Customer Reviews

Press Your Luck DVD

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

When you walk into a video store and see games that are playable on a standard DVD player, you have to realize that these machines were not designed to play games - just menus and movies. So it's no surprise that there's going to be sacrifices made when trying to incorporate gameplay into what boils down to fancy menu navigation.

The "Press Your Luck" DVD game does remarkably well given the limitations. Todd Newton (who hosted the GSN remake of PYL, by the way), does a fine job of hosting. While you can't buzz in and answer the questions like the original show, the game solves this by giving each player at least one opportunity to answer a question for 3 spins, while the other players attempt to get one. The questions were challenging but not impossible, a treat when you remember how simple the trivia was on the original show.

Where "Press Your Luck" stumbles, unfortunately, is the Big Board round. Forget about using any strategy while playing - it's utterly and completely random. The bouncing lights and shifting slides are only for decoration. What you "land on" is determined by the same principles employed when choosing a card from a fanned-out deck. Would it even be possible for the game to play like the show on a DVD player? You know: one box at a time in a seemingly random but actually complex patterns, prizes and whammies shifting in set intervals. I really couldn't tell you for certain.

Less severe, but still nagging is the fact that you have to remember what the scores are on your own. The game doesn't remind you of opponents' winnings, which may mean the difference between spinning or passing.

Speaking of "passing": the game doesn't (or can't) employ the spin/pass rules that are detrimental to the strategy of past real-life contestants. On the show, when you are passed spins, you must take them until you use them up, earn them though extra spin spaces, or hit a Whammy. In the DVD game, it seems you have the option of passing "passed" spins back to someone else immediately - though there's a limit of one pass per round.

Also, it should be noted - the player with the most money should go LAST according to the show's rules (an advantage). The DVD game makes that person go first. Not detrimental really but worth noting.

On the plus side, the new Whammy animations are quite amusing and it's been something sorely missed from the otherwise brilliant homebrew versions fans have made and posted to the internet.

Overall, if you can get it for around $10, it's worth a look. The trivia is more than adequate and the threat of hitting a Whammy when you're in the lead and have just been passed a spin adds to the excitement and tension. Hard-core fans of the TV show, however, may be griping too much to enjoy it on the same level.

Back in the 1980's game shows seemed to be at the high points of television. Still, there are very few games that were original and straight from the heart, while there were so many shows that've been revived. Classics like Family Feud had a second coming with then host, Ray Combs who tragically died in 1996, few classics like Scrabble were organic that delivered. More remakes like Name That Tune, Card Sharks & The Newlywed Game had new versions, and it seemed like the end of original shows. Press Your Luck was one of the few that broke that mold. During the shows' 3 year run on CBS from 1983-1986, it brought so much joy and laughter from the late host Peter Tomarken, who sadly was killed in a plane crash in 2006, and those irrestible pesky but always loving whammies!!. Now, the often overshadowed game show has finally been made into a DVD board game, but does it actually deliver?

Press Your Luck, is the latest in a long line of game shows being released on DVD, as a video game. The game adaptation of the classic show does a mostly adequate job of reintroducing a great game show to a whole new audience. The game features Todd Newton as the host, who is also no stranger to game shows on the computer and DVD. He was the host of GSN's revised version of the classic show, Whammy!: The All New Press Your Luck, and delivered as the guest host for the DVD game of The Price Is Right, and for Family Feud from Global Star on the Playstation 2, and P.C. Todd delivers nicely in the place Peter left behind as host, and delivers a unique and down to Earth appeal in introducing the game to new gamers. The questions that you earn spins to the board range from general knowledge, to pop culture in movies and entertainment. When you complete the question round, you take your spins to the big board for big bucks.

The producers did a great job of remastering and designing the classic look the show brought to viewers from the 80's, all the way to the great ways the whammy takes your money from a basketball player, to a whammy from outer space invading Earth. Still, there are a few disadvantages though to the game that makes gameplay a miss to die hard fans. The first disadvantage is that the game sometimes losses control on the spin count. The spin count doesn't seperate the spins that were passed to one contestant, and the ones that were earned from the question rounds. That does make that confusion tough for those who're keeping count on strategy with all the spins they're playing. Another disadvantage does deal with passed spins. On the classic game show itself, if you had any passed spins left over after you stopped a spin on a whammy, the passed spins would transfer into the earned column, allowing you to have the control to either play them or pass them to another player. Because of that flaw, it makes the gameplay a bit tougher to play and mistakes spins as spins you'd still be forced to take afterwards.

Although there were a couple of errors, Press Your Luck tries and mostly delivers on a great game show that continues to reach audiences young and old, which currently has been a part of the lineup on Game Show Network. I just wish some things could've delivered better. If you haven't seen the original show before, it is a welcome buy for DVD owners, but you might have a hard time finding this in the stores, where other games like Deal Or No Deal and The Newlywed Game or in much more toy aisles.

Graphics: B+

Gameplay: C+

Price: B-

Fun & Enjoyment: C+ for solo players; B- for multiplayer action

Overall: B-

I thought this game was terrible. There is really no "stopping" the board, you just press a button and the game randomly selects a "square" for you (a chapter on the DVD) and that's the prize you supposedly landed on. It's really lame.

This was alot of fun to play. We laughed so hard when we got hit by whammies. Great way to spend a rainy afternoon.

This game is just like the TV show fun as all get out. Great game for family night to get the kids involved.

I bought this because my children and I like to watch the show on GSN, so I thought this would be a fun game to play. I was a little skeptical after reading some of the reviews, but I figured I'd try it. For the most part, it was worth it. The game is pretty fun, and my children love to play it! Some of the questions are a little tough, but their favorite part is the big board anyway.
The few problems I have with the game is that it can drag on for quite some time during the question part. The questions also tend to repeat a little, which will at some point ruin the fun of earning spins. These things I can deal with, though. The worst part is that out of about 7 or 8 times of playing so far, 2 of those times I had to restart the game in the middle of it because it declared player 4 the winner when we weren't done, and there wasn't a 4th player!
Aside from the aggravation of that it is fun for my little ones. If I were playing against teenagers or adults I'm sure it wouldn't be as fun, but for my 4 and 9 year old it's fine.

This game totally brought me back to the TV show I used to watch years ago. Its really fun, and it looks like Imagination has added in some twists to the game that makes it more interesting. Highly recommended!!

I absolutely loved this game! I didn't think Imagination Games would be able to capture all of the great elements that made Press Your Luck the great game show it is, but they did. Fans of the game show will enjoy playing the DVD game.

We watched press your luck onTV with our kids all the time when they were little and we all loved it, now we play this with our grandkids and we have so much fun and they laugh sooooo hard. It is GREAT!! Thanks This game is the best!!!

I read the reviews for the dvd game, and still decided to buy it to see for myself. I bought the game at a discount store for $5, so I didn;t feel like I had as much to lose with this.

However, the gameplay goes VERY slow and the host Todd Newton can get very annoying at times. You can;t employ any strategy because the big board is just a wait screen until you hit the button to stop. There are 3 rounds of spinning and only an amount of questions based on the number of players you have playing.

Overall, I give it a C+, being the only upside was paying just $5 for it.