Pokemon Leaves Jeopardy Players Asking Questions

Last night's Jeopardy exposed two contestants' lack of knowledge about the most important topic of all: Pokemon.

On the November 28th episode of Jeopardy, Matt Preston came away as a surprise winner despite entering Final Jeopardy in last place. Preston entered Final Jeopardy trailing by $4,000 when host Alex Trebek announced the Final Jeopardy category was "Video Games."

Trebek gave the clue of "The desire in his childhood to catch every insect inspired Satoshi Tajiri to create this 1996 game," which Preston correctly answered as "Pokemon" (the answer is more precisely, Pokemon Red and Pokemon Green.)

Sure enough, Satoshi Tajiri conceived Pokemon due to his childhood hobby of bug collecting and he even wanted to be an entomologist at one point. Much of the Pokemon game experience was inspired by the feeling of catching and collecting bugs in tall grass, something that Tajiri felt had been lost due to the urbanization of Japan.

Because of his correct answer, Preston nearly doubled his earnings from $10,400 to $20,799. What's more, neither of Preston's competitors had the remotest idea what the correct idea was.

The second place contestant, Amanda Barlau, answered "What is Splat?" which we're pretty sure isn't actually a video game. Meanwhile, the reigning champion Marcus Gresham answered "What is Centipede?," which refers to an arcade game that came out nearly 20 years before the Pokemon franchise got started.

Since Barlau and Gresham answered incorrectly, Preston came away as a surprise winner and even defended his title on tonight's episode of the show.

We'll have to see how long Jeopardy's current champion remains on top, but hopefully he remembers that he owes all of his winnings thanks to Pokemon.