Lexi-Cross: A futuristic game show from the past.

I’ve been writing about game show video games here on and off. It’s a fascinating genre, especially ones that aren’t based on standard TV game shows. I’ve written about ones using licensed properties like Outburst or MTV’s TRL, to even straightforward adaptations of Jeopardy!, Concentration and High Rollers. But the ones I’m most interested by are the ones that aren’t based on any particular property or license, yet are clearly taking a few ideas from contemporary game shows. This one’s no exception.

("lex-eye cfoss"? carol what in tarnation are they talking about)

Lexi-Cross is one of the rare video games influenced by game shows, but it is not based on a game show or an existing property. Published by Interplay and developed by Platinumware – consisting mostly of ex-Cinemaware employees – this game came out around 1990 and had been mostly forgotten. Unless you’re like me and you roamed Home of the Underdogs.

Yep, much like Blood II: The Chosen, Strife and several others I’ve written about on this site at this point, that abandonware website made me aware of this game back in the late ‘90s. It was even considered a “Top Dog” on the website, given to games that were highly recommended by the site’s curators.

Before that, I had played a demo of the game on a Windows 95 machine, but since Windows 95 machines were just a pinch more powerful than 1990-era DOS machines, the game would act rather strange, where the game’s "cursor" would spaz out and get stuck in a loop before crashing. Even when writing about this game, I still worried that bug was going to occur, yet it never did in my several playthroughs of the game through DOSBox.

(she's so... angular.)

The world of Lexi-Cross takes place in the distant future of 2091, and there isn’t much of a plot to go on. You meet up with a contestant coordinator as you put in your credentials – name, date of birth, preferred colors and home planet. While I decided to be a smelly human being on Earth for these screenshots, there’s nothing stopping you from choosing any of the other eight planets and being an alien if that’s more your fancy. Afterwards, you’re whisked off, ready to go “On the Air.”

(I'm glad humans with visible electronics hasn't taken off yet, because this is somewhat off-putting.)

Our host is Chip Ramsey, and for the most part he just interjects once in a while and gives a brief rundown of the game and not much else. I can’t blame you if you forget he’s there while in game. To me, he looks like a cross between a Terminator and one-time Wheel of Fortune host Bob Goen. Considering the time when this game came out, it fits. There’s even a small robot model named “Robanna,” who doubles as your cursor in-game. This clearly shows some of the Wheel of Fortune influences in this game.

(it's hard to tell, but this board is either bigger than stuff like the giant board on The Wall, or Robanna is as small as a mouse.)

So how does the game work? It’s a bit complicated, but I’ll try to explain it the best that I can. Two players compete. Both players have an individual grid of tiles in front of them. You use Robanna to reveal tiles on your board, hoping to reveal spaces that can used to fill in words. There are blank spaces that will pass control to the other player if revealed, and there’s a handful of special spaces. Some of them include spaces where you take or give points to your opponent, a safety card that works like Wheel’s “Free Spin” of old, a chance to reveal a vowel on revealed tiles free of charge, Lose a Turn to your opponent, and the chance to peek at your own or your opponents column or row of tiles.

(at least the spaces are more varied here than on Wheel. If Lexi-Cross were made today, there would be about 25 500 point spaces.)

At any time, you can spin the wheel and pick consonants just like Wheel. In addition to Wheel staples like Bankrupt and Lose a Turn, there’s also “Reveal Row/Column” spaces that will completely reveal every space on a selected row or column and give you the rewards for each. It’s helpful in certain circumstances, but any time you hit a points or special space, it gets replaced by an “End of Turn” space, which seems to be done as a way so a player can’t just dominate by spinning all the time.

You only get points for any letter that’s on tiles that you already revealed. It’s possible to find “no visible occurrences” of a letter, yet later reveal tiles that have the letter in question, so it’s important to try to reveal as many tiles on your board as you can before spinning to figure out the words in question.

(Alex Lightner sounds like the name of a parody spy flick. Yes, just like real game shows, they'll sometimes get things wrong.)

Much like a crossword puzzle, all the words associate with a person, place or thing. Once you’ve seen enough words, you can take a guess at solving the overall puzzle to win bonus points. The game also gives a punny hint, which is filled in with any “red” tiles that are found when picking letters. You don’t have to only rely on your grid of tiles and words, as both players’ boards are visible at all times.

