I was a huge fan of Quiz Climber when it came out this summer. Blending trivia gaming with the competitive element of challenging friends was an inspired touch. It was the kind of game that turned a 5 minute play into an hour or more of desperately trying to get ahead of a friend. Well, I’d better get used to those sleepless nights again as there’s a new version: Quiz Climber Rivals!

An updated version of Quiz Climber, Rivals offers challenging new questions covering ten different categories. Weekly competitions are there for players out to compete against their friends, plus there’s also a global leaderboard to compare amongst the world.

Most interestingly is the new average answer time score which measures how fast the player answers correctly. An ideal way to encourage players to answer accurately and fast.

Oh and while I’m the bearer of good news, there’s a worldwide competition connected with Quiz Climber Rivals! Simply correctly answer 40 questions in a row, take a screenshot of the high score, send it to quizclimber@relentless.co.uk and be entered into a prize draw to win an iPad2. Full details are available on the Relentless Software site.

FREE!

Quiz Climber Rivals

iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2011-12-06 :: Category: Games

Remember the game Celebrities? Where teams had to guess as many celebrity names as possible before time ran out? Well it turns out that there’s an iPhone based way of playing it now courtesy of MTV Networks and VH1. It arrives at the same time as NextMovie Trivia Challenge, also from MTV Networks.

VH1 Celebrity Party is a pretty fine conversion of the classic low tech game. Teams of two or more compete in a series of rounds in order to identify as many celebrities as possible in one minute. Clue-givers are first able to say anything but the celebrity’s name with round 2 getting harder and requiring them to only use two words, with the third round players only able to use charades.

The basic Celebrity Party game is a free app to download with a Pro Pack available as an in-app purchase of $0.99 and offering more themed packs as well as the ability to create new packs. There’s also a neat ability to pair multiple iOS devices over Bluetooth so each clue-giver has their own controller.

FREE!

VH1 Celebrity Party

iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad

Our Rating: :: PARTY FODDER
Read Our Full Review >>

Released: 2011-08-22 :: Category: Games

NextMovie Trivia Challenge has been created by the guys in charge of NextMovie.com. Players are able to challenge their friends in head to head competition or work their way up the game’s leaderboard. A weekly challenge feature ensures everything’s consistently fresh and sections consist of the likes of 1980s movies right up to the current day. Like VH1 Celebrity Party, it’s a free app to download so clearly well worth a look.

FREE!

NextMovie Trivia Challenge

iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2011-08-19 :: Category: Games

Remember back in the day when people would tape the Top 40 music charts off the radio? Or is that just me and I’ve aged myself quite badly? Who knows. Either way, Top 100 Music is kind of like that but with a modern and more law abiding vibe to it.

The app includes the top charts for the U.S as well as 22 other countries, hopefully encompassing pretty much every area that anyone could possibly be interested in. Users can sample all the top songs in the U.S since 1997 at the touch of a button as well as all current hits in the top 100 for the other 22 countries. Once previewed, users also have the option to purchase them through iTunes for the revelant amount.

Some music and videos are even free from the app with a free icon highlighting which are available in this way. Users can then add reviews of these tracks as well as read comments from other listeners.

Fans of 1980s music will be particularly pleased that Simple Tree, developers of Top 100, also plan to add charts from the 1980s in a future update as well as other charts too.

For the frugal music fan, Top 100 could well be just what they’re after to entertain them and satisfy their trivia needs. It’s out now.

FREE!

Top 100 - Music

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2011-07-15 :: Category: Music

Film trivia buffs and retro video game lovers rejoice! Screenlife, makers of all things Scene It? on the App Store, have just releasedScene It? Pixel Flix. Okay so it’s not a real combination of the two, but rather a trivia game dressed-up in vaguely 8-bit visuals. Still, it’s a neat idea and certainly grabbed my attention.

Players take on the role of a pock-marked theater usher as they attempt to complete a gauntlet of movie related trivia questions and ultimately square-off against the theater’s “boss.” It follows the same basic structure as most other titles in the genre with multiple categories to choose from (Leading Ladies, Horror, etc…) and several different methods of answering questions on a timer. My personal favorite is the one that recreates famous movie scenes in pixel form and asks players to guess the film. Watching an 8-bit rendition of Sarah Connor blasting away at that liquid metal guy is hilarious.

