233 · Wheel of Fortune Junior Edition

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00:00 Wheel of Fortune, Junior Edition. Now everyone's favorite TV game show is just for kids.

00:22 And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sean. I'm Joe. All right. Now, funny enough, Wheel of Fortune has three contestants and we are three people who run this podcast. And it's worth mentioning that because it has been a while since the three of us have all been on the show.

00:47 That's true. Sean, you can't just start shouting out letters. You have to at least spin the wheel. I did. We just can't hear it. Sean, you should know this because we've already recorded the Wheel of Fortune episode. Yeah. Sean, this is just the kids version, which makes me wonder, first question out the gate, did you need a kids version of Wheel of Fortune? The Jeopardy! one kind of makes sense. It's like it's the questions are easier.

01:13 Here, it's just like the words that you guess are, I guess, like more relatable to kids than anywhere else. But like it's still words that you would know. There was no super challenging words in the original Wheel of Fortune. Yeah, it's the junior aspect of it is like is like a little hard to see. It's like, oh, OK, yeah, I guess some of these things like kids like. Is Vanna's dress just cut a bit more modestly?

01:38 I don't know. That's the only thing I can think of. Yeah, that must be it. I think coming off of Sesame Street 1, 2, 3 and ABC, we got this is like the third one. This is like the next kids game. Exactly the same as the Sesame Street games. If I just pull out some random words, though, OK, like that you can guess Alcatraz, Albert Einstein.

02:05 Try to find another one in the bees that broccoli, you know, like these are things that aren't necessarily like exclusive to children. Well, I think the game itself is like there's only ever going to be 26 things you can pick. And like the rules of how common letters are is not going to change based on if if whatever thing, person, event or phrase you're guessing for is for kids or for adults. Like the game fundamentally does not change.

02:41 I guess it's just going to be easier to guess or not. Yeah. And Mike, did you say Alcatraz was one of the words in this game? Yes. Alcatraz was one of the words in this game. I would venture to say that that is definitively not a kid word. You didn't see the cartoon Alcatraz. I'm looking at one right now. Dental hygienist, which like, yeah, sure. Kids like when I was a kid, I just went to the dentist. I didn't know that there was like a just call in the dentist. Right. There's another one here to arithmetic book. That's a math textbook.

03:16 Arithmetic. Yeah, yeah, I know. I know. But that's Michael spelling for you. What are you going to do? Yeah. You know, in the Wheel of Fortune game, if you said it wrong, like how I just did, they wouldn't give you the actual points for that. You'd have you have to say it how it actually is. But in the game, I would have been correct because it's only putting letters on the screen. There's no voice component where you like shout into the controller the answer. That's true. I mean, you could theoretically not know how to pronounce any English words and do well at this game. But not true in the actual Wheel of Fortune, which I guess is just if we're, you know, if they're trying to go for the Wheel of Fortune experience at home.

03:59 Last time we talked about this game, we said that this is better than Jeopardy because at least how you pick out letters makes more sense for the format of like picking out one letter at a time in Jeopardy. It's the tedious to spell everything out and any little misspelling counts against you in this game. Arguably, all you have to do is just pick letters, knock them off the board. It's like a little it's a little bit like Hangman, an older version of what the kids today call Wordle.

04:28 And I think that the Wheel of Fortune Junior Edition, regular edition, the way that they pull off the game show translated to video game is better than Jeopardy. Oh, absolutely. I think we may have even mentioned that. I don't know what order we played these in. Same order. It was the same order. Okay. So we did say that before, right? You got to put the words in my mouth, Mike. I don't quite remember the conversation. But I would say that, yes, Jeopardy is not as easily translated into video gameness because it's not as binary.

05:13 So that's just Wheel of Fortune in general. What makes it? Let's make it more junior. And to make it more junior, they even went through the trouble of changing the prizes of what you can win. So there's no more car. Now you win a bike.

