Game Review - by Cristen Ingram and Carmelina Piparo
Austin Powers--Operation: Trivia follows the trivia game genre made popular by the "You Don't Know Jack" series. Adding to the Sierra Attractions family, Operation: Trivia puts a shagadelic spin on CD ROM-based trivia from the past four decades. You're introduced to the game by Dr. Evil with a kaliediscope of movie sound bites and snowy images from the movie Austin Powers--International Man of Mystery.

Storyline:
Dr. Evil has taken over your computer and has kidnapped Austin Powers; he now resides at the Electric Pyschadelic Pussycat Swingers Club.

Your mission--defeat Dr. Evil in a game of his own design--Win, Lose or DIE-- before he kills Austin Powers and takes over the world.

Features:
This game contains both one and two player options. After selecting your play mode, you take a quiz to determine if you're teaming with Austin Powers or Dr. Evil. "Bot 90210" is your announcer and sounds an awful lot like someone named Jack, but that's just us.

There's a variety of games to test your trivia mojo: Need The Info, Stop and Go-Go, Keep Away, Crazy Chain.

Gameplay:
If you're playing solo, your goal is to exceed 102 MEELLYON dollars as a total score. You select a category from pop culture, people, movies, and TV shows of the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s. The trivia games ranging from crazy chain to keep away. Our favorite and the final question of the game, the crazy chain, gives you 9 multiple choice questions with answers that provide a link to the next question becoming more exciting than a game of 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon.

With two players--it's twice the fun and twice the challenge. You actually get some real competition when you face a human opponent.

Graphics:
The video clips from the motion picture flow smoothly and with a blend of computer animated pychedelic patterns. The brightly colored transitions are reminiscent of the You Don't Know Jack format.

Sound FX:
OK--you're talking to major Austin fanatics and having said that, the lousy impersations cancel out the eye candy. The cute and clever come-backs and cut-downs tickle our funny bone but the baaaad impersonations can't be ignored. It's to the point where we wish we could mute the voices but that would make it just slightly hard to play the game.

Other than the pathetic wanna-be Dr. Evil and Austin Powers imitations, the soundtrack puts you right in that groovy mood to battle the EE-vil forces trying to take over your computer and the world.

Overall:
Lots of interesting questions that you oddly know but don't where you learned the answers to. If you really want to get an edge in the game, watch Austin Powers--International Man of Mystery a few times (not like you already haven't). The game is right up the "You Don't Know Jack" alley so if you were even halfway impressed with "Jack" give "Austin" a how's-your-father. YEAH BABY!