Pixel Flix is free (ad supported) and sitting in the App Store right now.The base experience is bound to keep small-time trivia hounds busy, but the elite can also buy add-ons such as new genre questions and power-ups through in-app purchases. Just remember to clear some space before downloading as it’s a somewhat hefty 160 MB.

$1.99

Scene It? Pixel Flix

iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2011-08-16 :: Category: Games

Available for free today comes Say What?!, a music trivia game that’s all about matching song lyrics to items on a speeding conveyor belt.

It’s a simple game that promises to involve fast reactions and fast thinking, too, with the added bonus of learning all the song lyrics at the same time. The more correct icons hit, the more points scored thus making the Facebook leaderboards satisfying indeed.

Say What?! comes with music from Calvin Harris as well as other free tracks. Plus for a small in-app purchase, players can also purchase tracks from the likes of Kasabian, The Zutons, The Hoosiers, Scouting For Girls and Toploader with more content set to be added every week. Independent music is also catered for with new musical discoveries such as Gudny, Mercston and Gus Warriner also included here.

Say What?! looks like a great trivia game for the music fan. Hopefully as time goes on, an impressive selection of music will be available.

It’s out now and it’s a free download just for today!

FREE!

Say What?!

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2011-07-20 :: Category: Games

My love of movie trivia has been well documented before. Indeed Scene It? Movies 2 and MovieCat! still hold very important places on both my iPhone and iPad. So the prospect of daily and up to the minute trivia quizzes is pretty thrilling indeed.

That’s exactly what Scene It? Daily sets out to do. It’s a new trivia app that offers quizzes across four different categories: Movies, TV, Music and Celebrity, and promises to keep everything as up to date as possible. Right down to possibly asking questions about something that might have happened the night before!

Players from across the world can compete head to head for bragging rights and players who answer enough questions in a row gain a streak multiplier that boosts scores even further. There’s even three different power-ups to use.

Scene It? Daily is available on Facebook and on its own site but of course there’s an iPhone app for it which is out now for the grand price of nothing.

FREE!

Scene It? Daily

iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2011-07-12 :: Category: Games

Everyone loves trivia, right? I mean, who can resist the warm sense of satisfaction in knowing the correct answers to a subject they’re interested in? While movie fans have a whole range of fun ways of answering film trivia, music fans are still in need of that amazing hit. TriviaTunes sets out to do exactly that.

It’s essentially a game of name that tune. Music is streamed from the TriviaTunes servers quickly and efficiently, and players must simply guess what the track is. Options wise, there’s a bit more to it than that though.

For one thing, TriviaTunes offers a bunch of songs included in the free package. However for the inexpensive price of $1.99, players can pick up song packs ranging from TV Show theme tunes, 1980s, Movie soundtracks, Country, Rock or numerous other decades. Chugulu Games offers regular updates so there should be plenty of new music to check out for a small fee.

As well as that, there are numerous different modes to play. Besides playing simply alone, up to 4 players can join in. There’s a buzzer mode whereby the first one to buzz in with the correct answer wins. The MCQ mode offers multiple choice answers with incorrect answers gradually disappearing as time goes on. Plus, there’s the intimidating Expert mode which allows players to enter answers directly from the keyboard rather than guessing from a selection of answers.

TriviaTunes looks to be a pretty well planned out game, covering all the necessary bases to make for an entertaining trivia game. Hopefully it’ll be fun for all the family with genres stemming back as far as the 1970s although grandparents might wish for some older decades to be available.

TriviaTunes is out now and is compatible with all iOS devices. It’s a free app with a string of in-app purchases available.

FREE!

Blind Test, le Quiz Musical aux Playlists 100% inédites !

iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2011-03-09 :: Category: Games

According to a study released by TechCrunch last month, the average Facebook user has 229 friends yet 7% of them are people that they’ve never met and 3% are people who have only ever met up once!

Of course, just because people haven’t met up with Facebook friends in real life, that doesn’t mean they don’t know them well. But how to test that? Playing Trivia With Facebook Friends of course!

It’s a new and free app that uses the information gained from Facebook profiles to provide players with questions all about the respective friend. Questions start out quite simple with the likes of main interests, birthdays and hometowns. As things progress though, it gets much harder with recent Facebook activity questioned as well as more exact questions such as how many photos have been tagged featuring the player and the friend.

Trivia With Facebook Friends looks like a fun way of discovering just how much people know about each other.

It’s a free and universal app. However, users are restricted to five lives a day which can also be increased for a small monetary sum via an in-app purchase. Removing adverts can also be done by paying $0.99.

