Welcome to another edition of Playing With Power. The review article that looks at all things Nintendo Entertainment System. It’s been a while since we looked at a game show themed video game. The last one, Double Dare, while faithful enough to the real game show, was still annoying due to bad controls, especially on the final obstacle course. This week, it’s Remote Control. Is this adaptation a television classic, or should it be taken off the air pronto?
YEAR OF RELEASE: 1989
PUBLISHER: Hi-Tech Expressions
GENRE: Game Show
Remote Control was a game show that debuted on MTV in 1987. It was a trivia game that focused primarily on old TV shows, current prime time television, and mostly the channel that primarily aired it, MTV. It was hosted by Ken Ober, and featured comedian Colin Quinn as the announcer/sidekick. The show was enough of a hit that it would later be brought to syndication in 1989. However, after only a four year run, the show was cancelled in December of 1990. But before that happened, there were still some video game adaptations. Including one for the NES by Hi-Tech Expressions.
Hi-Tech Expressions was a short lived video game company that published (sometimes developed) games for many consoles up until they went out of business in 1994. However, one could say they didn’t exactly have the most exciting roster of licenses to use with games like Barbie, Muppets: Chaos at the Carnival, A myriad of Sesame Street video games, and even versions of other game shows like Fun House, and Win, Lose, or Draw! They made two versions of the Remote Control video game, one for the NES, and one for the Apple IIGS. The game has been given mixed reactions, but is it really bad? Let’s go further.
COVER STORY
Can’t really say too much about the cover, as it’s really just an image from the game show itself. If you had never seen the game show prior to seeing this box, you’d have little idea of what’s going on. If you did see the game show, you know the contestants are in the middle of a snack break. So, it no doubt will catch the eye of those who have seen the show better than those who haven’t.
GAMEPLAY
Remote Control is a 1-2 player game show video game. You choose from multiple TV trivia questions and try to get the best score to win. You can choose from one of several character avatars from the select screen, as well as the name with 6 characters to use.
The game for the most part follows the object of the game. You choose from one of the 9 channels on the Zentih TV. These channels represent the questions you have to answer. These of course range from questions about shows like Bewitched, The Brady Bunch, Cartoons, Batman, and of course, MTV. Complete with hilarious quips from the host.
Unlike the actual show, the questions are A B C multiple choice questions. Buzz in with the B button, and choose your answer with the A button. The correct question gives you five points. You can stay on the same channel a total of three times. Each increasing the score by 5 extra points. The round goes for a while until you eventually go to snack break, which like the show drops food on the players. However, it looks more like baseballs being dropped.
Not all channels give you questions. You can often hit the channels “Ranger Bob”, or the “Home Shopping Zone”, which will cause you to lose points. There’s also “Beat the Bishop”, which you must answer a tricky math problem before the bishop makes his way across the screen. No other penalties or games were added from the original show.
In the second round of the game, the points are now doubled. And like before, the round goes until the game finally goes off the air, and the player with the lowest score is eliminated. In the show, it’s being dragged through the wall, but in the NES game, they get blown up by lightning. Quite the way to finish a player off. The final round of the game is a lightning round with the remaining player as you must get the most right answers out of a list before the other player. Win, and you get the honor of having your face on the MTV logo. That’s sadly it.
The gameplay is okay enough for a trivia game, but there are some issues. The final round of the actual game show has been completely removed from the NES version. And the most terrible part is that there is a low amount of questions in the game, which means that even by the second play through, you’ll most likely run into previous trivia questions. Other than that, it’s faithful enough.
GRAPHICS
The game may have some of the ugliest graphics I’ve ever seen from any NES game. The character sprites all sport ugly, creepy faces, which are a little nightmare inducing truth be told. The host looks nothing like Ken Ober, but that’s usually the case with a lot of NES game show games. But the most damning thing this game has against it is the background. The area with the contestants is passable enough to feel like it’s from the show, but the background with the host is just horrendous, gone is the shrine of Keith’s game show host heroes, and instead is ugly, neon MTV logos that change color and just look like an eyesore. I don’t know what the thought process was with a lot of this game’s graphical choices, but in the end of it, it really makes this game look awful.
MUSIC
The music in the game fares no better. There are really only two songs in the game. One for the title screen, which is a very loose version of the Remote Control theme song, and the other is the one you hear throughout the game. Neither are the most offensive tunes ever, but neither are ones you really want to hear again after you’ve finished playing.
OVERALL THOUGHTS
Remote Control is an okay enough trivia game. Is it a faithful to the game show? Not entirely. Doesn’t help that the graphics are horrendous, and the music is bland. But if you’re looking for a throwaway retro TV trivia game to play for a couple minutes, it does at least give you that. But it’s sadly one of those games you’ll most likely enjoy on one play through, and forget about it entirely afterward. So in the end, it’s definitely not worth paying too much for. This is one game that no one would miss if it went off the air.
RATING: Thumbs Down