Smarty Pants

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What’s the Story?

SMARTY PANTS for the Nintendo Wii allows players to buzz in to answer questions by simply raising their hand holding the Wii remote. The first person to raise his hand will hear and feel the buzzer in the remote, signaling him to point the controller at the screen and select the answer. Each question has four multiple-choice answer possibilities.

Choose the Friends Mode for a competitive, fast-paced game for up to four players with two scoring methods, Countdown or Wager. Players take turns spinning a category wheel that includes art, books, entertainment, fashion, games, places and people, science and sports. For a more cooperative, friendly environment, choose Family Mode. Instead of using the category wheel, players are given a number of questions to answer in a specific amount of time; families can control the speed at which the time burns down as well as the number of questions asked.

Is It Any Good?

What makes this a good game across generations is that it adjusts the difficulty of the questions based on the age of the participants. As you play, the game keeps track of your progress and adjusts the difficulty of the questions to your performance. The 20,000 questions filtered by age is a plus, as is the method of buzzing in by raising your arm. But for a multimedia game, there's very little multimedia, as most questions are just written across the screen and then show four possible written answers.

The worst problem is the price: $50. For what you get, this game should have been priced in the $20 to $30 range. If you own a Wii, are looking for fun ways to entertain a family group, and price is not an issue, pick this one up.