Game shows feel like the obvious thing to adapt into video game form. Many viewers of game shows imagine the day they can become a contestant and be challenged for grand cash prizes. However, restrictive entry requirements and intense competition to be in the running to be considered mean that not a lot of people truly get the chance to take part.
Turning the format into a video game is the perfect solution for anyone who believes they could ace a bunch of questions better than those who made it onto TV, as they can challenge themselves from the comfort of their own home. They can even rope in their friends if they wish. All these games are missing is the ability to win a huge cash prize at the end of it all.
7 Wheel Of Fortune (Wii)
Wheel of Fortune is the longest-running syndicated game show on American television, and its visuals have become iconic TV staples. It’s not surprising that it’s spawned many video game adaptations, stretching back as far as the NES. However, the consensus among fans of the show appears to be that the Wii version, released in 2010, is the best of the bunch.
Featuring the full setup of the show, including bobblehead versions of presenters Pat Sajak and Vanna White, Wheel of Fortune on the Wii allows players to use their Miis as contestants to solve the tricky hangman puzzles of the show with friends. It’s a simple adaptation, but it works so well.
6 Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? (PS1)
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire was a phenomenon at the turn of the millennium, and the few contestants who managed to climb the ladder and win the big million would become headline news. With all this excitement around the show, it’s not surprising that the original PlayStation got a version of the show for home play.
What makes the PS1 version great is how faithful it is to the show’s format. Players are asked fifteen increasingly difficult questions by a virtual version of Regis Philbin, Chris Tarrant, or Gunther Jauch (depending on the player’s region) complete with tense music and three limited lifelines to help. It was a massive commercial success, resulting in multiple sequels that lasted up until the show’s hype died down by the mid-2000s.
5 Trivial Pursuit Live
While based on the board game of the same name, the format of Trivial Pursuit Live steers firmly away from the game it’s based on and straight into game show territory. The game takes place on a large set with screens, while the player avatars stand at podiums to answer their questions. In fact, it barely resembles the board game at all, with no dice rolling and no board.
The game’s format may be based more on the short-lived game show adaptations from the 1990s, which also asked questions in a linear format and allowed contestants to choose categories instead of landing on them by random chance. Throw in a few video game twists here and there, and the end result is a surprisingly fun party game.
4 Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader
One of the more recent game show adaptations on this list, Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader sees players answering questions from school textbooks in direct competition with a class of children currently studying those subjects. It’s a test of how much knowledge adults have retained from their school days, or even how much they’ve learned about things that have changed in the years since.
The game version is faithful to the show, with players working their way up the grades and trying not to flunk out of school. However, unlike the show, the game can be played with multiple players at once, all answering simultaneously, making a great party game as everyone battles to see who the smartest is against the fifth graders.
3 You Don’t Know Jack
Some of the best game show video games aren’t based directly on real shows, and instead, take inspiration from the format as a whole. One of the more notable early examples of this was You Don’t Know Jack, a game that takes the traditional format of a game show and turns it into a party game. While the usual trappings of a game show are here – a host, the ability to win “money” and multiple rounds of questions – the game also goes into strange places with it, particularly in its bizarre category names.
The developers, Jellyvision, would later morph into Jackbox Games and today can be found producing not just followups to You Don’t Know Jack but also the Jackbox Party Pack series, which each provide their own game show style formats like Quiplash and Drawful.
2 Buzz! Series
During the PS2 and PS3 eras, Sony experimented with several unusual concepts such as the EyeToy, a webcam controller that predated the Kinect, in an effort to attract wider audiences to their systems. Another highly specific peripheral was the buzzers, designed entirely for use with the Buzz! franchise of game show titles.
Buzz! saw a group of players going head-to-head on a quiz show presented by a Muppet-like presenter, with multimedia questions thrown into the mix to better fit the video game format, and a round where contestants can throw pies at each other. It remains the best-reviewed game show in video game form, and it’s not even directly based on a real show, just the general format.
1 Fall Guys
Game shows aren’t just about answering a series of questions under a spotlight while tense music plays. Some game shows are a lot more physical, expecting their players to run around obstacle courses. While many of these come from Japan, such as the infamous Takeshi’s Castle, the UK also had It’s a Knockout, where players had to go through multiple absurd physical challenges.
The existence of this show led British developer Mediatonic to create Fall Guys, the popular battle royale game that owes much of its format to It’s a Knockout and the various Japanese game shows that began to get imported during the 90s and 2000s. Players take on the role of floppy jellybean people who stumble their way across absurd obstacle courses until only one player is left holding the victory crown. It’s a winning formula too, as the game has been an ongoing smash hit since its release in 2020.