05:32 And the vacation is a trip to Disney World. And, you know, you can win stereo equipment instead of, I don't know what would have been the equivalent for an adult. I think it's still just stereo equipment. Stereo equipment, yeah. Yeah. But you don't win a bike. You win 10 speed bikes. Oh, really? Well, I think it's, I don't know if it's supposed to be like 10 speed bike. Oh, it's a 10 speed bike. If that's a thing. But like, it says 10 speed bikes. It's plural. Okay.

06:02 Unless, until you said that it was plural, I would have said that that's just another, that's a Joe-ism now. No, no. Because I think a 10 speed bike is a thing. I actually don't know what that means specifically. I guess it's just the gears. Yes. But, but either way, it was plural, unless I'm misremembering. Or just trying to defend myself frantically.

06:22 It's okay. Yeah. The strategy doesn't change at all for Wheel of Fortune here because the, the gameplay is exactly the same. Again, it's only what is the word that you spell out that changes. Even the categories are still the same. Thing. Thing could be anything. Thing. Literally, like, that is the most vague Wheel of Fortune category ever for, for some of these, you know, bubble bath is a thing. I could argue that you could sub categorize that. That doesn't need to just be thing, right? My favorite category is fiction person. Uh, which seems a lot more specialized than obviously thing.

07:04 Um, and I, I don't know, but how would you specialize past thing for something like bubble bath? Would it just be like bath, bathroom thing? Uh. House. Okay. Household. Right. Because it's also like bubble bath isn't necessarily like an object thing. When I, when I say thing, I'm thinking of an object specifically. Bubble bath is like a, it's like, it's like, it's all, yeah, yeah.

07:29 It's almost like, you know, it could almost be like a verb. Like I'm going to go bubble bath right now. True. I, I guess like, uh, I, I do like moving it more into like concepts and, and theories, but I guess that's, that's just beyond the scope of, of, of Wheel of Fortune. And so for those of you unfamiliar with Wheel of Fortune, you are spinning a wheel that has various money amounts on it or, uh, a bankrupt space where you lose all of your money, a miss your turn space where you just, uh, don't get to go that round and a, uh, free spin where at any point other than your current turn, you can cash in the free spin again.

08:07 Sounds like a lot of options, especially considering the amount of money denominations they have from $150 all the way to a thousand dollars. However, I don't know about you guys, but mostly like the, the flow of the game is either like, you know the, the word and you're just kind of like trying to collect a lot of money putting in the letters or you don't know the word. And you got to wait for like the computers to help you like move along until it's your turn again. And then you spin the wheel, get some silly amount of money that doesn't really mean much of anything and, uh, try to continue to rack up points again. So it's like a very, uh, it's either it's your turn or it's not. And I know that that sounds super basic, but it's the truth.

08:48 It's it, the game is either you're waiting for anything to happen or it, or you're at the risk of just watching the gameplay itself. Which really shows you just how like boring wheel of fortune kind of is like, unless, unless you're having fun guessing words, which I mean, you know. So there's a little bit of that risk reward element to when you, when you do the, uh, when you're like, if you know the word and you want to keep spinning so you can get the letters because you might end on miss a turn or bankrupt.

09:18 And then the net computer is going to solve it for you. So there's that like tiny little element. It's like one little modicum of like strategy that kind of encompasses the whole thing, but like, it doesn't get much deeper than that throughout or that, or I'm a wheel of fortune novice. No, I think you could be pretty much have it. I don't think wheel of fortune, uh, design has, has too much going on. Uh, what was your, what was your favorite word that you got? Favorite word that, that I got correct or just favorite word that came up?

09:49 Cause it came up. Favorite word that came up. So I was playing with a couple of buddies of mine and we, it was, it was not our turn. And the first spin was, it was like a two word thing. The first spin was a T there was one T or no, it was an R there was one, there was one R in the second word. It was the first one was very long. And the computer just proceeds to solve pajama party.

