Family Feud Review

Not everybody loves game shows, but many people do. Enough, in fact, that during the NES days many game shows were turned into video games (some even into more than one). Among those is a game show that came, went, and recently has come again, Family Feud.

I was too young to truly remember the original version of Family Feud too much, although I did watch it pretty faithfully. Since I was such a fan of it, when my brother and I got ourselves an NES, one of the games our parents bought us was the videogame version of Family Feud. I put far more time into it than my brother did (he isn’t a game show fan), but even I never really thought much of it.

The graphics on the game, frankly, are below average. The people in the families, and even the host, look absolutely hideous, and the color scheme of the room where the game takes place, although it tries to follow the show’s, isn’t much better. Overall, the graphics could have used an overhaul.

The same can be said of the sound. Although the sound and sound effects try to follow the show, and do so somewhat decently, the sound probably could have been made more realistic. Instead it sounds like they copied the worse version of the music they could find into the game. So, while it is the right music for the time period, it just wasn’t done particularly well. This is one of those games that maybe you just want to leave mute if you’re going to play it.

The gameplay follows the show as the show was done when the game was released. Questions are asked, then somebody rings the buzzer to answer, and eventually one family or the other tries to find all the answers to the question at hand. If you’re a Family Feud fan, you know how it works, and if you aren’t, why are you reading this?

The system for entering answers is a typical letter-grid of the day. You enter your answer, then you hit an okay button. Although supposedly minor misspellings are allowed, it is very difficult to misspell a word in such a way that the game will know what you meant.

If you do happen to win, a very similar system is used for the fast money questions. I should mention though that, although the chosen answers for the questions were probably correct for the time period, they have changed since then, and to figure out what the answers would have been when the game came out is rather difficult.

Overall, this game had potential, but it wasn’t the world’s best game by a long shot. Even with two players, both of whom are real fans of the game show, you won’t get much entertainment out of this game anymore. I say find a more recent version if you want a video game copy of this game show.