated with it; rock, rock 'n' roll, classical music, pop, country and western, or a mystery selection.

In the JUKEBOX round each team member picks a number from one to 12, revealing an icon for one of the six musical subjects. A question in that area scrolls by and four answers displayed, one of which is correct. As is the case with most rounds, a correct answer gains two points and incorrect ones pass to the other team for a possible bonus point.

Clues are given as to the identity of a mystery star in round two, but more points are earned if the question is answered before all three are viewed. In YOUR SCENE you choose an easy of hard question - easy is on the team members specialised area, hard on any musical area. NAME THE YEAR is the same as round two except a year rather than a star has to be deduced.

Nine questions are tackled in 45 seconds in round five. Both sides play simultaneously beating one another to the answers, but a wrong reply automatically gives the opposition a point. (On the Spectrum, both sides get their won 25-second round, but two seconds are deducted for an incorrect answer.)

For the final round its back to the Jukebox where the last six numbers are chosen.

It's blatantly obvious that this game is a simple rehash of Elite's other licensed quiz game, A Question Of Sport. The screen layout, control system and even round formats are all the same - only names and of course the questions have been altered. The computer itself is a pretty mean opponent and can soon be a bore, so really it's a two-player game.