120 · WHEEL OF FORTUNE
Based on the popular Merv Griffin-produced TV game show of the same name. The goal is to solve for the missing letters in the given place, person, thing, phrase, etc. Spin the eponymous wheel for money, guess consonants, buy vowels, and try to solve the puzzle.
SHOW NOTES
Wheel of Fortune Longplay
MOST Wheel of Fortune Video Games
Pat Sayjak on the Rugrats
- WHEEL...OF...FORTUNE
- Introductions
- I never got excited about this game show. At least Jeopardy has prestige
- Overview
- Spin a wheel, guess a consonant, if it’s part of the phrase/thing that you’re trying to guess you get to spin again. Okay it’s basically hangman.
- Gameplay
- No picking your character or what they look like
- No Pat and Vanna is Green?
- AI is pretty respectful
- What’s your strategy?
- Sequels and Spinoffs
- 2 more Wheel of Fortune games on NES. Unbelievable. Just like Jeopardy
- This thing is on every console/pc you can think of.
- EGL
- Why this game isn’t like SMB
Auto-generated transcript. Each paragraph starts with its timestamp. Speakers are not identified.
AND WELCOME TO NES-TALGIA AND WELCOME TO NES-TALGIA AND WELCOME TO NES-TALGIA AND WELCOME TO NES-TALGIA AND WELCOME TO NES-TALGIA AND WELCOME TO NES-TALGIA AND WELCOME TO NES-TALGIA AND WELCOME TO NES-TALGIA AND WELCOME TO NES-TALGIA AND WELCOME TO NES-TALGIA AND WELCOME TO NES-TALGIA AND WELCOME TO NES-TALGIA AND WELCOME TO NES-TALGIA AND WELCOME TO NES-TALGIA AND WELCOME TO NES-TALGIA AND WELCOME TO NES-TALGIA AND WELCOME TO NES-TALGIA AND WELCOME TO NES-TALGIA AND WELCOME TO NES And I'm Joe. And guys, today we have a game that I have honestly never even been excited about as a TV show. Now we have to play it as a video game. What do you guys think about Wheel of Fortune?
I don't hate the TV show. I've never really watched it. I think I remember watching it a little bit in the 90s as a small child. But beyond that, no. Yeah, I mean, I never tune in for Wheel of Fortune. But when it's on, I like trying to solve the puzzles. I'm not very good at it sometimes. But it's fun.
Yeah, and it's kind of like for me, in the scope of hugely accessible game shows on television, there was The Price is Right, Family Feud, Jeopardy, and Wheel of Fortune. And I think Wheel of Fortune is the lowest of those four. Yeah, I'd say the same thing. I was a big Feud fan. And not so much Price is Right, but I was a big Feud fan. I can't wait to play Family Feud if there is one. There was definitely a Family Feud on PlayStation 1. Yeah. So we can only hope that the track record would go all the way back to NES.
Yeah. And I mean, Game Tech, the publisher of these games, even though Rare is making them, Game Tech is the publisher. And they seem to have just like acquired the electronics rights licensing for all game shows. So anything that is on TV in the late 80s that's a game show, they have the ability to like make a video game about it. So I wouldn't be surprised to see the Feud. I mean, like, were they on the same network or something or they just went around to everybody and was like, we want it?
That's a good question because Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy are back to back on TV and they always have been. So it was always Jeopardy first and then Wheel of Fortune. So that makes sense here. Yeah. Same with release dates. But I know that they have the rights to like Hollywood Squares too. And I don't remember that being on the same channel as Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. So maybe they just went around. Yeah. Who can give me an overview of Wheel of Fortune if somebody listening has never watched an episode? It's Hangman with a wheel with money on it.
Yeah. The wheel decides the value that the letter you guess is worth. I'm not even sure that that's correct. That's correct, right? No, that's true. Yeah. That's correct. Okay.
