One of my friends recently bought that 80’s “Name that Tune” game that you constantly see being advertised on VH1 (the one that comes with a DVD). Last night, four of us got together and played it for the first time. Here’s my review.

To play, you need at least three people but no more than four. Each person gets their own little plastic color television. Each player moves in a straight line from their beginning spot to the center of the board. There are no dice; players move forward by answering 80’s music trivia questions.

There are three phases of the game. The first phase is a section numbered 1-6. To advance through it, players must answer questions of increasing difficulty which are read from cards. The second phase is where you begin using the DVD. In that area there are Name That Band, Name That Song, and Music Trivia rings you must advance through. Once two people make it to the middle, the third part of the game is like the old television show “Name that Tune”, except you must “name that song” by watching a video. Players bargain to see who can name the song in the fewest amount of seconds.

We used the old rules that if you get a question right, you get to go again. The game comes with two decks of cards, standard and expert. Now, my friends and I pride ourselves on our 80’s music trivia knowledge, so it was no surprise that we were able to waltz through the easy cards. They were so easy I can’t even remember any of the questions. If you know anything about the 80’s, the easy deck is too easy for you. So then we got to the video portion. We expected this to be very simple as well but VH1 has included some REALLY obscure 80’s bands in the video lineup. For example, one of us got Men at Work (duh). When the next video played, we were all sitting there staring at the screen. This is a group of people who still listen to 80’s music on a regular basis and none of us have ever even heard of this song. Finally the name comes up. “Martha and the Muffins.” Who the hell is Martha and the Muffins? Another one that come up was “Wa Wa Nee”. I would say the video portion was 1/3 stuff none of us had ever heard of before, and 2/3 super easy stuff.

The “video trivia” portion of the DVD has nothing to do with music video trivia. Gamers watch a 30 second clip, and at the end are asked about something that appeared in the video. For example, in one clip they show George Michael’s “Faith” video for 30 seconds, and the question is, “what was written on the front of his jacket?” So once you understood what the questions were going to be like, it was pretty simple to beat.

The next game, we decided to switch to the expert cards, and things got a lot tougher. One question I specifically remember was, “what was the name of Wham’s backup singers.” Another one asked, “how many times was George Michael’s video ‘I Want Your Sex’ re-dited before MTV would play it?” So by expert, they really mean expert. These were a lot more fun to play with and made the game a lot more challenging.

Another thing that made the game more challenging was the scratched DVD my friend got, which caused the DVD portion to lock up about every third time, forcing us to watch the un-skipable intro time and time again.

Overall we enjoyed the game, although its $40 price tag (much of which must have gone to licensing videos) seemed a little steep. We were able to play three or four full games with very few videos repeating, although I’m not sure how many more times we could have played without getting lots of them. People who enjoy the 80’s will probably enjoy this game.