I love watching good game shows and playing along at home. In fact, one of my dreams is to be on a game show. While we have seen video games based on popular game shows before, I was excited to see Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! packaged together in America’s Greatest Game Shows for the Nintendo Switch. Unfortunately, though, that excitement was quickly diminished once I began playing.
I see no need in fully explaining each of these games to you, but in case you need a refresher, here you go. Wheel of Fortune is a Hangman-style game where you guess letters, and Jeopardy! is a trivia game. Each have a host asking the questions of three players competing to win money by answering the most questions correctly and occasionally wagering said money to gain more.
While other versions of these two games have done a great job at recreating the experience of being on the show, these do not. The worst part is that Ubisoft even claims in their description that you can “enjoy an authentic TV show experience.” This is far from the truth.
Wheel of Fortune is incredibly generic. Not only do the graphics look like they are from one or two console generations before the Switch, we don’t get Pat Sajdak or Vanna White. Really! Two of the most well known TV game show personalities are nowhere to be found. Also, you are supposedly able to move the Joy-Con to spin the wheel, but I couldn’t get it to work, so I ended up just pushing a button to spin. You can customize your character and set, but the options are quite limited.
Jeopardy! is even worse. While buzzing in on your Joy-Con is nice, you don’t even get to see the show’s set. It’s always just a question view. On top of that, instead of typing in your own answer, you pick the correct answer from a multiple choice list. This means it becomes a frenzy to see who buzzes in first, because all you have to do is pick the most obvious answer. And just like Wheel, the well known host, Alex Trebek is completely absent, as is the announcer. Unlike Wheel, though, you cannot customize your character at all, and you are stuck with generic blank avatar icons.
For those who want to try, you can challenge others online, but there aren’t many people playing. Therefore, I could not actually test it out.
It is important to note there is a Family Mode, which keeps everything family-friendly so young kids can also play along. (Not that the questions for either of these shows aren’t really family-friendly to start with, but it’s still nice to have this.)
If you want to play an authentic home-version of Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy!, I highly recommend going in a different direction, as the Nintendo Switch versions are not good.
GAME: America’s Greatest Game Shows: Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy
PLATFORM: Nintendo SwitchPUBLISHER: Ubisoft
ESRB: E for Everyone
MSRP: $39.99 US
OBTAINED: Provided by Publisher for press purposes
Steve is the Senior Editor of NintendoFuse and co-host of the NintendoFuse Podcast. He’s been a Nintendo gamer since age 6 and has been on staff with NintendoFuse since 2008.