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University ChallengeThe Electronic Game.
Well, your hard earnt cash buys you:
You will need to supply:
How does it work? In essence this works very well, playing as individuals or as teams (preferably sharing the buzzer in that instance), the question master reads a question out (ideally you'll have decided what level of questions you want to use before you start playing) and you buzz in. As there are four buzzers, the traditional buzz and bell are there, along with a Big Ben style chime and a horn, each of which light up when used. Correct answers earn you bonus questions, scores are kept on flip cards. A row of ten lights on the front of the desk times twenty minutes - they start off lit and turn off every two minutes, until you're down to the final light, at which point all the lights relight and go out every 12 seconds. A gong sounds at the end of the time. Is it "good"? It gets the essence of the show across very well indeed. Well done. The desk idea itself is actually very cool indeed. But it's not perfect by any means. For a start, there's a six second lock on the buzzers - when one person buzzes in, it takes six seconds for their light to go out and nobody can buzz in until it's gone out. This is hugely irritating, and makes throwing questions open much more of a reaction test than it really should be. The scores are kept on flip cards - this works really really badly. It is completely unneccessarily fiddly, not helped by there being some sort of bar on the rings, so instead of just constantly flipping forwards, you have to keep flipping back to get to a number you want that you've gone past. With the digits column just having a 0, a 5 and a -, this gets very irritating very quickly. You don't get enough questions. On each card (which are, to be fair, are nicely plasticy and well made) you get two starter questions and a set of three bonuses. You are given fifty cards for each "level". You will probably get through about 15-25 a game. That means you're out of fun after two-three games, unless you try a different level which will be too easy or too hard. And that's not much fun, is it? They're riddled with typing errors as well. You are meant to store the question cards in a neat little holder, except that none of the four compartments are actually big enough to take a deck of questions. And it seems a bit mean to include nameplate things but not throw in a 20p marker to use to write on them. This is a shame really, because with a bit more time and expense lavished upon it it could have been something special. I want it! Amazon are selling it for a whopping £37.64. at that price there is no way in hell we can recommend it to you. However, Argos Extra are selling it at £19.99 which for a curio such as this is a bit more reasonable. Just bear in mind you could probably pick up a second-hand copy of Quizzard and a second-hand UC quiz book on eBay for a tenner total. |
How much bang for your buck?