FREE!

Trivia Friends

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2011-06-30 :: Category: Games

Music is an area of my life where I have been extremely passionate since before I can even remember.  Something about the sounds that harmonies make as they echo off of your eardrums instantly clicked with me, and made me want to pursue any and all forms of it.  Plus when you add in being a trivia nut, you have the recipe for a glorified musical mind orgy.

Targeted at people just like me, the legendary record store chain Rhino created their chain exclusive SAT style trivia challenge named the Rhino Musical Aptitude Test.  Here is what you can expect to find in this unique brand of quizzing, as it lands on iOS:

“Using multiple choice questions across four levels of difficulty (easy, medium, hard, and expert), the RMAT requires players to correctly answer five questions per level before advancing to the progressively more difficult rounds. Each game offers players the chance to deploy three life-saving Guitar Picks, which bring down the number of possible answers from four to two. However, three strikes (incorrect answers) during any given level and you’re out! Featuring all of your favorite artists from ABBA to ZZ Top, the RMAT is jam-packed with enough trivia throughout all the musical genres you’ve come to know and love to keep even the biggest music geek busy for hours on end!” — VIA Rhino Development Blog

After playing through the game a couple of times it will be hard not to be won over by the challenging battery of questions.  But that is not all…

For those that are willing to take the plunge and pay the ninety nine cents and unlock the full app, there will be a series of competitions that can be won through being successful in the game itself.  So get going on racing up the GameCenter leaderboards, because that useless knowledge of The Beatles may finally come in handy.

FREE!

Rhino Musical Aptitude Test

iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2011-05-03 :: Category: Music

In case I have never before admitted it within the hallowed pages of 148Apps, I am a trivia and pop-culture nut.  Anything that can test my knowledge of all things that don’t matter is right in my wheelhouse.  That is why I was thrilled to hear about the newest update to the puzzle game Bamboozle, helping it make the jump into version 2.0.

This isn’t just a simple update though folks because as part of the big changes the app will now be available for absolutely free.  On top of the instant benefit of a price drop, the game has now implemented a retro-tastic new visual style that sets it out from the crowd.  Plus, for those of you that are keen on stroking your ego, there are even international leaderboards that show how you rank against the rest of the world.  Also, players will now have the option of purchasing extra expansions to the game at a minor monetary cost, so that way the game will never end.

If you haven’t checked it out already, now is the time!  Let us know if you like it in the comments.

FREE!

Bamboozle! - The Classic Teletext Quiz Game

iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2010-08-09 :: Category: Games

Trivia games on a variety of different devices are pretty important these days when I attend a family gathering. They ensure we’re all on pretty equal footing, from my 10 year old cousins to my 88 year old grandmother. Admittedly the grandmother is still confused by the ‘fancy TV playing things’ (her words) but everyone else is happy.

Confidence: The Game for iPhone and iPad comes out sometime quite soon and looks ideal for our Easter meet up. Offering 2,500 questions in an impressive 250 categories, there’s certainly going to be a lot to do. Some pretty varied categories are on offer from World Leaders to Disney Movies and Chemistry so this should be one for all abilities.

Developers The App House also promise that players can compete against AI opponents as well as their friends and family. The real unique thing about it sets to be the confidence part of the title however where players rank their confidence – how good they think they are – depending on the category and thus gaining more points for the chosen subject.

The video certainly looks promising so this certainly looks like one to watch out for in the coming month.

It’s been 4 long years since Italy gloriously hoisted the FIFA World Cup and proclaimed themselves the kings of soccer (football, futbol, calcio, etc.). There’s a deep field of 32 teams who will be vying for the 2010 crown and, while you can never count out old stalwarts like Brazil, Italy, and Germany, many countries have a legitimate shot at the trophy and their place in soccer immortality.

