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Whispers of Deal or No Deal

If you’ve been watching the show as of late you probably heard about it.
As if being a newly successful game show on primetime wasn’t enough for the show, now it was going to expand into gaming with a “handheld” version (if you can call whatever they slapped together “handheld”) and possibly a PC version (though I could have heard wrong). And, well, when I first heard whispers of that the first thing I thought was… what the hell?

This is not like Who Wants To Be A Millionaire (recently referenced in Shojo Beat 2-4’s chapter of Absolute Boyfriend), Jeopardy or (yes) even Win Ben Stein’s Money (which, thankfully, seemingly never generated it’s own video game version). I mean look at this show, this is the kind of thing you use as mini game content, and not a game unto itself deserving of it’s own release!
Starring Howie Mandell (he who now seemingly is fostering a Yasu (from VIZ’ Nana) look), you are given a chance to win up to $1,000,000 by simply following the following formula.

1-Enter the show (duh)

2-You are introduced to 26 cases, numbered (yes) 1 to 26. Attached to these cases (though not physically) is 26 extremely hot female models, who “babysit” the cases and open them as you pick them (more on that later). The models, by the way, are that sophisticated cute sexy hot who show a little but are not the s-word, just so you know.

3-Pick a case, and you’ll get a close look at one of those models as she delivers it down to you. This case is yours throughout the game, and will be yours when your done… if you do not sell the case first.

4-Start picking cases. You start out with 6 cases, and then lesser and lesser cases as you open them.
4a-Dollar amounts in the cases are varied. From $0.01, $1, $5, $10 and up all the way to $400,000, half a million, $750,000 and one million dollars. Your case could have one of these, and the only way to know which is to eliminate the other cases (and thus their respective dollar amounts from the board).
This is supposed to be simple enough, remove from the low end (left side of the board) and try to not remove excessively from the high end (right side of the board).

5-Yeah, good luck. Unlike other competitions where with and intelligence serves you well, the entire contest is a long slow dance with Lady Luck. There is no skill, pattern, rhyme or reason to this. You pick randomly, and achieve random results. Thus the entire game is you being at the mercy (or the victim of) luck.

6-After you open up x amount of cases you’ll be contacted by the mysterious banker. This figure, who sits in a high seat overlooking the stage (in some sort of “Executive booth” watching over all), “calls” in offers to Howie which is how much he’s going ot buy the case from the player. A good quick rule of thumb on this is that he’ll always make an offer that keeps the low numbers higher than the high numbers. Huh? I.e. if you take the totals on the board, and then place the offer on that board, you’ll have more totals below that offer than above for the most part.

6a-If you take the offer then the game’s over.
6b-If you say no to the offer you’ll have to pick x amount of cases until you’re down to two cases (yours and one last one on the stage). You can decide now to swap cases if you wish, otherwise you open your case or take the final offer and the game’s over.

This seems interesting on TV, but mark my words if you waste money for this on your PC (if such a version exists) you’ll be buying a one trick pony that’ll get old really really fast.
Now if this was part of a batch of game show related games, then yeah I could see you buying this. However as a stand alone offer I really would not even think twice about this thing, it would be “no deal” for me and that’s that. You might say different, but for the life of me I can’t see anyone seriously buying this no matter how much of an addict to the show they are.

Of course if the people who are shilling this game WANT to sell it I suggest they swallow pride and put together a selection of good gameshow games to go with this! If I were them I’d possibly not just limit this to the PC and put it on the handhelds with a few different gameshow choices to offer variety. I’d also utilize certain handhelds online capacity (the Nintendo DS and PSP) in order to offer up a “Game Show Central” where players can compete against each other or become the “audience” in online versions of the shows when they want a break or waiting for their slot to compete in certain shows. Here players meet, compete, and you form a community of gameshow watchers who’ll (in turn) increase viewership on participating shows which is a win-win for everyone.
Otherwise a stand alone Deal or No Deal game is going to be a one-trick pony, due to drop dead from lack of replay value before the day is done. Avoid it like you’d avoid tickets to Backgammon With The Stars.