Cost:$30.00 From: Tenore Games, P.O. Box 1221, Burlington MA, 01803 Players: 2-5 players or teams Playing Time: 30-60 minutes Type of game: Trivia Complexity: 2 Skill level: 7 Chance Level: 5 Overall: 8 Reviewed by: Peter Sarrett, Issue 1.1, June 1992 NOTE: This game is now out of print.
Sometimes the simplest ideas are the most fun. Movie Memory comes with a game board and dice, but they're incidental to the real fun of this game which is listening to and identifying snippets from movies. The game includes five 90-minute cassettes filled with short quotes from films of the late 70s to early nineties. On your turn, you roll the dice and listen to the next quote on the tape. In case you didn't catch it all the first time, the quote is repeated for you. Then you pause the tape and try to identify the actor or actress, character, and film the quote is from. Start the tape again to listen to the answer. If you get all three right, you get to move your piece forward the total number rolled on both dice. If you get two parts right, you move the higher of the two dice. And if you get only one right, you move the lower of the two. If you get two or three parts right, you also get to take another turn. The quotes run the range from staggeringly obvious to heinously obscure. But then, the difficulty of a particular excerpt depends a great deal on whether or not you've seen the film. The target audience for this game appears to be a young one, though, as films like Fast Times at Ridgemont High and The Breakfast Club pop up fairly often, while more "adult" films are less common. We usually play in teams, and manage to guess at least two parts out of three correctly most of the time. Often it's possible to name the actor or actress even if you haven't seen the film, and teammates can jog each other's memory. Movie Memory moves quickly, and it's fun to play along even when it's not your turn. It's great for parties or large get-togethers-- and for you Mac-heads, it's a great source for digitized sounds. An "Advanced "R" Rated Edition" and a "Classics Edition" are supposedly forthcoming.