10:14 We had no chance to even play. Just the computer was like, Oh, an R that's pajama party. I know that. I saw some questionable choices. Like midget football team was a, uh, was a, an answer like to a, to a solve thing. I don't think that flies anymore these days. That was an answer. That was like a thing, like a specific, that's just a words put together. Yes. Midget football team. It's supposed to be like a common phrase, right? Like not like just some random thing that like no one's ever like says. Yeah. I don't even remember what the category was, but that's, that's what happened. It was probably thing. There were phrases though. I did like the phrases of put the frosting on the cake.

10:57 I had, uh, um, it was an accident and easy come, easy go. Those were good. Those were classics. Only you can prevent forest fires. That's a big, that one fits. It fits somehow. Macaroni and cheese casserole fits. So why not? Mike, do you have any content for us? I've got, I do, but Joe, you go first. I also want to mention that like, in terms of them, you know, like trying to gamify this more, you know, we mentioned that there's like that little bit of strategy. They did this in the original wheel of fortune NES game too, where there's like the powers, the strength meter for when you spin.

11:40 And like, we've seen that a million times, you know, the, the meter fills up. You got to press a right at the right moment when it's at the amount of the amount of strength you want to put into your golf swing or whatever it is. But with spinning a wheel of fortune where the wheel is like made to be a randomizer, it doesn't feel like, like, I have no idea. Like, am I supposed to try with strength? Am I supposed to try to do a weak spin? Does it make any difference at all? Other than just like how long it takes for the spin to go? I don't think it does at all. I don't think that there is any strategy or reason to try and do a strong spin over a weak spin. It's just like there to be like, yeah, see, it's a video game.

12:15 I don't think that there's any strategy to it, but I do think it's necessary just so that like every time you boot up the game, you don't get the same sequence. Like it just is the random number generator for this. Sure. Yeah. That's the only reason I could think that it exists.

12:30 Add that randomness. Yeah. And I guess rather than just having like internal dice that are being rolled, at least it like feels like you have a little bit of agency in the randomness.

12:43 Another thought on the, I guess, strategy side of things or just gameplay elements. It's in Jeopardy, there are the, you know, 500, 400, 300, 200, 100. You choose the amount of money that you want to go for. And we were talking, me and Sean, about how like, oh, maybe you want to clear off the 500s right away to see if you can rack up all that money. And then the computers really have to fight for the rest of it because that'd be a large lead for you. In Wheel of Fortune, the strategy revolves around a spinning wheel. So there is very little you can do to prevent a bankruptcy. It truly is chance.

13:18 But even still, the amount of money that is on the board is confusing from a, I don't know, from like even just the game itself giving you the option of spinning between 150, 200, 250, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, 1000. And there's just so many possible different numbers that even the scores that come out to don't necessarily feel like they lead to close battles because somebody could easily

13:47 provide just as much information on the board with like really low spins, like 150, 200, 250 only. And then another guy just gets the 1000, picks the letter S, gets two of them, and then solves the puzzle and wins all the money. And I think that could be solved if there was just less numbers between, like if there was just 250, 500, 750, 1000.

14:11 Yeah, now you're talking about redesigning Wheel of Fortune, but like this game isn't called a letter word guesser game called Wheel of Fortune. It's about the randomness and the kind of pushing your luck and accidentally going bankrupt. And then you have to buy the easy letters because that's the way the world works. I think it's sort of going for something there. Whoever designed Wheel of Fortune in the whatever year it was, it's not about making a balanced game. I don't think.

14:49 Yeah, I'll be honest. I can't remember if there was ever even a time where I actually sat down and watched a full episode of Wheel of Fortune to really see how like the how the contestants do against each other. But I imagine if this is a problem in this game, this is something that happens in Wheel of Fortune, which has been on the air for how long for many years now, meaning that like it doesn't seem like many viewers have an issue with it. Unless unless that is something that somehow is corrected in actual Wheel of Fortune that this game could do.