So because like I said, when I watch it on TV, I'll just be like, oh, let's try and figure out what this word is. I don't pay attention to like the people's scores or anything like that. And when you spin that wheel, you're mostly guessing consonants because you have to pay for vowels. And the thinking there is just that, yeah, vowels would just give away the puzzle. So you have to pay for them to have the rights to them. Yeah. So you spin the wheel. You guess a consonant. If it's part of the phrase or thing that you're trying to guess, it reveals itself. You get, let's say you spin 300.
Vanna has to touch it first and then it reveals itself. Yeah. What do you think? This all just happens by itself? There's not someone working really hard to get this done? I'm not sold that that's Vanna White because that's a green, like Loch Ness Monster looking person. I don't know what that was, but that was not Vanna at her best. You're right. But that was a day without makeup. I would go. I would not go so far as to call that poor girl the Loch Ness Monster. That's true. That was actually, she stood on two legs. So just theoretically, definitely not.
The manual really tries to use that Vanna likeness or not likeness as a real selling point, though. I don't know if you guys read this, but it says, for the little description of the game, it says, solve the puzzle on the game board by filling in the hidden letter. Each correct guess sends our beautiful blonde hostess to the board to turn over your letters. Then when you solve the puzzle, see her clap for you with an exclamation point.
I'm glad that there's clapping. Clapping is a big part of the show if you haven't seen it. It's just very funny that they were trying to use that as like a selling point. Like, I'm going to buy this so this, you know, pixelated Vanna White will clap for me. But Vanna was like the selling point for the show. It was like that, I guess sex appeal would have been what it was. But like that she was the selling point of the show. I don't think anybody thinks of Pat Sajak like they think of Alec Trebek. I think of Pat Sajak in a very, you know, raunchy way sometimes.
Okay. And just as we can give the whole scope of the game, you spin the wheel. Let's say you get $300. Then if you guess the letter S and there's two of them, you get $300 for each one. Then they show up on the board and you can choose to solve or buy a vowel or spin again. But if you get it wrong, then the next person in line gets to take over. And they could solve it right there if they wanted to. And that's why you don't want to give away the obvious things. Yeah, exactly.
There's a lot of strategy to Wheel of Fortune, right? Maybe not. But let's go over it. What was your guys' strategy for playing Wheel of Fortune on the NES? I'll be honest. My strategy was just to try and figure it out. I was never worried like, oh, am I going to give away? I never thought too much about like, am I going to give this away to the next person if I fill in too many letters? So I was just trying to play a pretty basic game. Yeah, it's kind of hard when you take it out of the context of actual money to play this other than just like, I'm going to play Hangman. But in the context of Wheel of Fortune. And yeah, I mean, that's pretty much it for me.
Okay, but there had to be like some letters that you guys guessed more often than not, right? Oh, yeah. Like R, S, T, N, you know, the basics. Yeah. Yeah, nobody's going out and picking X ever, right? Yeah, X is hard to – Yeah, you're an idiot if you select X. Yeah, I feel like if you think there's an X in the word, you probably know the word by that point. It has to say ilophone already or something like that. Yeah, yeah. Now, in Jeopardy, there was a QWERTY keyboard, which most people are familiar with that layout. Why do you think that they didn't have that for Wheel of Fortune where you have to scroll across each letter? I think it's because they made a bad decision. Yeah, they just made a bad decision.
Because that was my biggest – well, my two biggest pet peeves of this game go hand in hand with each other. One is that when you start, you only have seven seconds to pick your letter, which seems like a lot, like seven seconds to pick a letter. But that's seven seconds to even look at the board and think of what letter did you do. And then sometimes I've ran out of time just trying to scroll from A all the way over to even like R or something because it takes so long to scroll over. It takes like half your time. If you're going to put all the letters in alphabetical order, at least make several rows of them so that it doesn't take as long to navigate.
Because I – like not so much in the letter selection while you're just like guessing. But if you're going to finish the sentence or like guess or solve the puzzle, you can run out of time even if you know exactly and you're just trying to get to all the letters. Yeah, that was more the issue. Not the lack of the QWERTY keyboard, but rather the fact that it's just one row of letters. And slow scrolling.
