Original Release: Gametek, 1989, Arcade
The arcade game adaptation of Wheel of Fortune had the option of turning into a ticket redemption game for prizes.
Wheel of Fortune (Arcade, GameTek, 1989)
Where to Buy: KLOV, eBay
How to Emulate: Arcade Emulation Page
Review by: C. M0use
Wheel Of Fortune is fairly accurate to the show, in as much as I can remember the show anyway. The outset has a crowd greeting you with a digitized chant of “WHEEL … OF … FORTUNE!” and there’s some bonus GILF in the front row shaking her giant rack for you for some lols. The festivities are accompanied by a funky techno version of the familiar theme song, and a totally bimboed-out version of Vanna turns the letters for you (and encourages you to “Spin!”, though the voice is apparently some Bogus Vanna and not the real deal.) No Pat Sajak or Charlie to be seen, though you get the little digitized sound effects when the letters appear and are turned, even a digitized crowd roar while you play with some random meathead yelling “No! No!” and “Pick a T!”
The game was published by Gametek but kind of resembles those dark Atari games of the 1980s, so much so that I wonder if some of the programming staff didn’t swap sides here. Apparently the original IRL version actually spewed out tickets when you won that you could use at like Chuck E Cheese or Dave and Busters or something to get prizes. I guess that’s why the game’s one major problem is present – when solving a puzzle you have a pretty crazily limited amount of time to input all the letters, and with the hurry it’s easy to hit a wrong letter and fail the whole thing immediately.
Up to three people can play at a time, there are no CPU players so if you play solo you just keep taking turns until you exhaust your three lives. Lives are taken away for guessing a non-existent letter, landing on Lose A Turn, buying a non-existent vowel, screwing up a letter while solving the puzzle, or failing to solve the puzzle in time once you’ve elected to. I think the game gives you one back for each puzzle you solve.
The game show is a pretty basic one to translate to video game form. Aside from the overly tight timer when solving a puzzle, the controls and gameplay work just fine. None of the advanced concepts of the show like bonus cards or mini-games seem to be worked in, so if you want the most authentic Wheel in terms of rules and gameplay this isn’t it but it certainly does have the show aesthetics and ambience down.
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