15:22 Well, I think the difference there is just that they have actual money on the board. Like there's a they're playing for something real. And so, you know, these these various amounts actually like mean something like it's a meaningful difference between them. And it's not that like points don't matter as much as money in a video game. It's just that because the spread of the numbers is so wide between that, you know, could theoretically be the unlucky guy who gets the 150 and the 200, which is only a $50 difference.

15:51 But meanwhile, there's also a $1,000 thing on the board. It just creates like to Sean's point, unbalanced gameplay that is more exciting when there's real money on the line and not just like, well, I can reset the game if the computer just got too far away. Yeah, that's that's true. You know, I mean, nothing, you know, your whole I know you weren't saying that points don't matter as much as money in a video game. But I think that we're the three best audience members to agree with you on that, because we always say how we hate the points or we don't pay attention to points.

16:22 But I think that even to like further prove that point, there's a mode in this game where you don't even play against the computer. You just play against yourself. You just keep racking up points until you win. And like, it doesn't matter. You win no matter how many points you have. But you can still lose out on the grand prize. Yeah, it's the trip to Washington.

16:53 And the game does slightly change for the third speed up round where you only spin the wheel once. and then every letter is worth that dollar value. So it's just like you either guess the letters and get that money or if you don't guess a letter that's on the board, it then goes to the next person. So that changes the game a little bit because it does become a speed competition to guess the word correctly because you only get to pick one letter, then you have to solve or else it goes to the next person. And I kind of wonder why the whole game isn't like that at a certain point. You could just keep spinning and drawing this whole thing out and yes, there's the risk of a bankruptcy,

17:35 but otherwise with a board as large as that with many different value dollars on there, it's kind of like this is for me, this was the exciting round where I was actually thinking about trying to solve it before figuring out most of it. Well, I don't know about you, Mike, but when I was a kid, I just liked to watch the wheels spin. And I think that the wheel spinning also serves to pad out the time of the program. So yes, in the video game version, I'd very much prefer this sort of one and done or solve situation, but that's just not a simulation enough for the Wheel of Fortune purists.

18:18 Which we know there are many. Oh, I'm sure. But I think that the other problem, not problem with it, but the thing that we had the same problem with the first one too. Like I don't want to keep reiterating problems we had with the first time, but like the time it gives you to like to input your answers, like if you're solving, the time it gives you to input that is short. And I'm sure it's short like that on Wheel of Fortune, but like in this game, if you take five seconds to think about,

18:51 if you take five seconds to think about like what, okay, what letters do I need? What is the saying? And you're like, oh, I got it. I know exactly what to do. That five seconds might've made it so it's actually like impossible for you to solve depending on how long the word is because the keyboard is so not ideal that you have to go around and select it. Like on actual Wheel of Fortune, you take five seconds and maybe you still have a time limit, but you take five seconds and you get it and you can just say it out loud. You don't have to like, you don't have to scroll through a bunch of letters and select each one and watch it float up slowly for some reason.

19:25 Sean, the Wheel of Fortune wheel, which is the second most exciting thing about Wheel of Fortune other than Vanna is that, you know, in real life, that is sparkly. It's big. It makes a fun, it makes a fun sound. Yeah. You know, like it's very like, ooh, what's it gonna land on? And that, you know, and then you get the bankrupt thing and, you know, that pipe flute thing is, you know, that's great. You know, like these are all fantastic things that are lost to me on the presentational aspect because of the graphics that we have and the lack of Pat Sajak. Where is he? I don't know. Yeah, they should have a Pat Sajak edition. But now I can only think of your, your Brugrat's Pat Sajak.

20:11 I'm imagining that's what exactly what he would look like. Tough to believe that the Rugrats could get Pat Sajak, but Rare couldn't. But Wheel of Fortune the game can't. Yes. And they never really say that's Vanna, right? No. It's Vanna White, not Vanna Wright.

