I Just Won A Million (Who wants to be a Millionaire?)

Member Name: DavidJWest

Product:	Who wants to be a Millionaire?
Date:	06/02/02 (209 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Win money, Slick, Lots of questions

Disadvantages: Costs money, Addictive

It's true I tell you, with the new on-line version of the ITV cult TV quiz show, I won the big prize of a cool million quid!

Unfortunately the biggest cash prize you can win on this version is only a thousand pounds and to do that you have to be the quickest person to the million and I wasn't even in the top three, so no retirement plans here yet!

Fellow dooyoosers will no doubt have similarly addictive personalities such as I so a word of caution here, before reading the rest of this rant, this is a fairly addictive new site I have uncovered.

I'll tell you a bit about the TV show which this on-line game is base on, as if you didn't already know about it!

The programme has been put together by a company called Celador and it is hosted by Chris Tarrant, he of Tiswas fame, if you are old like me you'll remember that Saturday morning mad childrens show.

Unfortunately this childrens show (WWTBAM) does not have Lenny Henry with his condensed milk sandwiches or the phatom flan flinger or even Bob Carolgees with Spit the dog (or that rather nice young lady who name escapes me).

What it does have is great and atmospheric lighting and music with a simple but intrigueing format where contestants have to answer ever harder questions to get to a million pounds. The questions are multiple choice and there are 15 correct answers needed to win the top prize.

Along the way the contestants have three "lifelines" they can use to help with tricky questions, 50/50 will remove two wrong answers form the choices given, ask the audience will let those watching in the studio take a guess at the answer and finally the "phone a friend" which lets the contestant ring up an aquaintence who can try to aid them in their hour of need.

The website itself is slick and replicates the feel of the TV show in looks and sounds with flashy graphics galore, but I suspect you need a plug-in
or two to appreciate this in full (Macromedia Flash I expect).

There are all kinds of options on the site, a forum, news section and downloads even a shop, but I will concentrate on how to win the cash!

In order to play for the cash prize, you will need to pay, unfortunately! It is between 50p and a pound to play per game, depending on how you choose to part with your cash!

My advice is to pay by telephoning the number given as this is the cheapest method and quickest in my case. You pay 50p for the 30 second or so call, you can pay by sending a text message or with a credit card on-line but this is around £1 a time.

You need to register which is easy and then buy credits to play with. After that you just log on and you are away answering questions and using lifelines exactly as you would in the show.

Only real difference is it is against the clock. I don't remember Mr Tarrant ever saying "hurry up" to the contestants as I suppose the longer they take the less money ITV has to pay out, but on this version you get 30 seconds to answer to begin with and 60 seconds for the tougher questions.

So far I have paid to play 3 times and won 2 free games, if you are quick enough to the £1,000 pound mark you get these perks and I find that goal quite easy.

After that things get tougher, I did cheat by using Google to get to the million mark (I prefer to say used my initiative) and my Wife does have a bad cough at the moment too! Seriously though to get to the million quickly enough to win the cash prize you will need to answer all the questions quickly, not enough time to type in "peninsular largest" into google, even the fast typers can't risk that. Maybe better to get a gang of intelligent friends around for a laugh.

I don't think having a quick PC or connection is much help either, the way the game is designed seems to make things equal for all levels of PC used.
As long as it doesn't crash on the last question, that would be a bit tedious!

One major difference for the cash competition is you don't have the "is that your final answer?" option which means if you have played the computer version you may regret clicking on the answer too quickly!

I just found out that you can play a free version of the game, no prizes on offer but you can choose various historic games to play. For example play the game that "Carol Vorderman" played on as well as other celebrities and the million pound winners. As I said addictive people look out!

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