Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (video game)

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire is a PC game developed by You Don't Know Jack creator Jellyvision and published by Disney Interactive in November 1999. The game is based on the show of the same name, more notably the American version which is produced by ABC's Valleycrest Productions subsidiary.

Dispute the name, it has no relation to the game adaptation that was released outside North America in 2000, which was published by Eidos Interactive and has a different developer.

Gameplay
The game plays just like the show does. The player answers 15 different questions of increasing difficulty each with 4 possible answers. If the player gets the question right, they win the Dollar value of the question and move on to the next one, up until they get to the last one, worth a Million Dollars. Any question that the player gets wrong, ends the game and the winnings are reduced to whatever tier the question the question was in. Walking Away also ends the game, but the player keeps the money they already have.

The 3 lifelines - 50/50, Phone-a-Friend and Ask the Audience also appear. 50/50 works how it does on the show by removing 2 wrong answers. Phone-a-Friend rings up a "Friend" who suggests to the player what they think the answer is. Ask the Audience sums up answers from the Audience, which suggest what they think the answer could be. As with the show, each lifeline can only be used once.

If more than one player is playing, the Fastest Finger First round plays before the main game. As with the show, the players are asked a question with four answers which must be placed within a particular order. The player who does this in the quickest time gets to play first.

Regis Philbin, the first host of the American version also appears. His voice assists the player throughout the game, and he also appears in humorous live action full-motion-video clips mainly by taunting the player if they got a question wrong, being sarcastic or by breaking the fourth wall and saying that the whole thing is just a video game and not the real deal.

Other Versions
In June 2000, a Second Edition was released for PC (from this release onwards, the game is published under the Buena Vista Interactive subsidiary of Disney Interactive) and later the Macintosh, PlayStation (published by Sony Computer Entertainment America) and Game Boy Color (published by THQ). This release contained 600 new questions and new voice and video clips from Regis Philbin. the GBC version is also one of the few titles for the handheld to feature Video Clips and voices (only in the intro).

In May 2001, a Third Edition was released for the PC, Macintosh and PlayStation, once again containing 600 new questions and new Regis Philbin voice and video clips. the PC version however was internet-compatible, allowing players to put their scores online and download new questions from the Buena Vista Interactive website.

In the same year, 2 specific versions were released for the PC. A "Kids Edition" and a "Sports Edition", each having questions tailored to those demographics, as with the above versions these contain new voice clips and video clips like with the latter versions. Unlike the other versions, these 2 versions were developed in-house at Buena Vista Interactive.

Music
The Music featured is the same featured in all versions of the show which use the Original Format.

Reception
Due to the show's intense popularity at the time, the first version topped sales charts for many weeks after its release. The Second Edition's box says that the first version was the "Fastest Selling PC Game of All Time".