I love being a Canadian! Though I have many reasons for this, today’s particular cause for celebration at being a Canuck was brought on by the X-Box 360’s new live game show “1 vs 100″ being open to all Canadian Gold members for the beta on Microsoft’s experimental X-Box LIVE Primetime.

I hadn’t actually heard about this and so was pleasantly surprised when I turned on my 360 the other day and was met with a “1 vs 100 – Play Now” message.

As a kid, I used to always dream of being on Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune, Family Feud or the like. I’d watch them for hours making my own guesses and laughing at the contestants when I got something right that they got terribly wrong. Though I never did get to realize my dream, ‘1 vs 100″ brought me one step closer to it last night by simulating the game show. And since there are real prizes on the line, I imagine it does a good job at simulating at least part of the tension of being on a game show. Yep, you read right, winners can actually walk away with new X-Box Live games, Microsoft points, and possibly other swag in the future. True, this is a far cry from the thousands contestants on TV shows get, but being able to win something real is still such a nice touch that successfully differentiates this game from all of those other Game Show to Video Game ports we’ve seen in the past.

So how does it work? It’s simple enough. 1 contestant is chosen at random and has to face off against 100 other people in a straight-forward multiple-choice trivia show. The player has 3 “helps” similar to the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire Lifelines. His job is to answer all of the questions right and knock out as many of the 100 as possible. The 100 are given points based on how fast they answer, how many questions they get right in a row, and how many other contestants got knocked out that round. The top 3 of the 100 get to split the Microsoft Points and get a free X-Box Live Arcade game.

I had time to play 3 games yesterday and finished 5th in one of them and in the 10 ten in another. I had a blast and can’t wait for tonight to give it another go. Seriously, great idea Microsoft. It’s innovations like these that makes the 360 my console of choice.

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4. Soulcalibur 4: PS3 and 360 versions compared.
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