Right. It just seems strange that the same developer – like Rare was totally capable of doing it in Jeopardy. So to not do it here I think was a bit of a mistake. But there was also some things that they did in Jeopardy that they didn't do here. Like there's no character avatar for you. You're just kind of there with your nameplate. We never see you. It's a first-person game.
Yeah, that's kind of lame too. If you're going to make a game show game, which I guess this is the golden age of game show games here. But if you're going to make a game show game, you got to make the presentation like really shine because that's 90% of a game show.
So that was disappointing to see. And then there's also the pointless power meter put into the wheel to assess your strength. I don't know about that. I think it's fine. I think it's like you're going to have to at least prove to the player that you weren't always going to get bankrupt.
Like if you landed on bankrupt and all you did was press spin, you'll be like, oh, that's a fucking joke. Like that's not fair at all. But if you give them something to input like how hard you're going to spin the wheel, maybe they can like accept that maybe that is just chance. You know what I mean? I totally agree with that philosophy, Sean. And that makes a lot of sense because you do want to have some kind of idea of control. But do you feel like it actually mattered how much strength you inputted? Like did the wheel actually spin longer? I couldn't tell. It did.
But yeah. For me, it was like I would just try, you know, if I just want to get on with the game anyway, I would just use little strength just to get across the wheel as far as I can. Yeah. And, you know, your chances of landing on bankrupt or 1,000 are the same either way. It's just it's just a way to make people not throw their controller, I guess.
And the computers here are pretty respectful. We had that weird thing in Jeopardy where they would just guess nonsense because realistically, what else could what else could they guess? But here they don't ever guess like letters that like they don't ever guess X or U for the most part for me. I don't know about you guys, but they seem to have like some kind of coherence. And they waited until the puzzle was actually pretty close to being solved before they would jump in and solve it. Yeah.
I think there's got to be like a hierarchy that all of the AIs use is like, well, I'm going to guess like T, R, N, like those first and then they start moving down. But I think that they're very liberal with how many vowels they're going to guess because I think the AI use that a lot more often than I've seen in the show. Yeah. And there's there's also the whole like easy, medium and hard mode, too.
And I think the mistake would have been to have hard mode be like as soon as a letter or two is on the board, the computer just knows the answer and solves it based on little to nothing. But instead, it seems more like just the overall luck and ability of the computer players are better when they're on hard. Yeah, it'll guess correct letters more often, I assume.
Right. Rather than just like guessing the solving the puzzle quickly. But did you guys did it ever did the AI ever incorrectly solve? That didn't happen. No. Whenever they solve, they get it right. Like I've played a few of these games where I didn't win, obviously. And whenever it gets to like that bonus round where we'll get to all the fun things about that. But it doesn't matter how few letters they actually reveal. Like if you just had like an M and an N, like they can immediately guess like, oh, commander in chief. It's like, well, nobody was going to get that. But OK, whatever. I'm already out of the game. So I guess it doesn't matter.
Yeah. And so, Sean, you mentioned that there are some other rounds. It's the same as a normal Wheel of Fortune format on the TV show. You have two regular rounds where everybody plays. You spin until you guess a letter wrong or go bankrupt or miss a turn. And then in the third round is the speed round where if you guess a letter, you have to pretty much either solve or pass your turn. Did you guys think that that made it like a little more challenging? Did it add anything to the game for you? For me, it was kind of just like an experience in patience because it would be several rounds before we revealed enough letters for anyone to know what it was.
I mean, it definitely changes the dynamic. And again, I'm in quarantine, so I don't know if I could even play this with another person. But I feel like this game would be a lot more interesting if it were with non-computers. So I think that's what sort of harms the third round because like in the previous rounds, you could kind of like dominate as long as you're guessing well. Whereas in this one, you have to like there's no way you're going to get this in your first or second guess. So you have to pass it. So I played this with my girlfriend actually and I think that it was fine playing with two players. I think because like you said, there's no actual money involved. It kind of just feels like maybe just play Hangman.
