Review of Now That`s What I Call A Music Quiz (Interactive DVD)

Introduction

The `Now` brand is pretty much a British institution. It has something to do with the way popular music has insinuated its way into everyday life, the way millions of Brits pay interest to the charts announced every weekend. At least that was the way it was done when I were a lad, before the era of the download and ringtone. A typical introduction to music would be when parents noticed a little toddler gyrating clumsily during Top of the Pops, and decided that he or she must want a copy of the Birdie Song for a birthday present. The rare novelty record would soon be replaced in a pre-teen`s affections by the Sunday afternoon ritual of trying to screen out Bruno Brookes and the rest of the chaff from a precious tape recording of the latest Stock Aitken and Waterman hits to make it into the chart. Then something magical would happen called pocket money. It wouldn`t be an instant graduation to The Stone Roses and Echobelly though, because in that intermediate stage when taste was yet to develop would come the compilation record. Kindly companies would want to repackage as many singles as possible to appeal to young buyers. They would gather all the recent hits onto two pieces of vinyl, or tape or that new fangled CD, and suddenly solvent pre-teens would be introduced to a cornucopia of pop music. Telstar was the Jack of all trades when it came to the compilation, and vinyl still gathering dust in my attic include the Deep Heats and Thin Ices as well as a couple of Hits discs. But the trusty standbys (and still going strong today while others have fallen by the wayside), are the Now That`s What I Call Music discs, presenting a nice middle of the road collection of pop. My first Now compilation was Now 4, a collection of pure heaven for this eighties fan, and I kept buying on and off until Now 25, the point where I discovered the album with a vengeance. Judging by the rate at which they release these things, they must be in the three digits by now.

I began with this ode to the mighty edifice of pop that is `Now`, as it is this fact that gave me hope when presented with Now That`s What I Call A Music Quiz. A couple of years ago, I had the misfortune to review the Pepsi Chart Music Quiz, a game with plenty of questions, a few images but absolutely no music. To top it all off, it was presented by Dr Fox. What is the point of creating a music quiz if you don`t own the rights to any music? Virgin, the company behind the `Now` name owns the rights to music, a whole lot of music. Finally, a quiz that would actually make proper use of the DVD medium. At least that was my hope when I inserted the Pre-release dual-layer DVD-R into my player.

Now That`s What I Call A Music Quiz comes with three modes of play.

Top 40 is a race to number one, for 1-4 players or teams. Choose from Easy, Medium or Hard questions, and you`re taken to a 3x3 grid from which you select your decade, from 60s & 70s, 80s, 90s or 2000s. Get your question right in the time allotted and you move up the chart. Watch out for the Hit or Miss questions. Get them right and you double your ascent, but get them wrong and you drop back down the chart.

Top 20 is a race to number one, for 1-4 players or teams. This is an endurance test. Answer as many questions as you can in a row as they increase in difficulty. Once you feel your bottle going, stick and control of the board passes to the next player. If you get one wrong, you drop back down to the last place you stuck. You only have a limited number of sticks, so play wisely.

I Spy is a two-player game, where answering questions correctly reveals a 3x3 image, one square at a time, ala Catchphrase. First player to correctly guess three images wins.

Video

A nice and bright 4:3 picture to suit all TVs, except the widescreen ones. Loads of primary colours and gorgeously rendered 3D graphics. It`s only hampered by the creaking quality of the older video clips.

Audio

Stereo sound and everything is nice and clear, including the music clips.

Features

The dulcet tones of Mark Goodier explain the rules of the games if you require them.

Conclusion

The interactive DVD is shaping up to be ideal post-prandial entertainment for Christmas Day, when the Queen`s speech threatens on one side, and a saccharine dose of the latest Robin Williams goo-fest on the other. The Now That`s What I Call A Music Quiz is a corker that will provides enough entertainment to help you digest seven or eight pounds of dry turkey and sprouts. This disc addresses everything I loathed about the Pepsi release. NTWICAMQ, has no DJ interrupting the proceedings, and takes you straight into the game. There are plenty of questions that test your general pop knowledge, requiring you to choose from one of four options. But aside from the text questions, there are visual questions that require you to identify images or answer related questions, you get to listen to snippets of pop music and answer questions, you even get brief bursts of pop videos from 5 decades to watch. It`s everything an interactive pop quiz should be. All that`s missing is the sarcastic tones of Mark Lamarr.

It isn`t without problems, although I guess they are the problems inherent in the medium. There is only so much memory in a DVD player, only so much randomness that it can generate, and I did notice one or two questions repeated. It`s nothing that a couple of pints of eggnog won`t diminish. The transitions between sections and questions are pretty slow depending on your player. Ironically, this game will probably be at its swiftest played through a PC with decent read ahead times. There also may be a small shame quotient with the game. I actually felt unclean at getting a question about Simply Red right, although answering a Showaddywaddy question correctly perked me right up for some reason. The only real downside to the game is that winners are announced with a fanfare of Girls Aloud, surely dispiriting after having answered 20 or so gruelling pop trivia posers. The only real bugs that I noticed were questions in the wrong categories. I had one 80s question in the 60s & 70s category, and one misplaced glam rock question in the 2000s (it wasn`t about The Darkness for what it`s worth).

It was a generally positive experience until it came time to stop. Player restrictions are the bane of many an existence, with the inability to change soundtracks or skip piracy warnings on some discs enough to make me grind my teeth in frustration. I`m willing to forgive this on an interactive title; after all you don`t want users exploring the disc looking for the answers. This disc pretty much locks all the player functions that aren`t needed for the game. But for some idiotic reason, that includes the stop button. You cannot stop this disc. The only way to switch the bloody thing off is to press the Stand By button, or the Eject. I have visions of a silver platter of death, ejected while spinning furiously, cleaving through a family on Boxing Day. I can see the headlines now.

It`s a minor annoyance, but an annoyance nonetheless. But as the disc constantly reminded me on the question screens, it is a "Pre-release version. Circle Studios Ltd 2005. Do not distribute" Hopefully this annoyance will be dealt with on the final release. NTWICAMQ is finally a music quiz worthy of the name. I`m still going to knock a mark off for the stop button fiasco though. Well worth looking up if you are in the mood for some DVD party shenanigans during the festive period. I`m going to distribute this now. (Just kidding lawyer people).