Jewel Case Release
| Genre: Game Show |
CDs: 1 |
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| Publisher: Hasbro Interactive |
Released: December 15, 1998 |
| Developer: Artech Studios |
UPC: 6 08610 99164 2 |
| Sony ID: 00683 |
PSRM: 010870 |
| Players: 1 to 3 Players |
Memory: 2 Blocks |
| Accessories: Vibration |
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| ESRB: Everyone – No Descriptors |
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| Box Copy:
Now You’re In the Game! Be an actual contestant on the Wheel of Fortune! Give the wheel a spin and see if you can solve a variety of clever puzzles, specially written by the TV show’s producers. Don’t just sit at home and watch – be there and play! Key Features:
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Variants
Wheel of Fortune was released in the Greatest Hits format. SLUS-00683GH / PSRM-010871
Greatest Hits Release – SLUS-00683GH / PSRM-010871
Misprints
- There are no known misprints.
Review
Game shows are a staple of American television culture, entertaining people for decades with their catchy concepts and potential prizes. One of the most beloved shows is Wheel of Fortune, now airing for 50 years since its taping began.
Finally, something older than I am!
If you’ve never taken the wheel for a spin, here’s how the show works. Three players take turns spinning a giant wheel of dollar values. Correctly guessing a consonant awards you that dollar amount multiplied by how many times the letter appears in the puzzle. If they need help, you can purchase a vowel for $250 of their potential prize money. If they successfully solve the puzzle on their turn, they keep the money from the round. Whoever has the most money after the last main round heads into the final bonus round. It’s one giant game of ‘hangman’ for those old enough to remember that old game.
Upon starting the game, one obvious feature stands out more than anything else: the quality and quantity of the audio. Quality-wise, it comes across a little muted, clearly exported to a lower quality than it could be. But that annoyance subsides when the quantity of sound is realized. Wheel of Fortune’s audio library is – and I mean this with all the respect – insane.
Vanna, the announcer, and both computer-controlled players are fully voiced with variations on their callouts and comments. Vanna’s video comments include multiple versions of the same responses – i.e., the number of letters on the board. She also has compliments, new prize announcements, and commentary between puzzles. There’s even some audience murmuring as they quiet down.
The opponents also have full banter and have voiced a decent number of the final solutions. It really adds to the ambiance, though the programmers missed a step in the immersion. The computer opponents are strictly programmed to go all-in dollar-wise, which leads them to fill in the puzzle up to the point they can only buy a vowel or fill it in without having to guess at it. Knowing you’re behind in the count while the CPU milks the board for all its worth becomes stress-inducing.
When it comes to the player benefits, Artech Digital really stepped up the hospitality. There is plenty of time given to fill in the rest of the puzzle; the available actions are always on screen for you in big, bold graphics. Spinning the wheel is performed with a single button press. No more meters to fill or wait on from the older eras of the subject matter.
Speaking of benefits, the game’s visual variety more than doubles based on a single option. If you choose high resolution, you’ll only have 5 stage dressings to view. Set it to Low resolution, and 7 more variants pop up. These include themes like Movies and Wheels, among other real-world location inspirations. You can either set the stage to your liking, or the game will automatically cycle through them as you play, so long as you have a Memory Card saving your progress.
Swapping over to gameplay, Wheel of Fortune is not without its faults, but truthfully, they’re just more realistic than I’d care for. When playing solo in the standard 3-player mode, the CPU opponents can be crushingly brutal with how many times they can run the table, even on the larger puzzles. In one game, a computer opponent had already racked up $20,000 in winnings, and we were only 2 puzzles in.
To the developer’s credit, the anger is directed more at the RNG: the random number generation that runs the wheel itself. It really is random, as Lady Luck came and went for everyone involved. In one of the last games I played before writing this review, I won the show with over $50,000 in prize money, thanks to winning a crazy Final Round prize. I then proceeded to start a new game and hit Bankrupt AND Lose a Turn in sequential spins. No lie, landing the big money values and hitting 4 or more of a letter is a wee bit addicting. I can totally see how the show has its legions of fans after all this time.
I think that’s why the game works so well as a video game. I truly did not appreciate the strategy involved in taking chances with letter guesses. A single wrong choice can derail your financial dreams. I think I was sweating when deciding to relinquish my Free Spin token. It’s shiny, like my precious.
Lastly, if the pressure is too much for you, the game thankfully allows for a true solo run, where it’s just you and Vanna on set playing the game. Artech was also kind enough to offer scoreboards for each of the different modes. Since there’s no career mode, these act just like arcade high-scores – how much money can you bring in with one jaunt through the show?
On a final technical note, the game appears to use different resolutions depending on what you’re seeing. I share this only because it wreaks havoc with modern TVs. If playing on a flatscreen, you may have the prize videos or certain Vanna videos get cut short as it transitions back to the stage screen. It might also just be an emulation issue, but if you’re playing on real hardware on an old CRT, everything is good.
So, with a thousand newer and more period-correct versions of the game available anywhere else, is the PlayStation version worth going back to? Yes, actually, and not just because I’m biased. There’s an oddly comforting in-fashion retro vibe to it. Many of the puzzles are time capsules of the era, with many references to even earlier times in pop culture. With the game supporting 3 players with the multi-tap, combined with the high-score table, there’s a fun time for modern-day parents to take their kids on an old-school word-based adventure.
On the review scale, it’s a Solid 7/10. Wheel of Fortune’s first outing on the original PlayStation is pure comfort food, but there’s more they could have done with the memory card functions.
The Good
- Incredible Audio Diversity
- Plenty of Options
- Really feels like you’re on the show
The Bad
- No Career Mode
- Too many variants of some solutions
- The CPU can run the table too often
Final Score: 7/10 – Solid
The first Wheel of Fortune release on PlayStation is the perfect comfort food. If you hate to lose, stick to Solo Mode.
Screenshots
Videos
Video review of the game.
Trivia
- If you check out the Puzzle Guide, you can see just how often subject matter and puzzle variations are used. The developers used every trick they could to maximize puzzle count.
- The game stores high score tables for each mode like an arcade machine. It’s a fun way to track just how well you do across solo and versus CPU runs.
- Unlike other versions, where Vanna ‘hosts’ from the video wall, she is kept off-screen for maximum video wall viewing.
- Most, if not all, puzzles that should have visible commas do not display them. So if you would normally write “Red, Blue, and Green,” it will show up on the board as “RED BLUE AND GREEN.”
- Artech did a nice job creating generic prizes, avoiding the need for product licensing.
Guide
Every solution in the game is now at your fingertips. The guide is far too big, so you can jump to its own page by clicking the link.
