Whammies Were Funny to Everyone but the One Losing the Money
If you were curious about Press Your Luck, it was one of my personal favorites growing up, along with Jeopardy, Classic Concentration (both with Alex Trebek on them when I watched them), The Price Is Right, and Scrabble (oh, but that theme song was evil, Chuck). Here's the first part of the episode that made Press Your Luck especially famous. Listen for the Whammy sounds, as well as the beeboob...
If you were curious about Press Your Luck, it was one of my personal favorites growing up, along with Jeopardy, Classic Concentration (both with Alex Trebek on them when I watched them), The Price Is Right, and Scrabble (oh, but that theme song was evil, Chuck).
Here's the first part of the episode that made Press Your Luck especially famous. Listen for the Whammy sounds, as well as the beeboobeep of the big board. Without them, the game falls a bit flat, if you ask me:
And I always thought there was a weird contrast between the jokey nature of the Whammies, and the fact that they basically robbed a contestant of all their money and put them one step closer to being permanently eliminated. Kinda messed up.
I admire what Ubisoft is trying to do, and sometimes the tone is good with those games, but I feel like they look a bit too shallow. I guess it depends on how it goes down with your buddies while you're playing. One of the great innovations is that now you can download new questions; that was always a problem with trivia games in the past. Even though the devil muppet from that British quiz game looks like he wants to swallow my soul, that game design is actually pretty decent. The Ubisoft revitalizations are hit or miss, it seems, since they put emphasis on the prizes you'll never win, rather than on the trivia itself.
Game shows make good party games though, so I hope more people will try to refine the designs further to match the format.