Wheel of Fortune

Most of the usual features are here and it certainly follows the sameprocedure as the programme: three standard rounds in which a phrase, typeof person, or other category must be guessed. Each player spins the wheeland, presuming it lands on a dollar figure, you can select a letter in thesame way you’d play ‘Hangman’.

Get it right and you’ll have another go, but get it wrong and it’s nextplayer’s turn. Either way, the chosen letters end up on the used-letter board.Land on a ‘bankrupt’ and you’ll lose ALL your money, while ‘Lose a Turn’should be obvious.

Whoever comes out with the most money gets to play the final, bonus round.Tonight, though, you don’t get to go home with the car, just some more virtualmoney. You don’t get to pick your own five consonants and one vowel thoughas on the small screen – it chooses R, S, L, T, N and E on your behalf.

There’s also a couple of what the manual calls “two-tier puzzles”, to be playedinbetween rounds, namely: Where are We? and Fill in the Blankand they give you an extra $2000 if you answer correctly.

When you do get something wrong, the sound of the audience groaning is likethose green characters in Toy Story.

There’s few gameshows that I find actually entertaining to watch. This is oneand Family Fortunes is another. It’s probably because the questionsaren’t usually particularly taxing, isn’t one that you can tire of quicklyand so can be played at home by most of the family.

When it comes to this toy though, there are still some improvements thatcan be made.

The back cover states there are 450 puzzles in nine categories, but why didone particular puzzle come up twice in three separate games? Some are tooambiguous too and lean too far towards the American market. For example,instead of a name, one ‘People’ puzzle was “Baseball coaches”. Yes, baseball’sa really big sport in the UK (!)

The major bugbear with this game is that you have to be very gentle with thekeyboard when typing in your full answers, as opposed to single letters.Firstly, I’d have preferred a standard QWERTY keyboard, not a ‘Speak and Spell'”A, B, C, D, etc.” one. It’s also too over-responsive. So often can a letterrepeat itself, requiring you to type more wrong letters to go back to thestart and try again. It’s then very infuriating doing this and just as you’reabout to get it right… the time runs out and it’s game over for your chance.It was never like this on TV.

Overall, this Wheel of Fortune is definitely compelling. A nice addition isthat cartridges from the original version can be used here, but of coursethere’s no wry sarcasm from Nicky Campbell. I didn’t miss the banalwitterings of John Leslie though.

Let’s hope the next version addresses the confounding keyboard problems though.

I would give this game 7/10, but as I give marks out of 5, it receives…

OVERALL