Quiz Master

.: By: Corn Bread :: Device used: EM-500 :: November 1, 2001 :.

Are you a trivia quiz fan? Or are you addicted to the game show Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Whether you are or not, here’s a game that can be both useful and entertaining. I present to you, Quiz Master.

Who wants to play Quiz Master?

Quiz Master plays very similarly to the game Who Wants to be a Millionaire in that you are given a question with 4 answers to choose from. Answer it correctly and you move forward to the next question; give the wrong answer and you lose the game. The questions given cover a wide range of topics ranging from history to sports, scientific to mathematical... anything and everything under the sun you can think of.

Just like in the game show Who Wants to be a Millionaire, you are given 3 “lifelines” (called Help Lines in Quiz Master). You can adjust the difficulty of the game between Easy, Medium and Hard - the higher the difficulty, the more points you rack up per correct answer. In addition, you can enable/disable the use of Help Lines and the game timer.

There are also four game modes available: Capture the flag (you are given 5 lives, 100 questions and 3 stages), Baseball (3 lives, 20 questions and 3 stages), Sudden Death (1 life, 20 question and 5 stages) and Clocked (3 lives, 20 Questions 15 second default game time, the faster you answer, the higher the score). In addition to these four variants, you can make your own custom game and dictate your own rules. You can adjust the number of lives, questions, stages and game time to suit your personal preference.

For each of the variations, there is a corresponding high score table that keeps track of your trivia skills, and you can also post your high scores on the Smart-Thinker website. Depending on the game type that you choose and your grasp of everyday knowledge, a game could last a few minutes or up to an hour. Thank goodness Quiz Master has a save game feature to allow an occasional break from a brain wracking game.

Can I use my Help Line? My pathetic high score chart.

But what if you have played through the game and have answered every question in the game? Fear not, for Quiz Master includes the option of letting the player create/add their own trivia questions.

There are two ways of doing this: you can either download more questions from the Quiz Library on the Smart-Thinker website, or you can make your own trivia questions by making a text file and following the format given by Smart-Thinker, or you can download the Question Maker application from the Smart-Thinker website. Personally, I prefer using the Question Maker application; it's very straightforward and easy to use, and makes creating new questions a breeze.

This level of customization allowed me to use Quiz Master as a learning aid. How? Well, my young cousin had a big quiz coming up and asked me to help her. Instead of typing a quiz in MS word, I used the Question Maker program, made a set of 50 questions concerning nouns and vowels (she was studying for an English test), imported it into my PPC and gave it to my cousin. She was thrilled to have the questions in a game-like format and really enjoyed answering my makeshift quiz. Not surprisingly, she passed her exam the next day! Something that can help kids learn and have fun at the same time is good news in my book.

Choose and customize your game!

The only complaint I have about this game is that the load time is somewhat long. When you click on the answer or the next question, it would take a few seconds for it to load, something that can be somewhat annoying for those aren't particularly patient (like me).

All in all, this is a very good game to add to your Pocket PC. Not only is it very entertaining, but it can also be used as an educational tool. The game feels solid and stable and I haven’t encountered any bugs. Additionally, the interface is very simple and very easy to navigate, and the game only costs $9.99. Quiz Master is available for all major Pocket PCs, and can be installed in either the main RAM or on a storage card. 3.8MB of Storage memory is needed and 3MB of Program memory is needed in order to run Quiz Master.

Pros:

• Thorough help file is included in the game.

• Customizable game.

• Adjustable difficulty.

• High Replay value due to the ability to add/create more trivia questions.

• Save game feature included.

Cons:

• Slight slowdown in performance after answering or moving to the next question.

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