One of the perils of being a fake Mac journalist is that every four or five years you have to review new versions of Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune. Together, they’re the death and taxes of Macintosh gaming. Now it’s Freeverse’s turn with them, and I’m afraid they’ve gone all ironic on us. Freeverse games, you see, are normally all about personality. Well, not all about, but the personality of the Freeverse cast of characters is often enough to drive fans to purchase one of their games even if they have no interest in the genre. So, it’s ironic that Freeverse would be the company to publish the most personality-free versions of Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune to date.

And this isn’t just because Alex Trebek, Pat Sajak and Vanna White are nowhere to be found. The video snippets of Alex and Vanna killed the MacSoft versions of Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune, respectively. The load times were annoying, and the live motion video overtop of the computer animations were disjointed and kind of creepy. Even though technology has progressed since then, I’m still quite certain I wouldn’t want live video of these people in the game, but CGI characters or even voiceovers could work. Instead, we get nothing.

As I mentioned, though, that’s not the real problem here. Jump past the break to find out what went wrong.

Freeverse, Inc. has announced the release of Jeopardy! Deluxe and Wheel of Fortune Deluxe, based on the hugely popular syndicated television game shows, for the Macintosh platform. Both Jeopardy! Deluxe and Wheel of Fortune Deluxe provide you with all of the thrills and excitement of the game shows from your own home…except for, you know, the thrills and excitement from winning heaps of cash and cars. In that way, it’s exactly like watching it from your own home. Free demos are available for download from the Freeverse website.

Details on both games after the break.