What’s different this time around? Well, this is the first World Cup to take place in the continent of Africa. Many of the players and coaches have changed throughout the years. But, as far as my fellow iPhone enthusiasts are concerned, the biggest difference is that this is the first World Cup to take place since Apple’s miracle device was born. There are several cool apps for just about everything these days, and the World Cup is no exception. Here are 4+ apps that every soccer fan should have on their iPhones over the next month of soccer nirvana…

FIFA World Cup
If you want a game that has all the pomp and circumstance of the tournament, EA’s FIFA World Cup does a good job of incorporating all those elements. As the only officially licensed game, FIFA World Cup lets you choose from 105 different countries on the quest to qualify for the competition and capture the trophy. There’s also a Captain Your Country Mode, where you become a virtual pro on your favorite team and try to guide them to victory. FIFA World Cup may not be the greatest game of soccer that you’ll play, but it has all of the official stadiums and requisite fanfare of the world’s greatest sporting event, including some amusingly blocky-looking fans. Soccer enthusiasts may also want to try X2 Soccer 2010 for perhaps a better simulation of the game, and Soccer Superstars for a more arcade-like approach. Neither have the spectacle of the World Cup license, but they are amongst the best soccer games in the app store at this time. Keep an eye out for Pro Evolution Soccer as well, as the legendary series will soon be making its debut on the iPhone.

FREE!

FIFA World Cup™

iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad

Our Rating: :: DISAPPOINTING
Read Our Full Review >>

Released: 2010-04-30 :: Category: Games :: Action

ESPN 2010 FIFA World Cup
ESPN is the official home of the World Cup in the United States, and is offering an iPhone app that can be used to follow all of the latest happenings. Included in the free app is News, Live Scores, Schedules, Video, Stats, History, etc. For a robust $7.99 more, ESPN is promising Live Radio Streams of all the matches, timely in-game video highlights, expert analysis, premium alerts/notifications, and live play-by-play commentary. It remains to be seen if the upgrade is worth a purchase, but it is nice to have all this information included in a handy & attractive app. As an alternative, the Associated Press is offering a World Cup specific app for all of the latest soccer news, and Univision, the official Spanish language provider of the World Cup in the United States, is offering a comprehensive app of their own. It wasn’t that long ago when Univision was the only place to watch much of the best soccer, including the World Cup. Now where can I get a sweet Andres Cantor “GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLL!” ring tone?

FREE!

ESPN 2010 FIFA World Cup

iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2009-12-03 :: Category: Sports

World Cup Trivia Challenge
Want to show off your stunning, yet normally useless amount of World Cup knowledge? World Cup Trivia Challenge lets you do just that in a surprisingly good game. Choose your side and play through a trivial facsimile of the World Cup including qualification, group stage, and the knock-out stage. Better yet, take on your friend at the bar in a head-to-head match of true fandom. Get 3 multiple choice questions right and you score a goal, but every wrong answer counts towards your opponent’s tally. Go back and forth in a timed match to see who scores the most goals, with a tie game going to a true/false penalty shootout. World Cup Trivia Challenge is a modest game, but it has some clever ideas and is just fun. It’s a great time-waster between matches, and an excellent way to score some hard-earned bragging rights.

$1.99

World Championship Trivia Challenge

iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad

Our Rating: :: QUIZ TIME
Read Our Full Review >>

Released: 2009-08-31 :: Category: Games

Vuvuzela 2010
The most important app for this World Cup, however, is hands-down Vuvuzela 2010. If you don’t know about vuvuzelas before this World Cup, you will very shortly. A vuvuzela is a type of horn used by soccer fans, and it is especially prominent in South Africa. The crowds in South Africa will be blaring these horns during every second of every match. It may very well end up being one of the most distinguishing and memorable characteristics of the tournament. The deep, droning sounds of hundreds of vuvuzelas is reminiscent of a swarm of bees, just louder and more obnoxious. There were calls to ban the horns for the World Cup, but they’ll be there and they’ll be ever-present. If you don’t get to pick one up for yourselves, Vuvuzela 2010 does a great job of replicating the experience. Just pick the color of your horn to match your favorite team, turn up the volume as high as it can go, and shake or tap your phone. The effect is pretty genuine, and quite amusing. You might not be able to be at the World Cup in person, but Vuvuzela 2010 brings you that much closer. I suggest blaring it when people least suspect it, for maximum effect.

FREE!

Vuvuzela 2010

+ Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2009-08-18 :: Category: Entertainment

So, now that you and your iPhone will be prepared for the 2010 World Cup, who’s going to win? European champions Spain may be the prohibitive favorites, but I’ll go out on a limb and say England takes out Argentina in the finals. Okay, I put like zero thought into that, but it would be an interesting final (remember the Falklands?). Besides, England has an Italian coach, so that can’t be bad. Who do you think will go all the way? Post a comment if you have an opinion, or if you’ve found some other useful apps that all World Cup lovers shouldn’t be without…

Oh, and Go USA! Forza Italia! Viva Oranje!