Uploaded August 2011 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago

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Harry Yack takes a look back at a game so culturally significant it hardly matters.

Who Wants to be a Millionaire stood proudly atop the video games sales charts for weeks, nay months, after its release. This delivers false promise, for due to the unbelievable popularity of the TV show, every other parent who got their kid a Playstation for Christmas went out to Dixons and bought a copy. For 35 quid. In actuality, all you get is a bog-standard question and answer affair, and you know how fantastically those types of games translate to the Playstation. Exactly, they don't.

For that sort of price, you'd at least expect some half decent bonus games beyond a single fastest-finger first playoff. Sadly, you cannot take on Tarrant in hand-to-hand combat over that cheque for £64,000, nor can you go on a rampage around the Millionaire studio hunting for collectables - in this case empty coffee cartons and bottles of Benylin.

Not that it would be all that difficult, with the audience having gone home some three and half hours ago. But at least it would have offered something new beyond the entertainment you can get from simply watching the TV show on Challenge. For free. Well, not counting that hefty cable/satellite subscription Murdoch/Branson has you forking out month after month. Blasted phone hacking/hot air balloon flying media moguls.

Director commentary: youtube.com/watch?v=qBpC78r-0lI