Hollywood Squares (Rare)

Hollywood Squares

NES - USA - 1st edition.

Developer Rare Publisher GameTek Published 1989-09-?? Platforms NES Genres Licensed, Trivia Themes Game Show Series Hollywood Squares Multiplayer Alternating versus Distribution Commercial

Hollywood Squares is a trivia video game developed by Rare and published by GameTek for the NES in September 1989. It is based on the Hollywood Squares game show and part of the Hollywood Squares franchise.

Personal

Own?	No.
Won?	Yes.
Finished	2023-08-31.

After beating several other NES game show games, I decided to keep the ball rolling and hammer this one out too. I beat the AI several times before finally choosing the correct car.

Review

3	3	3	2	4

Best Version: NES

— This section contains spoilers! —

Good

• The game does an adequate job of representing the game show.
• You can select a playable female character.
• The jokes added by the "celebrities" add a little flavor.
• One of the "celebrities" is named Dean.

Bad

• The show's host, John Davidson, has been replaced by some generic guy.
• Although the game has a variety of men and women and different age groups, everyone is white.
• In a one-player game, there is no point in reading the opponent's questions since there is nothing you can do to influence them. You just want to skip it, but, the developers added a mandatory delay to give players time to read the questions. More annoyingly, if you press a button to clear the question too soon, there is an obnoxious buzzer noise.

Ugly

• As game shows go, Hollywood Squares is not very interesting. All the trivia is true or false, and winning the grand prize of a car is merely a guess. The only thing it has going for it is the appearance of B and C-list celebrities, none of which are present in the game. Because of this, it doesn't translate very well to a home video game.
• A lot of the game's trivia questions are about the bible, which is very inappropriate for children.

Media

Box Art

• 

  Cover.

Documentation

• 

  Manual.

Font

The font from the NES port is in the video game font collection.

Videos

Longplay.

Play Online

NES

Representation

Strong female character?	Pass	There are multiple female celebrities, and you can play as one of two female avatars.
Bechdel test?	Fail	Women never talk to each other.
Strong person of color character?	Fail	Everyone in the game is white.
Queer character?	Fail	There are no queer characters.

Links