Like it was fine. It was probably better, I assume, better than playing against the computer just because there's that like real competition. There was one game where I had solved more puzzles, but she won because she had more money. And I guess that's just like a preferences to the gameplay, but it's just, I don't know. I think that it's really, there is no, nothing that it being a video game brings to Hangman. Like, you know, like unless you are giving out real money, don't play Wheel of Fortune is like with another person, you know.
What it would bring as a video game is being able to play by yourself. Yeah, Joe, I think what you just touched upon is a dilemma that I like to call the Texas Hold'em dilemma, where if there's no money involved, it just like sooner or later, someone's just going to be like, well, I'm all in because they don't actually care about what's at stake. Yeah, it's just chips. Exactly. Like that's like, I actually did just have a, I played a game of Texas Hold'em where we were just playing with chips that had nothing behind them.
And that's, that's pretty much it. Whenever you have like a game like this, where there's a dollar value, like, I guess you could sort of count it as like, oh, I got the high score, but like you're definitely not going to be playing the game the same way. And it kind of ruins like the, like the fundamentals of how, of how the game is supposed to be played because nobody actually gives a shit. So, I don't know.
Yeah. And if the dollar value, I mean, if it were something that there was some strategy to getting a certain dollar value or, you know, doing this will maybe get you more money, but at a higher risk or something, then I can see it being like, that's gamified. But when it's just, I mean, maybe this is a fundamental problem with Wheel of Fortune, but when it's just been a wheel and you get a random number,
that's, it's flashier, but it's not, to me, not as fun. And that also like moves into the bonus round where you're playing for a prize where you can either get a Porsche, which is actually like product placement for Porsches or Porsche, I don't know how to pronounce it. Um, or you can go to Hawaii or you could get a, like a whole new kitchen renovation.
And like, after you play the bonus round, if you win, it just shows that, okay, you won that. Like it would have been like, there would have been some kind of like reward if they kind of like showed you driving away in your Porsche or something. Like that would be cool. Sean, they needed to, they needed to show animation, but even better. Imagine if these unlocked like little mini games of like driving or like doing something, surfing on an island.
Yeah. Right. Just something as like a mini game as a reason to want to win all of the prizes. But instead who selects like, no, I don't want the Porsche. Give me the deluxe kitchen. And I don't even give a fuck if I get either. Yeah. Cause all it does is it shows you the same logo for the, for the item, but it puts like flashy lights around it. Like you guys don't get excited about the idea of imagining you're going to go to Hawaii. It sort of reminds me of, I think it was a, it was just a post on Reddit that somebody said that they were playing like the PC version of who wants to be a millionaire when they were a child.
And they got super excited when they actually won the game because he thought that his printer was just going to start printing out money. And I kind of wish that I played these games with that mindset so that there was actually some stakes. I do like the idea that you brought up, Mike. I like that a lot. The idea of like, so even though it seems like it might be a little like extra for them to add in, you know, like that they probably would never do. But like having like a little mini game or something fun or something like, like, like almost like you feel like you're collecting these prizes that like incentivize you to like see what the next. Yeah, exactly. What's this other prize do?
Yeah. Cause otherwise, you know, Sean, Sean mentioned this, but I just want to make it very clear. The difference of what happens at the end, whether you get the final puzzle right or not is the same exact screen. But in one, it says, yes, you've won. And then the picture of the object or oops, you did not win.
Insert picture of the project. It's so inconsequential. It's just a piece of text. Yeah. It's literally just flavor. It's goofy. Right. So, so the last thing we should talk about is that actual final puzzle, which the way it handles it is there's, there's no wheel involved. Now you just guess any five consonants and one vowel, and then you have to guess whatever the final thing is. And it's usually something a little more challenging than the other rounds, I'd say.
I don't know how you guys felt about that. But overall, it's not really different enough for me to be like, you know, oh, wow, this totally changes the end of the game. But that's just the problem with the game show itself. That's not a thing on the video game. Yeah, because you still won. It's the bonus round for a reason. So you either win the game and fail at this bonus or you win the game and get the bonus. But like this, like, whippy.
