You know the routine! Blast through sixteen increasingly frustrating trivia questions, aided only by two helpful lifelines and one marginally useless one. As the game progresses, gravity begins to fail with alarming regularity in the studio, as demonstrated by your repeatedly flying out of your own chair into the floor, ceiling, and all points in between. (THQ, 2000)

I have to admit right now that this is the last game I ever expected to see on the Game Boy. But it's good! I have only a couple of minor quibbles, but overall, I've enjoyed this particular game a lot since I got my hands on it.

Compared to the PC/Playstation versions of the game, the portable port of Millionaire moves lightning-fast (though it'll still take you at least fifteen minutes to get all the way to the top). I wondered how they'd handle the phone-a-friend lifeline with the Game Boy, and to my delight, it's very much like that lifeline on the online game: your fictional "phone-a-friend" delivers his or her verdict in text on the bottom of the screen, after which the recommended answer is highlighted. This is a huge relief after wading though the convoluted phone-a-friend answers of "the amazing Earl" in the Playstation edition (hey, wait a minute!).

Minor quibbles? The full-motion video. It's cool that FMV is gradually being introduced to the world's most popular hand-held platform (I, for one, am eagerly awaiting the Game Boy version of the laserdisc arcade classic Dragon's Lair late this year or early next year, whenever it does wind up hitting the shelves). But in the case of Millionaire, the FMV of Regis and of the various animated swoops through the show's set (yep, we're still floatin' around the studio!) robs the game of storage space that could've been used to store more questions. Though it shares the same questions as other versions of Millionaire's second edition, the Game Boy version seems to have only 50% to 75% of the Playstation version's variety of questions. I would have gladly sacrificed the video of floating out of my chair for the umpteenth time for a wider variety of questions.

That, of course, means that the Game Boy edition of Millionaire will, unfortunately, wear thin even more quickly than the other versions. I've actually gotten all the way to the million just from memory. That's not impossible with the Playstation or PC versions of the game, but it is a little less likely since they have more questions.

Despite that, I heartily recommend this for any Millionaire buffs - or anyone with young fans of the show. This will definitely hit the spot with the kids during that arduous Christmas road trip to Grandma's.

Rating:  Three quarters - worth repeat play, but with some annoying features that might alienate less patient arcade veterans.

Reviewed by Earl Green
theLogBook.com editor/webmaster