20:30 Sorry. Did I say, did I say Vanna White? Never mind. Oh, okay. Yes, but you didn't mean it. It was a stupid joke. You can leave this hidden. Oh, I get it. I get it. That's so good. I'm leaving the whole thing in. I'm confused too, and now I'm learning. Great. But yeah, to your point about the wheel,

20:49 it's not even large, like relative to the screen. It only takes up like a third of the screen. At least fill up the whole screen and make it like a big wheel. Yeah, you know what? If they would have redesigned this so that like you only see the top half of the wheel so they could add some extra bits to it, like I don't need to see the bottom upside down half. Yeah. Isn't that what it's like on the show? Don't they just have the camera over it? They need better camera angles of the wheel in this game, Mike. That would make this essential.

21:22 The wheel is the biggest point though, because look at the box for this game. It's just the wheel. They're not even, they're not showing the board with the cool, like if you guys remember it used to be. Vanna wouldn't just touch them. She'd actually have to spin the tiles. And then she just got to touch them. Now I think she doesn't even walk over to them. But what do I know? What does she do? She like point to them from afar? She's like, yeah, with a long stick. She has a long stick. She's on her, she's got an app on her phone and she just selects them.

21:57 You know what's weird? What is weird, Mike? On the sequels and spinoff side, we have a whole nother Wheel of Fortune game to go on the NES. Pat Sajak Edition? So Sean, you were guessing Pat Sajak Edition. Joe, what were you guessing? Wheel of Fortune Infants.

22:15 No, seriously, think about it. We made the adult version. We've made the junior version. Now it's time to merge the two together, get the parents and the kids together for family edition. Oh. I thought you were going to say senior edition. So it's just both sets of answers in one cartridge. I don't know what it's going to be, but I'd like to say now, this is the only chance they have to get Wheel of Fortune upgraded on our list because this game is the first game just for kids. The family edition better not just be the same thing, but for families. Because also, why would you limit your audience to families?

22:59 What about a single folk? Right. Or me. Or, no, I would say, like, even if you're just two people, you know, you have to have, like, kids now to understand. Okay. How about Chosen Family Edition?

23:16 But also, if you're right and it's, oh, it's just the questions from both, it doesn't really make any sense because if their logic was, okay, the kids can't understand the words from regular Wheel of Fortune, we need a junior edition. Now, if you mix them both together, the adults have a huge advantage because 50% of the words, the kids apparently wouldn't understand. It's like, Dad, who's Gnome Chomsky?

23:42 But, you know, thinking about it, this game was made by adults probably to rig it so they can just, like, destroy their kids in Wheel of Fortune. Are you sure this one wasn't made by kids? You know what? I actually haven't looked that up or fact-checked it. I'm sorry. I spoke out of turn. Do you have any dev notes for this, Mike? Rare made it, just like they make all the other stuff, but man, are they really, like, they are just half-ass in these game show games. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I will say, you know, not to make this the episode where we also talk about Wheel of Fortune Family Edition, but just a quick look at the box art, it bodes really well for Sean because it's got half the wheel

24:20 and the board. Wow. Is there any Vanna? No, but the board already has successfully spelled out Wheel of Fortune. Now, if I was the marketer, I maybe would have left some of those letters out so that it's fun to, like, also guess them because Wheel of Fortune is on the box as well and on the back of the box and on the side of the box, so just leave a little bit up to the imagination, tease us a little bit. Sean, I heard that you might have prepared a giant wheel that we could spin to find out what the next segment of the show is going to be. Yeah, I'm going to spin that right now for you.

25:00 And would you look at that? It's the Essential Games list.

25:08 Sean, you spun the wheel. You go first. What's your vote? R. No, no, no, no. It's the Essential Games list. In this one, you just say whether it's essential or not. Oh, okay. It is not essential.

25:27 Oh, great, great. And then we go to Joe. Yeah, I mean, obviously, I'm not going to vote this Essential. I don't think that I could even get past just the seven-second time limit to fill in your letter, let alone, like, just how sort of mundane the game feels in general, especially because it is exactly the same as a game we've already played.

