Review: Press Your Luck 2010 Edition (Wii)

Taking advantage of Target’s current “buy 2 Wii games, get one free” promotion, I bought Press Your Luck along with two other game show games yesterday. (See also my reviews on Family Feud 2010 and The Price is Right 2010.  To sum up this game in a sentence: did the programmers who made the game ever actually watch any episodes of Press Your Luck on TV?  The problems begin as soon as you insert the disc in your Wii console.

First off, when you select the Disc Channel from your Wii Menu, you get a rather plain-looking PYL logo, and a clip of some music that’s similar to the theme music — but it’s not the real thing.  Observant game show fans may notice it’s a brief snippet of the theme from the pilot episode, which was never aired on TV.  This music was never actually used on-the-air, and only recently surfaced on the TV Music Museum website.

At first, I thought maybe it was an obscure nod to the pilot, to see who would notice it.  But the novelty quickly turned disappointing when the game finished loading and this “pilot” theme was prominently featured ALL OVER THE GAME — from the title screen, to the menu screens, and even within the game.  Never at all do you hear THE famously catchy Press Your Luck theme that really aired on TV.

If you’ve ever watched PYL, you know the theme music is catchy and fun.  I was actually whistling it when I was taking the game out of the box and loading it into the Wii.  When the game finally loaded (after 20 seconds of sitting through disclaimers and company logo animations), the fake music came up and I was floored that so many people actually worked on this game, and management actually approved this piece of garbage.

Gameplay Overview

Limited choices for your character until you unlock other options. (Image: amazon.com)

The character selection is only marginally better than Ubisoft/Ludia’s very first Wii game show title, The Price is Right (my review from 2/7/09).  Back then, you had a very limited selection of characters (not your own Miis).  In this game (and the other “2010 Edition” game shows) you have more people to choose from and you can actually change outfits, hair, and the like, but I was still disappointed with the fairly generic selection of characters.

As for the game itself, it’s unfortunate that PYL’s real-life announcer Rod Roddy and host Peter Tomarken have both ascended to the great studio in the sky, because the announcer they used to voice this game is terrible.  You can tell he was less-than-pleased about sitting in front of a mic for however long it took to record all the voicetracks that go along with this game.  While the unnamed voice does sound “decent” for an announcer, he lacks any enthusiasm whatsoever.

Question Round

Contestants answer questions to earn Spins on the Big Board (Image:amazon.com)

Just like the gameshow, the Wii remake begins with a question round.  Players answer trivia questions to earn “spins” on the Big Board.  You “buzz in” by waving the Wii remote in a downward motion.

On TV, if you’re first to answer, you have to verbally give an answer.  Then your answer and two other choices would appear on-screen for the other players to select from.  On the Wii, the first player to buzz-in has to select from four possible choices — then one wrong answer goes away and the remaining players choose from the remaining selections.

Just like on TV, the correct answer is then revealed.  If player who buzzed in was correct, they get 3 spins.  Other contestants who chose the right answer get one spin each.  Three more questions follow.

Note the question screen uses the same generic font seen throughout all of the Ubisoft/Ludia game show remakes.  Another lazy disregard for detail: the real font from the TV show was easy for me to find within moments via a quick Google search.  If anyone from Ubisoft/Ludia’s reading, I even posted the font right here for you download and use in the next version of PYL, if you ever decide to re-do the game with the right music and graphics.

Big Board

This was the most exciting part of the game on TV, but sadly, the folks at Ubisoft/Ludia did a wonderful job sucking the life out of it on the Wii.  There are a few big reasons I say this, but the only one that really matters is, again, the music.

Just as catchy as the theme music, is the endless loop that plays as the big board is in motion… with the lights dancing randomly from square to square.  But when the board kicks into gear in this remake, the background music is muffled out by fake audience sound effects, and the characters talking.  The little bit you can hear of the music is definitely NOT the real thing.  This will definitely disappoint any serious game show fans.

Even if you’re not a serious game show fan, perhaps you’ll be disappointed by the distracting Wii remote animating icon, constantly tilting up and down, telling you how to stop the board.  It’s there on every. Single. Spin.  Do you really need that reminder over and over again?  I think the first time is sufficient.

Last but not least, it seemed like the lights were moving around the board a little too slowly.  On a few occasions, it almost seemed too easy to hit any square I wanted — without having to remember the sequence like Michael Larson did when he took CBS for a $110,000 ride in 1984.

Yep, I was a loser my first game. The 2 computer players duke it out, with the reminder to Press A to skip in the upper-right corner.

On the plus side, when the computer players are up, you can choose to sit and watch their spins, or you can press the “A” button and skip past it.  If you use this option, it cuts back to the 3-shot of the contestants, and you can watch the scoreboard of the skipped player change according to what they would have had on each spin.  Then it goes onto whomever is next.

Also true to the TV version, when it comes down to the final spin (in the second Big Board round), the game shows you the “split screen” of the active spinner and the runner-up (who could instantly become the winner if the spinner hits  a Whammy), complete with the thick red line characteristic of 1980s video switcher technology.  Sadly, when the winner was determined, the red line didn’t “wipe” over to show the winner’s reaction full-screen, but rather, to a 3-shot of all the contestants with the contestants showing a rather narrow range of emotion.

What About the Whammies?

The Whammies - sadly, not the original animations, but original/remade ones. (Image" amazon.com)

Yeah, they’re there… but they aren’t as good as they were on TV.  There was something unique about the way the original Whammy graphics were clearly played from videotape, keyed on top of the camera video.  The Wii Whammies are too “slick” looking, and the animation actually looks cheaper than what was offered on TV 25 years ago.  Especially bad are the “loading screen” Whammy animations which consist of just 4 frames apiece, looping endlessly until the next part of the game is loaded.

After the Game

Another plus: as you win games, you unlock additional items to give the contestants more variety in their appearance.  More wins means more shirts, more pants, more glasses, more hairstyles, and so forth.  I still think the big problem here is that you can’t actually edit faces or eye colors or hair colors.  And, again, a big FAIL for not allowing players to use their own Miis in the games.

NES "Jeopardy!" in 1987 -- 22 years ago!

Playing with a character that looked nothing like me was OK back in 1987 on the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System.  The people in this Jeopardy screen shot have yellow or hot pink skin because the technology of the day was very limited.  But we’re in 2009, and there’s no reason I should be limited to choosing from 12 pre-designed characters that are supposed to look like real people, but in fact, look nothing like me or anyone I actually know.

Legal Annoyance

The tradition that started with the original Wii version of The Price is Right remains intact here: when you begin the game, you have to sit through a full-screen disclaimer, reminding you that any cash and prizes you win in the game are, in fact, not real, and are for entertainment purposes only.  Again, I ask, has our collective common sense dropped so low that this disclaimer really needs to be made?  Does anyone out there really think that buying a $30 video game is going to set them up with an endless stream of real life cash and prizes??

Overall Evaluation

To the folks at Ubisoft/Ludia who worked on this game, my message to you comes from a screen shot of your own product:

Again, the biggest FAIL of all here is the wrong theme music being featured throughout the game.  What happened?  Where’s the right music?  Was it a copyright/licensing thing?  If these people really cared about their product, they would have realized this remake of PYL sucks with the wrong music.  Ubisoft/Ludia did game show fans a major disservice by using the wrong themes — either pony up the cash for the right music, or don’t release the game at all.

I’d actually argue an unauthorized homebrewed version of the game, made several years ago, is better.

See Also:

- Review: Family Feud 2010 (Wii) also posted today
- Review: Price is Right 2010 (Wii) also posted today
- Review: Price is Right (Wii) the original version, posted February 2009