Fire up the Commodore 64!
It turns out there's a ton of game show stuff for sale these days. No less than 4 different Deal or no Deal items are out, including a handheld game and a PC game coming out this month. There's a new Family Feud CD-Rom out as well as a ton of "DVD" games, most notably Price is Right and Pyramid, the latter of which has been smartly advertised on GSN.
What I'm really craving is a Wheel of Fortune CD-Rom that isn't about a decade behind the actual show. We haven't had a new version in 3 years, and even that version was woefully behind the times, lacking the current bonus round and toss-up puzzles. Any additions to the show (with the exception of that baffling "WILD" card) should be easily integrated into a PC game. Of course there's always the awkward issue of dealing with Vanna as "host", but that's another story for another day.
As a rambling aside, PC and video game integrations of game shows have been around for 20+ years now, and as a kid I was a rabid collector of both. Some were definitely better than others. What follows is a brief discussion of the hits and misses:
The Good:
Wipeout - Despite only existing one season, the underrated Wipeout came out with one heck of a PC version, especially for 1989. The great-for-the-times EGA graphics really matched the look and feel of the show and the adaptation was dead on for both the main game and bonus rounds. One added bonus--the question files were stored as text files, so viewing them in a simple text editor allowed you to wow your friends with your knowledge of which movies did or did not star Marilyn Monroe.
Hollywood Squares - The Nintendo version of the game included some good joke answers, including a few that probably weren't appropriate for me as a 12-year old. It was besieged by the frequent repetition of questions, but that was par for the course at the time.
The Bad:
Press Your Luck - I nearly wet myself when I got this for Christmas (randomly, in 1990, 4 years after the show's cancellation), but I have to admit it wound up being a bit of a disappointment. The board spun at a dizzying speed on my not-so-powerful 286 computer, there was only one Whammy animation, and the board, while faithfully replicated in most areas, contained some confusing spaces like a $300 in round two and something called "Lose One Spin". I was amused to see that they had also copied the questions from the show verbatim, including leaving in the infamous "Sylvester" mistake from 1985.
I also remember the PC adaptation of Fun House and the Nintendo version of Double Dare being particularly bad.
The Ugly:
Price is Right (1990) - There's not much to love about this version, namely the ugly adaptations of the games (Plinko was just sad) and the random assignment of prizes to pricing games. I believe I once played One Right Price for a car and a blender. There's a tough one.
Family Feud (any version) - Family Feud definitely lends itself to an at-home version, but the subjective nature of determining whether an answer is correct or not became maddening, especially in earlier versions of the game that would not allow for misspelling.
Also, in a slight twist, as for games that *became* game shows, You Don't Know Jack has to be one of the best party games ever invented. We played that thing at least 500 times in my college dorm. In the super early days of my website I got an email from the game's creative staff asking to get some copies of some game show tapes I had. The reward was a pre-release copy of the game's 2nd edition. Nice swag when you're a poor college student.
What I'm really craving is a Wheel of Fortune CD-Rom that isn't about a decade behind the actual show. We haven't had a new version in 3 years, and even that version was woefully behind the times, lacking the current bonus round and toss-up puzzles. Any additions to the show (with the exception of that baffling "WILD" card) should be easily integrated into a PC game. Of course there's always the awkward issue of dealing with Vanna as "host", but that's another story for another day.
As a rambling aside, PC and video game integrations of game shows have been around for 20+ years now, and as a kid I was a rabid collector of both. Some were definitely better than others. What follows is a brief discussion of the hits and misses:
The Good:
Wipeout - Despite only existing one season, the underrated Wipeout came out with one heck of a PC version, especially for 1989. The great-for-the-times EGA graphics really matched the look and feel of the show and the adaptation was dead on for both the main game and bonus rounds. One added bonus--the question files were stored as text files, so viewing them in a simple text editor allowed you to wow your friends with your knowledge of which movies did or did not star Marilyn Monroe.
Hollywood Squares - The Nintendo version of the game included some good joke answers, including a few that probably weren't appropriate for me as a 12-year old. It was besieged by the frequent repetition of questions, but that was par for the course at the time.
The Bad:
Press Your Luck - I nearly wet myself when I got this for Christmas (randomly, in 1990, 4 years after the show's cancellation), but I have to admit it wound up being a bit of a disappointment. The board spun at a dizzying speed on my not-so-powerful 286 computer, there was only one Whammy animation, and the board, while faithfully replicated in most areas, contained some confusing spaces like a $300 in round two and something called "Lose One Spin". I was amused to see that they had also copied the questions from the show verbatim, including leaving in the infamous "Sylvester" mistake from 1985.
I also remember the PC adaptation of Fun House and the Nintendo version of Double Dare being particularly bad.
The Ugly:
Price is Right (1990) - There's not much to love about this version, namely the ugly adaptations of the games (Plinko was just sad) and the random assignment of prizes to pricing games. I believe I once played One Right Price for a car and a blender. There's a tough one.
Family Feud (any version) - Family Feud definitely lends itself to an at-home version, but the subjective nature of determining whether an answer is correct or not became maddening, especially in earlier versions of the game that would not allow for misspelling.
Also, in a slight twist, as for games that *became* game shows, You Don't Know Jack has to be one of the best party games ever invented. We played that thing at least 500 times in my college dorm. In the super early days of my website I got an email from the game's creative staff asking to get some copies of some game show tapes I had. The reward was a pre-release copy of the game's 2nd edition. Nice swag when you're a poor college student.
posted by Brad @ 4:54 PM 4 comment(s)