You get your fake kitchen. I think that's another thing that makes it problematic with two players. Whereas, like, at least the whole time you're playing the game, you're competing against, you know, against the other player. So that's fun. Once you've won, like, okay, well, you won. You go keep playing. I'm going to go. I'm going to go do something else. You get to go keep playing a game by yourself to get a fake bonus.
Like, I guess it's like, oh, it might be fun to solve that last puzzle. But like now that there were stakes up until now and now there are just no stakes, it's weird. Yeah. I think you'd have to make this a drinking game to make it fun. Like if you've got three players and whoever, like every round that's won, like the other two have to drink. And then finally with the bonus round, like if they get it, the rest have to drink. If they don't get it, you've got to drink. So, yeah, you could make it fun.
But that's because you're in. It's like for every consonant that you don't get, they have to take a shot. Yeah, exactly. So you can make it fun with like outside rules, but right now it's just, it's not really much. Yeah. Sounds like this game really needs like a game genie to enhance it. You know, some cheats.
All right. I mean, you know, real fast, I'll just give you the lowdown. We got three more Wheel of Fortune games coming to the NES. So we got to play through all three of them. Unbelievable. What are we going to talk about? I guess like we could. We just re-release this episode.
With the commentary track. Yes. Can't we? So, yeah, I guess they're all just going to be like, maybe they look a little different and they're going to have different puzzles because I can't see what they could change to like the base, to the base gameplay. Like there's nothing. A QWERTY keyboard. Maybe. That would be fun.
You know, and this, this idea of having Wheel of Fortune as a video game is on everything. It's on every single console and PC you can think of. I'm not even going to list all the different ports because it's all just the same thing. Again, it adheres to the rules of the game show. It doesn't, it doesn't, you know, it doesn't take any risks on the formula. It's just Wheel of Fortune, baby. All the time, always. And with that in mind, let's get into the essential games list.
You know, I would make something fun here where you guys could like guess consonants or spin a wheel or do some, you know, maybe I bring a girl onto the show. Like, I don't know, but none of that stuff is going to really help us make this game any more essential. So why don't we just get it over with and vote on this thing?
Sean? Well, you know, we basically said everything. It's just like the skeleton of a game that doesn't have like, you know, you can't, you can't enjoy it unless there's actual money involved. And it's not even as much of a game as Jeopardy is because I think there's still, there's still like a little bit more to Jeopardy than there is to Wheel of Fortune. So it's not essential at all. That's it. And Joe? Well, you've probably gathered by now that I love this game. Yeah. No, I'm just kidding. I think that Wheel of Fortune in and of itself is just okay.
And this isn't even like the best version of, not that I know really any other versions, but this is, this is already has things that make this worse than real Wheel of Fortune, mainly the keyboard and the ridiculous time limit and the fact that there are very little stakes. So I can't vote this essential. Got it. And I mean, for me, I, I could give you a whole list of reasons for why this game isn't like Super Mario Brothers, but I'm not going to do that here. It doesn't, it's, it's not warranted. This is a, there's no blocks to hit. There's no King Koopa. Well, there's blocks. Uh, there's, I would consider those tiles. You're revealing tiles. Okay. But you know, tomato, tomato.
Okay. Cause you know, nobody says tomato. Wheel of Fortune, Wheel of Fortune trivia here. But you know, before there was like computers took over our lives, Vanna would actually turn over the actual tile. She wouldn't just touch them. They would actually reveal. Oh, really? The letter behind them. Yeah. It was like a spinning thing. Cause I remember when I watched, like she had a bunch of like mini CRT monitors that I think were actual touchscreen, but they could have been, they could have been fake, you know? Right. It's really boned me out.
