The DVD's Got Game

By Wilson Rothman

At times even Parker Bros. has seemed bored with board games. Over the years, gamemakers have tried to liven up the old form with licensing tie-ins like Star Wars Monopoly or reincarnations like Travel Scrabble. In the 1980s, the VCR looked like the key to board-game evolution, but promising first steps like Clue VCR Mystery Game had weak follow-ups--anyone for VCR Wrestlemania? Most attempts to re-energize board games are now garage-sale fodder. Today the first DVD-enhanced board games are hitting stores. Will a lawn sale near you be their next stop?

As it turns out, some of the new DVD games have their charms. Trivial Pursuit DVD Pop Culture ($35), Mattel's Scene It? ($40) and Disney's Lilo & Stitch's Island of Adventures ($20) all use a game board and pieces--and most have cards and dice too--but each comes with a DVD full of questions and challenges. The DVDs can give games the tension and excitement of a good TV game show. Questions are chosen at random from onscreen categories that players highlight with the remote control. One drawback: there is limited space for animated questions on a DVD, SO avid gamers may experience unwanted deja vu.

In the new Trivial Pursuit, you use cards during normal play but win scorekeeping pie pieces by answering questions from the DVD. Most of the queries feature animated text followed by clues, complete with dramatic music. (What actor was in the following movies: Fuzz, Boogie Nights, Deliverance?) After almost all the clues appear, "all play" appears onscreen, letting competitors steal your pie piece by answering before you or correcting your wrong answer. (It's Burt Reynolds.) Some questions use elaborate audio and video--the Law & Order intro voice-over, even a chimpanzee doing the Macarena--but the game would be better if it had even more multimedia elements.

Because it's a brand-new game, Scene It? takes longer to figure out. Still, the effort pays off: this movie-trivia game boasts more clips, from hit movies ranging from Animal House to There's Something About Mary, than the other new DVD games. Scene It?--like Trivial Pursuit--supplements DVD challenges with quiz cards but also decreases repetition by stocking multiple questions for each movie clip.

Designed for a younger crowd, the Lilo & Stitch game has no quiz cards. A voice on the DVD asks questions and issues physical challenges (impersonate Elvis, outstare an onscreen character). It's more visually elaborate than the other two games and uses the technology well: instead of dice, there's a virtual spinner.

If designers can figure out how to pack in more questions and increase interactivity, the genre will get even better. Perhaps, in the not too distant future, we'll be using our DVD remotes to locate Colonel Mustard and his lethal candlestick.