Gimme A Break: Shijo Saikyo no Quiz-oh Ketteisen (Battle for the Greatest Quizmaster in History) was a fairly popular TV show in Japan in the late 80s and early 90s. It was your basic Japanese game show that people hear about - dramatic, exciting, and occasionally sadistic in what it made its contestants do. It's a genre that's not too popular these days, but it left behind several oddball games like this one.

The main feature behind this one is the controller.. controllers it comes with. Called the "Party Tap", it consists of a main unit that connects to the special connector on the Famicom... and six "buzzers" that are used by the players. Just like the TV show, up to six players can play at one time - any combination of human and computer players is possible.

Yonezawa apparantly had some big plans for this Party Tap - they announced a fair amount of games for it, but only released one or two more before (other game shows) before quitting the scene by 1993. It's probably a good thing - one, game shows are boring when you're playing them, and two, the controllers are built very cheaply and I'm sure more than one buzzer was busted by someone excitedly slamming his fist on one.

The game itself is really fairly simple - there aren't many gimmicks or anything in the code; it's just straight question and answer. Whoever buzzes in first gets to choose from several answers, so it's important to buzz in even before the question is fully displayed on the screen to get the advantage (this is something that both computer players and real-life contestants do).

If a human player wins the initial contest, then he gets to challenge the "Quizmaster" - always a rotund middle-aged man with big glasses and a very sten expression. If you can answer 10 questions right before the Quizmaster can, then you too can win fabulous prizes and instant fame - or not; the game just sort of says "YOU WIN" and such, which isn't as much fun.

In fact, the whole game is coded pretty pedestrianly - there's zero music, very little sound effects apart from people buzzing in, no actual people are seen in the game besides Quizmaster and challenger. The only real reason people have to buy the game is for the (cheaply constructed) controller, and even now the game can sell for 4000 yen or so because of this - in general Famicom controllers are more expensive than their NES counterparts. This is a price for collectors only, tho - the game is no fun at all and even if you can find five other people to play this, there are lots and lots of more enjoying ways to enjoy yourselves.

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