Yeah. Cause they would light them up. Like they would light up the ones that she would have to then go touch, which I thought was weird. Like, why don't you just activate those when you're, when you're lighting them up? Well, as I was saying, she used to have to actually turn them. So that was her whole point. And then they weren't just going to go fire her because she's the whole selling point of the show. Machines took her job.
Yeah. Like honestly, machines took her job before they took any actual industry's jobs away. So the game is not essential if you haven't put it together, but there's always the junior edition of Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. And I'm sure there's another game tech rare duo that's going to make another junior edition of another game show. So there's always those. The junior editions could surprise us and just be home runs. I can't wait to be honest. The junior editions could really be like the backyard baseballs of Wheel of Fortune. You know, I would love to see kid versions of Pat Sajak and Vanna White in my backyard playing hangman on a fence.
And no one's going to talk about it. But, you know, it is really it is just hangman. Right. Like this game is not even that clever. How has it been on the air for 30 years? Because it's simple. It's got like a really it's got a really sparkly wheel. And I was always a big fan of the wheel.
You know, I'm glad you brought that up, Sean, because that was something I wanted to talk about. You know, the the whole presentation of the game. I know we did the essential games list and we're done talking about this game. But realistically, like a lot of this game just takes place on like a black canvas with text and minimal design elements surrounding you. Why couldn't they just, you know, create a a layout for the where the game show would take place and show you the wheel there? Why did it have to be on a dull black screen?
Don't they usually have like a like a tropical backdrop? Yes. In Wheel of Fortune. Yep. There's always themes. That's the whole thing. I think the themes are a better hook. It would have been cool, too, if like you could like if there was like a dedicated clap button that you could hit while the wheel was spinning or like maybe it's like first person. You can like turn your head and like walk around the stage and security would come and take you away if you tried to approach Vanna. I like the idea that they have to like sell like a unique NES controller that has like an extra button on it so you can clap. Yeah. It would be sort of like this is more like a next gen thing. Right. Probably PS5.
VR. Haptic feedback. Open world Wheel of Fortune. Haptic feedback. Where you go like backstage and stuff. Haptic feedback when you spin the wheel. You could just use like a Famicom controller with the microphone built into it and have that be the cheer. And that's why you would really buy the multi-tap in the first place. And so that the other fourth player who's not one of the other three could be the cheering.
Yeah for sure. That would be great. All right. I'm pretty sure that's all the time we have for this episode of Nostalgia now that we're just rambling. We have Xevious as our next game and that will wrap up September of 1988 for us. So we are getting closer. We're getting close to 89. Yep. We're getting closer and closer to 89. But just to give you a little recap of what September's had in store. It has our lost episode Adventure Island. It has Galaga Demons of Death which is obviously like bookended with Xevious the Avenger. So like those two are made by the same company. So that's why they came out in the same month. Then you have Golgo 13 which is Vic Takai made that all on his own. And then you have.
Then you have Jackal by Konami which we all seem to like a lot. Yeah. Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune together. And oh, Mylon's Secret Castle could go with Adventure Island since they're both made by Hudson Zoff. So that was their September plans as well. So I mean there's a lot of good stuff here. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff and there's also Lee Trevino's Fighting Golf.
It wasn't that bad. I don't know, man. After we talked about it on the show, I was kind of like excited to play it again. And then I realized like we even though we didn't hype that game up too much, we still hyped it up a little more than I'm comfortable with. You know what? You do what you have to do, Mike. Thank you. To make yourself sleep at night. Well, I made that episode of the podcast. I just made it dimmer. I brought down the audio overall. So it's at like negative nine decibels. This way we don't sound as excited.
Yeah, that's the best way to go about it. I get loud when I'm excited. We're just more quiet. Yeah. All right. So yeah, we got Xevious the Avenger to finish out September of 1988. And I hope you join us for it next Friday. I'm Michael Esposito. You can find me on at Esposito Film on Twitter. We are at NostalgiaCast on Twitter. We post things every single weekday. You know you love it. I posted a bunch of Pat Sajak pictures this week. So you know you want to check out those. I was going to get you to check it out. It's that. I was going to get you to check it out.
