I can’t find references to an Android version yet. (Edit: It’s on Amazon App Store)
Blockbusters has been revived (and failed) so many times that we have a running gag that it’s “about time someone did a revivial of Blockbusters” just minutes after the previous series has ended. And now we have a new revival, an APP based revival.
It looks the part – they’ve gone for the traditional 80s stylings (the recreation of the titles and set is quite neat although the theme arrangement feels a little lacking in oomph, and it’s lacking a definitive final note), Bob Holness and everything. In a nice touch you select a mascot in lieu of an avatar. The feel of the thing is pretty good (a couple of things are off – like the scoring and the desks, but not enough that the man on the street is going to get upset about).
Can YOU spot the rather large flaw with this question?
You can play one player against the computer or two players (using your iThing as buzzers – GOOD DESIGN CHOICE, with Bluetooth or over GameCenter (untested)). Unfortunately it doesn’t play a great game – all the questions are multiple choice, but when they aren’t riddled with spelling mistakes or mistakes generally, 9/10 of them are a bit easy with the answer choices given. If you play against the computer you play vertically to the computer playing horizontally, but the computer doesn’t put up much of a fight. If you’re playing against a human opponent they’ve done the decent thing and expanded it to a 5×5 board for fairness. This looks a little odd at first.
For your 99p at time of writing you get access to a general knowledge question pack (and a special Xmas pack at time of writing), there are currently 10 more question packs available with different categories at 69p a pop, or you can buy the lot for a value-tastic £1.99.
Winning gets you through to the Gold Run where you get 90 seconds to get from gold to gold, you need to type your answers out. This feels rather more successful than the main game – I’m not sure I’d call it hard (I’ve won it every time), but it feels rather more aggravating and exciting when you can’t come up with an answer – it also only seems to allow you one attempt at each one, and there seems to be little room for spelling error. I was also getting question repeats on my third go.
On the whole a nice looking but difficult to recommend app, but not without some positive elements – a Gold Run mode might be a nice addition, and if you’ve not bought a TV quiz app for a while, well not many have been released recently.
From what I’ve seen on Twitter, the Android version is available to download from Amazon, but not Google Play…
Added, ta.
If you’re going to pick some random wrong answers, best double-check they’re actually wrong! Whoops…
If they’d asked which was first, it still wouldn’t have been Elstree as Ealing pre-dates it by a decade. I’ve learned something new 🙂
I suppose it does say ‘was’ rather than ‘is’, but it’s still pretty lousy.
Amazon version seems to be a bit temperamental but when it works, it seems about the same as Ios version.
We should do a Bother’s Bar UK Game Show app. I’ll do the coding, all your readers can do some cloud sourced questions. We’ll be millionaires.