ESPN's Two Minute Drill

Too bad the programmers of this game have never seen the show. They'd enjoy it. Of course, they may not want to. Actually viewing the work their television colleagues have done would make them realize just how much work they have to do. So much easier, I guess, to just use code so old, it makes Strom Thurmond look like an 18-year-old snowboarder.

One of the key elements of 2-MINUTE DRILL is that's it's not a multiple choice game. On TV, you have to wait for the complete question to be asked and then must give the answer without the benefit of multiple choices. This could be achieved on the computer using increasingly accurate speech recognition engines, but the attitude of the ESPN software department seems to be one of complacent acceptance. It's easy enough to see their rationale: not everyone will have microphones for their computers, and voice recognition is imperfect, anyway. Better to take the path of least resistance and offer up a traditional multiple choice format. It might not be the same experience as the show, they might have reasoned, but at least everyone will be able to play. True enough, but if in so doing you fundamentally change the game, why bother?

Likewise, the decision to use typed answers in the final round guts the intent of show. Here the challenge isn't just to be right, but to be able to spell quickly as well. Since the answers usually revolve around people's names, you can be frequently "wrong" for no good reason. Also, one of the beauties of the final round (or "Question of Great Significance" for the picky among us) is that it's usually a tightly-focused field of study. On TV, it's often something as obscure as "the Liverpool FA Cup run of 1998" or "Georgetown postseason basketball in 1982", or even "the 1932 Summer Olympics". Here, not even the slightest gesture has been made towards specificity. Instead, you choose from one of five sports and then questions roll in. If you fail any of the questions, the game immediately ends--without even telling you what the right answer was.

If that weren't enough, the game suffers from bad writing. Where Kenny Mayne's dry and often original wit makes the television show something for even non-sports-fans to appreciate, here he's almost a self-parody. What's worse, he's barely present. He might've recorded a total of ten minutes' worth of material--hardly what he does in a single televised outing. Equally disappointing is the failure to do anything imaginative (or expensive) with the panel itself. Where actual sports personalities dominate the panel on TV, here ESPN staffers are substituted. To be sure, ESPN's wallets were kept fuller with this decision, but the game loses a lot in the translation.

By far, though, the most annoying thing about this game is that it has no real depth. It suffers from the same lack of questions that plagued the initial version of WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE?. Within a matter of an hour, you're likely to start to see questions recur, and within a week of moderate play, you'll find you're getting by less on your knowledge of sports than your memory of the right answer.

All in all, then, there's really not a whole lot to root for in this game's stadium. It simply is what it is: an attempt to quickly cash in on televised success. As such, it not only fails to be a good game in its own right, it serves to cheapen the parent product on which it's based.


Good game, but not great...   August 14, 2001
Donald (San Diego, CA)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful

Just from looking at the price you can understand that this isn't a high budget game, but it achieves its purpose by allowing the player to sit in the 'hot seat' and answer questions about sports delivered by ESPN's own hosts and anchors. There could be more questions, and the game could be a bit more realistic, but overall, it's a pretty solid game for the price you pay. If you like Kenny Mayne (like I do) or just sports in general, you should try this game out!


Your 2 minute drill begins now!   May 24, 2001
6 out of 6 found this review helpful

Let me start off saying this game is fair. I bought it because I'm into sports and my favorite Sportscenter anchor Kenny Mayne was the host. They game has many flaws though. There are not enough questions and after you play the game enough you can master it. For the first few times you play you have to know everything about every sport for the past 50 years just get a few points, but once you play a lot you master the questions. If there were a way to download more questions the game would be pretty good, but why would companies want to do something smart like that?


Not enough questions!   December 26, 2000
7 out of 8 found this review helpful

The game itself is fun enough, but there are so few questions that I started seeing duplicates in my third game.

Wait till next year's version...


Not as good as I hoped   December 26, 2000
9 out of 10 found this review helpful

I had high expectations for this game given the excitement of the actual show. However, I was disappointed with game play. As the other reviewer indicated, game play is fast. No game I played last longer than 6 minutes. In addition, I had played only 4 games before I started to get duplicate questions and question categories. Now I have played 10 games-- totaling no more than 1 hour of game play-- and get duplicate questions with every game. It does not feel like the game has 2000 questions as advertised on the box. Very disappointing-- I'll stick to the show on TV.

When I do not get repeat questions, the game is fun and challenging. However, I can't help but realize that the game will probably last me no more than 1 week. Maybe the gamemakers can do something to ensure that the full 2000 questions are used before repeating them.