25:53 So, no, not essential. I'll just add that these are the kinds of games that nowadays you can just play on your mobile phone or just, you know, other word games have dominated the mobile phone craze and of all that. I don't know what Wheel of Fortune Junior Edition on the NES from 1989 could offer anybody today. And that's what the Essential Games list is all about. Whether it was, like, a good game at the time or even just, like, one of those games that you buy

26:21 just because, like, you know, you rent it on a Friday night with your family and, which you should have bought the Family Edition, I suppose, but let's just pretend that it didn't come out yet. You just bought it with your family or rented it from Blockbuster. You're coming home, you have pizza, you watch a movie, you play some Wheel of Fortune Junior Edition. I'm sure, for some people, that's a good vibe. But as an actual video game, they could have done so much more here and so it gets both a bad review and a clearly not essential. Well, one thing I will say about this game and games like it is that it kind of is essential because if it didn't exist, you wouldn't get this half hour of top grade A listenable content.

27:00 That's true. And we'll be back with more top grade A listenable content, as Sean would say, next week when we do our very next game, 720 Degrees. Do you have to say the degree out loud? Can it just be 720? It's the skateboarding. I would. Is it 720? Or is it 720? Oh. I think it's 720. Or 720. 720 not. 720. 720 little zero up in the corner. That's how it's pronounced. That's right. Made by,

27:33 what's his name? Kingdom Hearts. Yeah. This is just the... Nobuo. Yeah, Tetsuya Nomura. Tetsuya Nomura. Nobuo is the composer for Final Fantasy. I don't know what the... I don't know what I'm talking about. Yoko Shinomura is the composer.

27:49 I was gonna say Tony Hawk, but... Tony Hawk will also compose some Kingdom Hearts music, I'm sure. Yeah, 720 is a skateboarding game. It's only the tip of the iceberg what we've talked about so far. We're actually gonna talk about the game next time, which could be great because we didn't talk much about the Wheel of Fortune game here. We also talk about other games, specifically ones that didn't come out in North America.

28:12 Gasp. That's the whole point of this podcast. We have another podcast called Nostalgia Bites for Patreons only. You can go to patreon.com slash nostalgia and there you can check out our Bites episodes. We've recorded a bunch already, I think seven as of the time of this episode, but we've got a lot more coming. We've got Pac-Land, we've got Starluster,

28:39 Boku, yeah, Boku Suka Wars. Like Boku Suka Wars. It sounds like you're on like an AI generating, there's like an AI generating video game titles. I'll just say that Boku Suka Wars being announced as a Bites episode is a, you heard it here first, folks, that hasn't even been announced yet. I didn't even know. Yeah, you're right. You just announced it. You know, it makes me feel kind of unimportant as a host that I'm on the same level as our listeners right now. I'd say we're a little slightly below.

29:12 Right. And also for the patrons, if Nostalgia Bites wasn't enough for you, we have a discord where everybody talks and hangs out and we recently played six player Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Shredders Revenge co-op and beat the game all in one sitting. It was great. We did chatting and all that. Okay. Yep. Great job, Sean. Well, next time we look forward to seeing you there. I'll be there next time. Right.

29:35 And also, thanks to the patrons and thanks to everybody who listens to the show, really. We've updated our website www.nostalgiacast.com in the episodes tab. What is no longer really bad HTML now leads to a very incredible eight tab Google spreadsheet where you can see every episode that we've ever recorded, every episode we're going to record, what our comments were on it, what we who voted for what and also like what developers are good and bad based on the research we have. That's right. I can say definitively that Konami has released nine bad games but 20 total. So do the math and that means they're a pretty good developer.

30:17 That's about 50%. And we are almost 33% done with this show. Not this episode, the whole show. The whole show. The idea of the show. Yeah. Oh, wow. That kind of feel they have urgency to live life. Yeah, we got to slow it down a little bit. You know, maybe an episode a month. We'll be right back.