It’s kind of wild to realize how much Austin Powers made a big impact in the late 1990s. Former Saturday Night Live star Mike Myers does a spoof of spy films, including the James Bond series of films, complete with hitting the right amount of hippie nostalgia. It becomes a box office success with sequels, merchandising, and of course, video games. It also kicked off a brief trend of spy spoof films that felt like them repeatedly saying “get with the times, grandpa” towards the titular 007.
I could talk about those weird Game Boy Color Austin Powers “games” that are mostly just reskins of Windows 98 but themed after characters from the film series, complete with silly jokes. (They made two, like it’s goddamn Pokemon! They were gonna make two more of these!) Hell, there was even a digital pinball game called, appropriately, Austin Powers Pinball. But longtime readers of the site probably know what I’m gonna talk about. somehow, somehow, they made something that seems tailor made for me.
Austin Powers Operation: Trivia is a trivia game developed by Berkeley Systems, Inc., and published by Sierra Interactive. One of the few Berkeley Systems game show games that has zero involvement from Jellyvision, the makers of the You Don’t Know Jack games. Released in 1999, shortly before Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me hit theaters, this was one of many games that came out of the Jack boom that happened around 1997-2000. Though, this coming from some of the folks who made that series popular really feels like a “from two of the guys who wrote the screenplay of this hit movie” kind of situation.
Now, I like game shows, I like video games that play like game shows, and I am a fan of the classic You Don’t Know Jack titles. I’ve even covered a myriad of Jack knockoffs on the blog before. But this game is a real headscratcher on why it really exists.
The rules go a little something like this: You’re a contestant on the hit game show “Win, Lose, or Die.” You must pick a side – Austin Powers or Dr. Evil – and try to beat your opponent, who has won over $100,000,000 or more in the same game. To win, one must know a bit of trivia.
If you have played a You Don’t Know Jack game before, then all this stuff should be easy to remember. Questions will cover either certain moments in history or a bit from the films. Pressing Q/P will buzz in, 1-4 to select an answer. Right answer gets you cash ($5-10 million, usually), wrong answer loses cash.
In addition to the standard Q&A, this game does take a few pages from Jack, but puts a light spin on them. For example, Dis or Dat, the rapid-fire either-or bonus mode previously introduced in You Don’t Know Jack Volume 2, appears in this game, called “Keep Away.” It’s changed to a “Keep/Away” system, where one player will have topic A, while the opponent will have topic B. Same rules apply, but it is an interesting twist.
The other new question type, “Stop and Go-Go” involves a bit of gambling. A list of 7 things will be given, of which four belong in the subject. Picking the first right answer nets $5 million. After that, one can either stop and take the cash, or risk it by picking another right answer, which doubles the money. This repeats until all four right answers are found, or a wrong answer is picked. Picking a wrong answer loses any money earned and, in a multiplayer game, passes control to the other team.
Finally, in lieu of a Jack Attack, Operation: Trivia calls it the “Crazy Chain,” something very Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon-esque. A question will be asked, this time with only three choices. Regardless if you get it right or wrong, the answer to that question will be the topic for the next question, and so on and so forth until all 9 questions are asked.
After that, the totals are made, and you find out if you won, lost, or died. And in most of my playthroughs, I lost every time. I get that it’s a reference to the film, but there’s not enough questions in the game to really make that $100 million+ target feasible in a single player game: There’s only about 6 questions before the final round, identical to a short game of classic You Don’t Know Jack. I get that they probably didn’t have enough material to stretch it out to the long 21 question games, but that lofty goal makes it infuriating to play alone.
Now, if you’re playing with someone else – just one other, I’m afraid, they treat this game like team sports – this rule does not come into effect whatsoever. Outside of assigning who gets to be on which team, it’s strictly a “whoever has the best score wins” game like a conventional trivia game. Which makes sense, these are party games after all.
One thing I haven’t touched on is the humor of this game. A good chunk of it boils down to fairly currently topical humor, combined with references to the first two movies. There is a good amount of punching down on certain groups, including referencing the transphobic “she’s a man, baby” bit from The Spy Who Shagged Me.
This is something Jellyvision did not do with their past You Don’t Know Jack titles, and there’s a reason why: Because that type of humor incredibly dates the game to the time period it was released in. Most Jack games usually go for absurdist humor, or mashing things together. Doing it this way makes for a clever and creative game, something that doesn’t need to do the lazy route like making jokes about Ellen Degeneres coming out as gay, which was definitely played out by the time the game was released. It’s giving me Outburst flashbacks.
Colin Mahan does the voice of the host bot, as well as the voices for Austin and Dr. Evil. He does a solid job getting the cheesy “game show host” voice down, and his Austin Powers and Dr. Evil impressions are at least up to snuff, especially since you’re not getting Mike Myers in a recording booth for a game on this kind of budget. They even get some impressionist to play Number 2, who does a bang-up job at nailing Robert Wagner’s tone. A shame the voices are wrapped in such subpar humor.
At least I can say the game definitely hits the groovy 1960s style that the film was going for, and it fits right in with the silly kitsch of the Jack games. Even if it’s missing Jellyvision’s offbeat humor in the process. It’s like a band getting a new vocalist and you can clearly tell it sounds a little different.
What surprises me is how little the other principal cast for Austin Powers is not even remotely featured here. Like, no Frau Farbissina whatsoever? I can understand not featuring much of more iconic characters of the franchise like Mini Me, as the game came out before The Spy Who Shagged Me hit theaters, but the potential for a silly minigame involving Mini Me would’ve been gold here. Then again, there’s probably a dozen flash games that fulfill that same purpose that you could play on Flashpoint.
While Sierra would still exist for a few more years after this, Berkeley Systems would release one more Jack clone in 2000: Backstage Pass: The Ultimate Rock & Roll Trivia Game, and it’s so blatantly going for the sardonic style of a Jack game but without the eccentric humor. Makes me wonder if it was gonna be You Don’t Know Jack Music at some point. The studio would shut down not long after that. Berkeley Systems mostly exists as a forgotten memory, being the company that brought After Dark and You Don’t Know Jack to commercial successes, got acquired by a bigger company, and then basically shut down and stripped for parts. A tale as old as time in the gaming industry. At least Jellyvision got out unscathed in this deal.
I start thinking about a phrase a friend of mine uses for judging things like these: “Who is this for?” I can’t imagine the principal audience of Austin Powers fans are on PC, unless the folks at Sierra thought there’s an audience of folks who like that series as well as You Don’t Know Jack. I get that it’s a licensed film property and the opportunity to milk it with all kinds of merchandising is always tempting, and that includes games. I wonder if they probably wanted to do a “throwback” trivia game and slapped the Austin Powers license on it because it fits with the film’s theme.
Regardless, I don’t think Austin Powers as a series carries itself enough for a dedicated trivia game. It’s not really worth playing compared to its peers, unless the thought of hearing how much Austin Powers likes to shag things while you’re trying to answer pop culture questions sounds appealing to you or your friends.
Austin Powers Operation: Trivia is available at a second hand store or abandonware website near you. Like a lot of the games from this era, it works best on a Windows 95/98 machine, and there’s virtual machines that can emulate those if finding real hardware is expensive or difficult to maintain. Trying to play this on a modern system is not recommended.
Going back through all these Jack clones has me really inspired by a lot of trivia and game show games that existed in the 1990s. They’re honestly a lost art. I know that what Jackbox Games and similar products like Rifftrax: The Game have a more broader appeal to folks, but I kinda wish we had goofy, funny trivia games again. Just without the stale political jokes and punching down of minority groups.
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