(can you solve it? I wasn't able to.)

There’s three puzzles that are played. Second one is played for double points and the third for triple (natch). Player with the most points after three rounds wins. The winning player then gets to play one more puzzle. Starting with a base time based on the score they got – up to 45 seconds – the player must keep picking consonants until they call all the consonants in the puzzle or call 3 consonants that aren’t in the puzzle. After that, they pick 3 vowels. Then you must solve the puzzle to win the bonus and get inducted into the Lexi-Cross “Hall of Fame.”

(I was not able to get into the Hall of Fame, but my AI opponent did in one game. Now they live in the same world as not-R2D2 and future Paula Abdul!)

And that’s the game. After the game’s over, you can rematch or start a new game with new players. There’s no story mode, it plays a lot like most other game show games of the era that it’s only a single match. That’s okay with me, but this coming from people that made popular story-driven games like Defender of the Crown does bum me out, considering we could’ve gone for a story mode akin to The Running Man.

(These kind of spaces seem to drag the game considerably, and don't bring much of a tactical advantage.)

So, now that I’ve gone through the complex rule set that Lexi-Cross has, I start to think like an armchair game show producer. Would this work as an actual show? What parts of the format work? What parts don’t work? What needs changing? Stuff like that.

The game itself is interesting. It’s got influences in stuff like Cross-Wits, Wheel of Fortune and Scrabble. The puzzles are simple, if not fun. But the game itself really drags. A single match of Lexi-Cross can take roughly an hour or more to finish, and most game show games are usually done in about 15-20 minutes, analogous to an actual TV show.

(this is often the outcome for the first few minutes of play. It takes a while to get going.)

Well, the first thing I’d change is instead of each player having their own grid, there’s one whole grid that both players can pick from. I think this would speed up the game considerably, as the normal two grid play makes it a game of revealing tiles for several minutes before spinning or any other cool things can happen. In addition to having only one board, this means that there’s no “cheating” by looking at your opponent’s board that might have more words revealed. There’s a bunch of times where I’ve solved puzzles not through seeing the words on my board, but glancing at my opponent’s.

I’d likely also get rid of some of the more superfluous features. Stuff like Lose a Turn on the grid seems to grind the game down to a halt. Blank spaces already do the work of passing control to the other player, thus Lose a Turns on the grid just feel redundant and penalize players more harshly. I’d also probably remove the “peek at row/column” spaces on the grid, as it rarely ever gave me any strategical advantage, and the reveal often went by too fast for me to really see any of the prizes or penalties on offer.

(Chip, round one took us a half hour. Can't we take a commercial break first?)

Finally, I’d probably make the game a “best of three” scenario rather than three straight rounds. Again, this speeds up the game, so that if a player dominates and gets two puzzles, we can head straight to the bonus round and get the game over with more quickly.

Otherwise, the game itself is fine. It’s a solid game show game made by people who were making something original rather than adapting an existing property. The sound’s a bit obnoxious – the F2 key will be your new best friend – and the music by George “The Fat Man” Sanger is catchy if not super game show-sounding. It’s a perfectly fine DOS game of the era.

(hope you like mercury, loser)

One thing that really surprised me is that despite it's a homage to game shows, they really don't lean into the angle more compared to something like Smash TV. Outside of joke prizes for losers, there's no toasters, VCRs, vacations or a faaaaaabulous new car on offer, which feels like a missed opportunity for more humorous jokes. It's fairly dry otherwise.

Unlike other Interplay-published titles, this has never really been re-released digitally. It’s a shame too, because it’s a pretty solid little title that even non-game show nuts would find some enjoyment in. I won’t link to any abandonware sites here, but you should give this a try if you want an enjoyable game show game.

(go back to Born Lucky, Bob- I mean, Chip.)

Now that I think about it, there’s been many game shows trying to do crossword-like formats, none of them being successful. This and an adaptation of Merv Griffin’s Crosswords are some of the more notable ones. There’s even one that has a rather famous game show host at the helm that came and went. I wonder if that one’s any good...