Berkeley Systems - the company that made computer monitor preservation cool - has taken another hip step forward. It's using computer games to bring people together and reward the mental accumulation of '70s TV factoids, Generation X trivia, subcultural tid-bits, and shreds of pop science. You Don't Know Jack puts one to three players in the midst of a virtual game show, complete with a wisecracking MC, a house band, and camera crews chattering in the background.
Success in answering the more than 800 offbeat questions depends on how much useful and useless crap you've managed to fill your mind with in recent years. Categories include Star Trek and genetics, sexually repressed commonwealth cultures, mein summer kampf, and others equally off-the-wall. The first player to hit the answer buzzer - a key assigned to each player seated around the computer - gets a chance to answer the question or screw a competitor by forcing him or her to answer an especially tough one. The nature of the questions favors the learned mind as well as the couch potato. Ornithology and Gilligan's Island are equally likely fodder.
Just when you've gotten used to being asked fairly straightforward questions about bizarre subjects, along comes the gibberish question, for which players must use sound and rhythm to decipher a phoneme-mangled answer, or the Jack attack, which bombards the player with words that he or she must connect in literal, figurative, or even subliminal ways. The wise-ass MC's running commentary on players' performances is funny and caustic - it reinforces the illusion of interaction with a real host.
Berkeley Systems is plotting to produce future "special edition" modules á la Trivial Pursuit, which will give new sets of questions centered on themes. Perhaps the Vulgarity Connection? Or the all-Monty Python Edition? The mind reels.
You Don't Know Jack is the unexplored frontier of computer quiz games, and like every other Berkeley Systems product, it's entertaining, slick, and classy in its own geeky way. Check out You Don't Know Jack, and put those after-school TV hours to work!
You Don't Know Jack CD-ROM: US$30. Berkeley Systems Inc: (800) 344 5541, +1 (510) 549 2300, on the Web at www.berksys.com/.
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