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Band
Metal Mental Meltdown
Title
Heavy Metal Trivia board game
Type
Other
Company
JPW Metal Enterprises Inc.
YOR
2004
Style
Heavy/Extreme
1/22/2004 - Review by: Frank Hill
Fun, but be prepared for some challenging questions
For XMAS, one of the Maximum Metal staffers got METAL MENTAL MELTDOWN: The World's First Heavy Metal Trivia Board game and what better way did we have to show off our metal muscles to one another than an evening challenge.

THE PLAYERS:
Frank - in Overkill "Fuck You" t-shirt
Troy - game owner and music store manager
Eric - Max Metal's encyclopedia of metal
HarderThanSteel - some hitchhiker we picked up

THE GAME:
666 color cards for a total of 2664 questions. 4 levels of questions. From easiest to hardest:

Head Bangers 3pts. (easy questions about popular bands and performers)
Cranium Crackers 5pts. (medium questions about discographies and more)
Skull Crushers 7pts. (hard questions about labels, producers, studios and more)
Mental Meltdown 10pts. (Insanely hard. Obscure trivia about all the above)

Layout is a chain pentagram with each link representing a different question level card. After rolling the black skull die, you move to a link and answer the question. First to get 666 points is declared the winner.

THE CHALLENGE:
You all have played Trivial Pursuit, right? Now, we like to think we know our metal, but it didn't take us long to realize than the game was similar to Trivial Pursuit in that it's very encompassing. Unless you get the 3 point questions or have a mind like a steel trap, you're going to face questions that are hard as shit. Take our first question which had "Dofka" as the answer. Fuckin' Dofka, a band from out of northern, WV...geez, man!

Once we realized stuff like "Name the studio where Maiden's 'Powerslave' was recorded" would be thrown at us, we decided to drop the points needed for a win in half to 333.

After a few rounds of embarassment the first to get a question correct was Eric with an answer about the band Fight. I got on the board next, then HarderThanSteel. Troy stayed zeroed out for quite a while and actually said: "This game makes me feel like I know nothing."

In the rules, you can go for double points with the correct roll, but our experience left us too scared to try. We didn't want to loose the piddlesome points we had. About an hour in and with everybody just barely breaking the 20 point mark, we made up a rule change. If you can guess another person's questions, you can steal their points. Yeah, now we're playing on the edge!

Then the Coor's Light came out and I made a valiant run. More like a short dash, really. HarderThanSteel was steady. Death metal fan Troy finally got on the scoreboard with a question about Europe...haha.

After a couple hours we found ourselves counting ahead to land on the easiest questions and had to make a judgement call and declare a winner at the top of the hour or the game might have gone on till Judgement Day.

METAL MENTAL MELTDOWN is a fun game, but be prepared for some challenging questions. Maybe we should've followed the gamemaker's advice and read all the questions first and played from memory.

THE FINAL SCORES:
Eric - 42
HarderThanSteel - 26
Frank - 22
Troy - 8

SAMPLE QUESTIONS:
Here are four sample questions (scroll bottom for answers)

HB (for three points) Who is the lead singer of Motley Crue?

CC (for five points) Name the fourth Bathory album.

SK (for seven points) What is the name of Stuck Mojo's mascot?

MM (for ten points) Name five bands that have recorded a song titled "I'm Alive".

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

And now…the answers you've all been waiting for…

HB: Vince Neil

CC: Blood, Fire, Death

SK: Cybertrial

MM: Kiss, W.A.S.P., Helloweeen, Blind Guardian, Killer Dwarfs, Icon

Scoring:

0 points: You probably think Brittany Spears is cool! - No, her music!!

3-8 points: Not bad …take your finger out, buy more CD's, and keep reading those liner notes!

8-15 points: A True Metal Warrior. Joey DeMaio would be proud, and of course I am.

15+ points: Either my questions are too easy, or you are an obsessed Metal fan... which is a good thing!
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COMPANY
REVIEWER DATE MADE RATING
Heavy Metal Trivia board game
2004
JPW Metal Enterprises Inc.
Frank Hill1/22/2004
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