Customer Reviews

Trivial Pursuit Saturday Night Live Edition

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The game is good, as far as trivia pursuit games go. I mean, it's of course a trivia pursuit game centered around Saturday Night Live. We found it somewhat difficult, but then, while us players watch Saturday Night Live, none of us live and die by it.

The thing that we all found most disappointing was the DVD. Given that the game is centered around a TV show, and it comes with a DVD that you use to play the game, we all had VERY high expectations to be watching a lot of little scenes from the show, and to have to answer questions based on that. Or at the very least, little scenes showing parts of the skit once we GOT the answer. Boy were we mistaken. The DVD, although it does contain a few portions of skits, and a few sound bites here and there, is LARGELY just the questions being shown on TV, instead of being on a card. VERY disappointing there.

Trivial Pursuit SNL Edition is fun. Thres over 2000 questions about Saturday Night Live. Dont buy it if you have been watching it for less than 10 years because most of the questions are about old sketches, cast members and characters. The DVD part is a lot of fun because you get clues to the questions, your timed and the game goes a lot faster. If you like Saturday Night Live and you have been watching it for a while you should buy this game.

We played this game for the first time last night and here are the initial thoughts:
Game Pieces: The game pieces are ingenious! You can play as one of several classic SNL characters such as landshark, Conehead or the Ladies Man. The pie pieces slide into the base of each piece and stay put even when the piece is turned upside down! This is great for us since we sometimes like to stop a game and pick it up on another day.
Game Board: The creativity in the game pieces ended there. The board looks really dated with graphics that look like they fell out of the 80's. They had the opportunity to design a really cool bored and I thought it fell short.
DVD: I love the addition of the DVD for "pie" questions. The navigation is a little jerky and hard to scroll from category to category and at one point, I accidently pressed stop and we had to start over again (and got some repeat questions.) We both loved the feature that you can "steal pie" if the person on the pie space doesnt know the answer or guesses wrong. It makes the game go much faster.
Questions: My husband and I consider oursleves die-hard SNL fans but were really surprised at how difficult the questions were! The game focuses on really specific details, lines, etc. from characters that were not just the mainstream characters. We got a lot of laughs remembering the episodes, but were stumped on a lot of questions. Also, the game includes characters and sketches from the show's beginning all the way to the current season. We were surprised to get a question involving Fred Armisan since he is a fairly new cast member.
Overall: Entertaining but definitely for the true-blue fans. The very difficult questions got a little frustrating!

"Trivial Pursuit: Saturday Night Live Edition" continues the line of spin-offs from the popular board game now used to tap into niche audiences. Playing this edition requires players to follow the rules of the other versions (travel around a board, collect pie wedges, etc), but the questions only relate to Saturday Night Live.

Playing the game creates many "laugh out loud" moments, as the architects selected some of the funnier skits to test viewers' knowledge. Many of the questions will result in exchanges where players who remember the skit will fill in the rest of the table and everyone will get a good laugh. Sometimes, the humor explains itself, like during our game, when the question was, "Who played Mindy Cohn in a spoof of the former `Facts of Life' star?" When the name "Chris Farley" was read, the answer set the table on a roar.

As many people have already noted, the crowning achievement of the game lies in the craftsmanship of the playing pieces. Skillfully designed in a manner that nearly rivals those Civil War chess pieces of the 1980s, the little figures exude such a degree of adroit fabrication that many people will want to display them on desks or mantels. Players can select from such iconic characters as Beldar Conehead, The Landshark, Chris Farley's "down by the river" van dweller and my favorite, The Ladies Man (complete with his own glass of Courvoisier).

With all that going for it, however, degree of difficulty really harms the experience of playing the game. Lorne Michaels himself couldn't answer these questions. My family contains many members who frequently watch the show (although one player guessed "Mango" for nearly all questions), but our game slowed to nearly quagmire status, as correct answers were rarely achieved.

The concept of the game will attract many players, and the possibility of using Molly Shannon's armpit smelling Mary Katherine Gallagher to move around the board will excite fans for a few minutes, but once the obscure nature of the questions is established, look for many people to put this game away in the closet and never play it again.

I got this game from my wife on X-mas. My family was excited to play it that evening. The game was excruciating to play. We are average SNL viewers having seen most episodes at some point in time (there are reruns on everyday), but the questions are TOO difficult. You would have to watch the show 12 hours a day and take detailed notes to get most of the questions right.The DVD only plays a few questions from each catagory so when you use up the questions it refers you back to the written questions. Lastly the DVD plays the same few SNL theme notes over and over again. We had to pause the game to make it stop.
We returned the game the following day.

I received this game for my birthday and was anticipating it to be a lot of fun. However, when I began playing it with my family, I discovered that most of the questions were meant for die hard snl fans. I was expecting the questions to be a lot easier to make for fun competition with anyone. I would recommend this game to anyone that is a die hard fan like me because it challenges you to remember all that useless snl trivia over the years.

Okay, so it's not really educational, however, my older kids, who are big SNL fans, have gotten a good sense of the older shows from the game. We've had a blast playing this together.

The little game pieces are SNL characters, however, they are mostly recent (Land Shark and Conehead are the only older ones.) The pieces are CUTE though! Really funny.

One disappointing thing is that while the DVD plays a portion of a skit, it doesn't play the whole skit. Surely, in a DVD (part of a $40 game!), they could have included entire skits.

I like the questions in general, and found the game challenging, but not overwhelmingly challenging. I think it's great for the average SNL fan.

In order to answer the questions in this edition of Trivial Pursuit you would need an encyclopedic knowledge of the minutae of SNL. Most of the questions were beyond the ability of my family, who have watched SNL since it began, and who quote it frequently. I was very disappointed in this game.

I have only played this game once, but it seems to be well crafted. Most importantly, The questions are balanced enough between the obscure (sorry, Tim Kazurinsky) and the satisfying ("What cartoon song did Andy Kaufman lip synch to?"). For the impressions category, I find if I just guess "Darryl Hammond" 100% of the time, I am right more than 70% of the time.
The DVD seems like it was included to be "relevant" (like a gas station selling espresso in the 90's), but it is useless other than generating some extra income for Don Pardo.
In the scheme of Trivial Pursuit games this one ranks higher than most (The Beatles being the lowest on the scale with inane questions like, "What color shoe laces did John Lennon wear while recording Abbey Road?" Answer: "Trick Question: He was barefoot"). The Beatles Trivial Pursuit

If you enjoy Scene It or Trivial Pursuit, this one's worth the $20 or so that you'll spend. Many of the reviews say that it was too difficult, but I disagree. I've had several groups of people come over to play, & it got pretty competitive! The difficulty level seemed right on.

The great thing about this game is this: Even if you're losing, you're having a good time laughing at the sketches. The bad thing: My friends & I have enjoyed it so much that we've run out of new questions.

I am a game nut, & I'm DYING for a 2nd version of this to come out (although unlikely). I would shell out big bucks if they'd compile another disc! ..."Step One - Cut a hole in the box!"