I'm not sure what you mean by conflating in this instance but your assessment includes not only your personal opinion but statements about the genre that were not true at the time.
(Addendum)
I personally like the Jeopardy! games and my only problem with the sports edition is that it's incredibly difficult. I have a laundry list of problems with the Jeopardy! games in general like the computer misspelling answers, the computer ringing in incessantly and giving XXX as an answer, questions so long they can't even be displayed on the normal screen etc. Even so, they and the sports edition are still fairly appealing to me.
If we're voting for unappealing games, I'd say lame kids games like Barney are much more unappealing.