Wheel of Fortune (PC) Review

Date purchased: Unknown
Price paid: Unknown
Dates played: Nov. 12, 2014
Playtime: ~1h
Date reviewed: Nov. 12, 2014
Date posted: Dec. 13, 2022
Rating: 7/10

1988 Second Edition from ShareData.

Pretty good, considering how old it is. I played this (and Jeopardy!) a lot back then off of 5.25" floppy. It has everything that was part of the actual game show back then, and it doesn't do anything poorly. It just shows the game board with all the letters (deleting them as they are used) underneath, an overhead of the wheel, and lists the contestants' names and how much they've won in the round and overall, as well as space for showing how many Free Spins each contestant has. Really, everything you need. It does have Vanna White clapping as you spin and she walks across flipping the letters, even slightly kneeling for the lowest row. You're stuck with PC speaker, but it's not that bad -- it opens with the WoF theme and plays "The Stars and Stripes Forever" when you win a round, both of which are well done for coming from the PC speaker. I don't know how many clues it has, but it seems to have enough to where you probably won't see a repeat for a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time.

Since there are only 4 prizes you can go for in the Bonus Round, I just played until I won all of them -- Luxury Bedroom Set, American Sports Car, 17' Fishing Boat, and Dream Vacation (with the Dream Vacation having the highest value at a little over $11,000). Took me 6 or 7 games to win all four. That put my total winnings over $300k since I already was a 21-time returning champion with about $225k when I started. I don't know how many returning champions it saves since my save file only has me and one other person.

The only bad thing I can say about it is that the computer contestants will pick odd letters (starting out with K, for instance), have a tendency to pick letters already used (while I was playing, one picked C twice in a row... in the same turn), and will somewhat quickly just start choosing letters in alphabetical order. If you have 3 people, this version still does a good enough job to where I would have no problems recommending it. It'll only take about 10-15 minutes to play an entire game.