Original Release: Apple II / C64 / DOS, 1989, Hi-Tech Expressions
Other Releases: NES (1990)
A simple but faithful adaptation of the original MTV game show, for 1 to 3 players
Remote Control (PC, Hi Tech Expressions, 1989)
Where to Buy: eBay
How to Emulate: MS-DOS Emulation Guide
Review by: C. M0use
Remote Control was MTV’s first dabble in game shows, and though it’s all but forgotten now it was pretty popular during its run from 1987 through 1990. I guess one of the reasons it went by the wayside is the theme is the questions are almost all about TV and movies of the era, something that can also be an issue with coming back and playing this game 35+ years later.
You can skim old episodes on YouTube to get an idea, in fact in doing so I noticed the questions in the game seem to have been pulled directly from episodes from the 1987-1989 seasons. The license went to Hi-Tech Expressions, which was a fairly big publisher at the time known for exclusively handling movie and TV licenses and kinda churning out not-so-great shovelware on a budget. That’s pretty much what happens here, with CGA graphics (though the studio set at least looks crisp) and honking internal speaker sound on occasion.
The game keeps to a simple formula that’s passable enough, though, and the computer versions add challenge by requiring you to type out the answers (on a generous 20-second timer) instead of it being multiple choice. You play two rounds, each containing nine randomly selected categories of questions, and then one player is eliminated before moving on to the final “speed round.” Eliminations were a big gimmick on the original show, the players were seatbelted into their chairs and dragged off set through a breakable wall … here they’re just set up the bomb and blown out of existence? They also seem to be eliminated at random points toward the end of the second and speed rounds, which seem arbitrary.
So this whole thing was clearly aimed at two or three-player hot seat play to be entertaining, as kind of a “game night” thing you set aside time for. You can play it solo, but it’s not much fun and is rather drawn-out. You have to fully exhaust all nine categories before moving on in each round, which have four questions each; with that and all the typing it really takes some time. The speed round at the end is also anticlimactic and can render all that time spent in the rest of the game pointless; in the actual show, this was where the MTV connection really came in with players having to guess the band from little snips of music videos, but that was obviously impractical to incorporate in the game both technology- and rights-wise.
The CPU players also operate on a simple pattern where they nearly always guess wrong on the first attempt in the first round, but then the second one will guess right at the last second. In the second round, they more often don’t answer at all but when they do answer correctly they tend to do it faster.
In addition to other players to make this enjoyable, you need a strong command of pre-90s TV (the most “modern” thing you’ll see here is Star Trek: TNG questions). If you have that you can easily mog the lethargic computer, but if you don’t you’ll sit through whole categories of having no idea what the answers are. The limited technology and rights issues also don’t really capture the absurd and kinda “insult comic” spirit of the show, save for some flavor text here and there.
Links
Fun retrospective about the show
Videos