Who Wants to Be a Millionaire

This version of Millionaire-At-Home works both better and worse than its CD-ROM counterpart.It's definitely better than even the CD SecondEdition in terms of the number, variety, and level-appropriateness ofquestions.The questions much more closely approximate those on thetelevision series than either of the two CD-ROMs. And the Phone-a-Friendlifeline is much closer to the show in that you actually CAN phone afriend, unlike on the CD-ROM.

Where the board game fails is in theimplementation of the other lifelines and in its dumbfounding lack ofmusic.

The 50/50 doesn't particularly work.On the show, it'seffective because Regis himself has no control over anything, and becausethe player's ramblings appear to determine which responses are pulled.Here,the person playing host potentially has too much leeway in decidingwhich choices will be nixed.To be fair, the CD-ROM isn't much better atcapturing the actual feel of this lifeline, either--its throwaways arepredetermined by code--but its approximation is at least fairer.

Similarly, the Poll-the-Audience option fails miserably.Instead ofbeing a more-or-less sure bet, this lifeline depends entirely on thebenevolence of the people you're playing against.There's no "audience" inthis game, because everyone's a player.It's in their interest to misleadthe person currently in the hot seat.Consequently, you'll likely get thewrong answer if you choose this lifeline-which goes against everything welearn from watching the show.

But the biggest drawback of this edition isthe lack of music.The show is entirely built around the music.Withoutmusic, Millionaire is nothing special.The music is the origin of 90% ofthe drama.A CD with the theme music should absolutely have beenincluded.

On balance, the Second Edition of the CD-ROM game wins out overthis one because you're just not going to have so many Millionaire-themedparties that it will matter that this version has slightly more questions.You might as well get the version that comes closest to approximating theoverall experience of the real deal.Hook your computer up to your TV, runthe audio through your stereo and enjoy a version that actually has Regisas your host.

I absolutely loved this game.I gave it away as an x-mas gift to my boyfriend and we played it with the family and they loved it.My dad is an extremely intelligent guy, but somewhat of a hermit and when we brought it to the table, he recognized it from T.V. and insisted on playing.Needless to say, he got to level 250,000 and we were all impressed.I did feel that some of the questions like the lower levels, under 32,000 were actually hard, and some of the higher questions, over 32,000 were a little easier. I guess it all depends on what you know.The game show asks questions like "what color is violet?" in the under 32,000 category and the board game asks questions like "what is cabernet?" so that is your difference. Over-all it is a fun game and really brought our somewhat distant family together. Thumbs up!!! I only hope they have additional boxes of trivia to add to the game like Trivia Pursuit, since you play the game so-often you start to be familar with the questions.It would be nice to have addditional boxes of trivia to pertain to the game to add more excitement.Definetly worth the buck!

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