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The Price Is Right DVD Game

The Amazon blurb:
‘Come on Down’ and take your place on Contestants Row! With up to four players and two different game-types, this hilarious DVD game allows the whole family to participate in the nation’s most popular TV game-show! Experience the winning formula of THE PRICE IS RIGHT in the ‘TV Show’ game - up to four players battle it out in a series of rounds to see who gets their Showcase Showdown! Or for something a bit different try ‘Joe’s Challenge’ - this game combines elements from THE PRICE IS RIGHT in an exciting new variation for two players.

Hang on!
"The nation's most popular TV game-show?"

How does it work?
Choose from three players, four players or the two players Joe's Challenge. The three and four player game works a bit like the TV show - bid on an item (although by bidding, you pick from one of five choices), and the person who is closest to the actual price goes through to play a pricing game, and then on to the Showcase Showdown. Keep going until all but one of you are through to the Showcase Showdown, everyone spin the wheel, and the person closest to 100 in one spin (or a combination of two!) gets to play the Showcase, and if you spin exactly 100 you have the chance to go for a car. Wooh!

The Rangefinder works completely at random, you get your showcase and then you select the price from one of ten options. If your guess is within range but not over then you win! You win a chance to enter a text message competition.

The two players Joe's Challenge is a bit different. You bid for items like before, and the winner gets to play a pricing game. The first to three won pricing games goes through to the wheel and possibly the Showcase Showdown, unless something goes wrong which we don't remember, in which case they've got to play another pricing game to get another go.

Is it good?

  • It doesn't use the proper theme tune, instead it's a hilarious "interpretation." Rubbish.
  • You don't really get to bid for things as so much as pick one of the five multiple choices. Now, I get the feeling that they've not bothered recording a "ooh, you've all overbid" message, so I largely suspect the person who picks the second highest price will always win it. Rubbish.
  • They have... a selection of pricing games on offer, some work better than others, although that's not saying much really. Most games boil down to multiple-choice bore fests, for example Pick-a-Pair doesn't have you picking just ANY old two items from the four, but you must pick one of the four paired up options. Hole in One, which I thought was an interesting choice for a DVD game (how was that going to work?) has you picking one of four pre-determined orders, and then hilariously gives you no input as to putting the ball at all as your mysterious computer bloke does it for you. Rubbish.
  • Cliffhanger has Pasquale saying that the mountain climber will climb one step for every five pounds you're off the actual price. The items are then groceries with the prices in pence, and in actual fact you'll move one step for every penny you're off. Rubbish.
  • The graphics are rubbish. The film looks very very heavily compessed, and the computer graphics (Joe giving instructions in front of a blue screen coloured in to look like the studio, all the prizes) wouldn't have looked impressive in 1996, let alone 2006. Rubbish.
  • And the prizes repeat themselves an awful lot. The same pool that are used for the descriptions are also used for the pricing game prizes. On several occasions, these were exactly the same prizes, with exactly the same Peter Dickson voiceover. Rubbish.
  • And the games repeat themselves a lot too. With exactly the same options as you had the time before. Rubbish.
  • You press a button to spin the wheel and it probably determines the value at random. We'll let that off. However, apparently if you score 100 exactly you get a chance to go for the car. Well no, you're shown a picture of a car and... nothing else happens. Rubbish.
  • The Showcase doesn't work too badly, but it's the only time you're told the price of anything in the whole game other than grocery items, the one bids merely ending in "you've won Player X!" However, the Rangefinder doesn't do anything when you tell it to, it stops on its own accord. How hard could it have been to have you press OK to stop a flashing light? Rubbish.
  • Joe's Challenge is boring and tedious, if the proper multi-player wasn't enough fun for you, well now you can play pricing games potentially to your hearts content. Forever possibly, we had lost the will to live before seeing it through. Rubbish.
  • Basically, playtesting this DVD is possibly the most harrowing thing I've ever had to endure in my entire life. And I've played Spell Interactive. Rubbish.
  • Rubbish.

Whatever Amazon is selling it for, it isn't worth it.