Board Game Review – Saturday Night Live: The Game

There’s something to be said about a television show that has managed to survive for over thirty years despite a roller-coaster of quality, talent, and drama in front of and behind the camera.

Satan must have made out like a bandit in the deal.

Despite the general populace voicing how much they loathe the almost forty year old skit show while they continue to secretly watch it, Saturday Night Live continues to thrive on the same network at the same time every week – rehashing the same skits predicated on a single gag over and over while Lorne Michaels continues to suck up a fat paycheck.

That said, SNL does have its moments from time to time, and does manage to hire some halfway decent talent on occasion, which has somehow been enough to keep the show on the air for forever. And in that time, the NBC staple has managed to build itself a legacy despite potential show-killers like non-Lornes running the show, Rocket f-bombs, and general in-house hair-pulling behind the scenes. As a result, the brand has managed to expand its reach into a multitude of different media – from mostly bad films to a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it line of action figures to clothing, greeting cards, and even video games.

…the NBC staple has managed to build itself a legacy despite potential show-killers like non-Lornes running the show, Rocket f-bombs, and general in-house hair-pulling behind the scenes.

So of course there had to be a board game.

Actually, there are two. Tiger Games came out with a trivia game in the early nineties. But, as is standard with most trivia games based around a single pop culture product, it’s crap – a poorly-derived Trivial Pursuit wannabe built around a short stack of trivia questions that get outdated and worked through too quickly to the point where the game reaches 100% boring in about three plays.

The latest offering by Discovery Bay Games attempts to avoid this pitfall by going the party game route. Unfortunately, it’s a deceptive ploy made with minimum effort.

Live! From… your… living… room. Not quite the same effect.

That’s not to say that it’s a horrible experience… Saturday Night Live: The Game is actually a Billy Barty handful of fun, despite the fact that a good chunk of the material it’s based on is not (like, most of the eighties). Like most party games (and certainly all the ones covered so far), the rules of play are pretty straightforward and simple: split up into two teams of at least two people each and take turns drawing “Cue Cards” from four different draw piles, completing the task on them before the timer runs out. Each draw pile represents a different “era,” or decade the show has been on the air so far and includes content from that collection of episodes. For every card each team completes successfully, they get to “bank it” as part of their score or “bet it” to rack up a better score, though if they fail a challenge they lose any cards bet up to that point.

Apparently anyone as young as twelve is an adult and the game involves Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots.

The “Cue Cards” in each era are broken down into six categories – “Live From New York”, “Talk Show Showdown,” “Here Now, The News,” “Commercial Break,” “Host-2-Host,” and “Not Ready For Prime Time.” This is where the deception comes in, because even though it appears like there’s a variety of crazy actions you can do based off the cards, most of them are trivia categories. “Live From New York”? General trivia. “Commercial Break”? Name the slogan that goes with the commercial trivia. “Host-2-Host”? Name the host trivia. In fact half the categories are actually just trivia questions. It unbalances the game quite unfavourably, though it’s technically half and half.

If you put random quotes all over the game, it makes it official!

But, as a minor saving grace the other half of the “cue cards” are actually quite creative and fun. “Here Now, The News” allows you to Mad Lib your own headlines, while “Not Ready For Prime Time” has players try to impersonate one of the various characters from SNL’s history while their teams tries to guess who they are. Finally, “Talk Show Showdown” adds a smidge of Whose Line Is It Anyway? and Make Me Laugh, as two opposing team members have to ad lib a talk show format with one as the interviewer and one as the interviewee. The first person to make the other laugh gets to bank the card.

The first person to make the other laugh gets to bank the card.

The real problem with the mechanic of the game is that since each team draws three cards randomly, most of the time it seems as though you never get any of the good cards. This is why the game seems so unbalanced. Most of the time, each set of players is just volleying back and forth trivia answers while blahdeblahdeblah. To make the game more enjoyable and work more like a party game, the trivia questions should have been relegated to one draw pile, and more activity features should have filled out the rest. How about a category where the players are given part of a sketch and they have to act out the rest? Or, maybe come up with an original routine based on a sketch or characters that recur in each era? Another great idea would be to have a category where you actually come up with a crazy commercial product and invent your own catch phrase instead of just guessing which one goes with which existing parodercial*. And the best idea for a category ever – re-enact your favourite Chevy fall.

Half of this is fun.

There are certainly plenty of ideas and possibilities that could have been incorporated to make this game a solid hour or so of fun. Unfortunately it just seems to be a half-assed mish-mash of game mechanics taken from other sources (Whose Line?, Weakest Link, etc.) and thrown together by the writing staff from the Dick Ebersol era. At best it provides a semi-decent enjoyable time and is worth playing once or twice with someone who already owns it – if anything, for just the opportunity to play some of the fun performing activities. But it’s definitely a must-buy for SNL fans and purists, as they will probably enjoy the Colon Blow out of this. And as it’s going for a much reduced price of about 13 bucks on Amazon, you’re getting it for a steal.

At best it provides a semi-decent enjoyable time…

The only better deal would have been if it came with a picture of the Pope to tear up.

*TM before PK.