Now for a commentary-free playthrough of the game!
Unlike other video game versions of Wheel of Fortune, you only have two players. You also have two rounds, a speed-up round, and a bonus round. You can either play on your own, against the computer, or against a human opponent.
The Control Pad lets you select options, and A confirms.
At the start of a round, the starting player depends on what round it is. Player 1 goes first in the first round, and Player 2 goes first in the second round.
From here, you can enter the names of the players. You only have a five-character limit. Use the Control Pad to choose letters, and press A to confirm. If you mess up a letter, go to "DEL" and press A. When you're done, go to "END."
You start out with no money, so you'll have to spin. Use Left and Right on the Control Pad to move the square along the bar. The further to the right the box is, the stronger your spin. Press A to spin the wheel. To see what you're going to land on, look at the box at the bottom of the screen. If you land on a numerical value, you'll be able to guess a consonant. If a consonant is in the puzzle, you'll get the number of points that you landed on for each appearance of the letter in the puzzle. For example, if you land on 300, guess there is an "L" in the puzzle and three L's show up, you'll get 900 points.
You can also buy a vowel for 250 points, and you'll lose those points regardless of whether the vowel is in the puzzle or not...so be careful. By buying vowels, however, you can open up the puzzle quite a bit.
If you guess a letter incorrectly, your turn is over, and it will be the other player's turn. If you land on Miss Turn on the wheel, your turn will also end. If you land on Bankrupt on the wheel, your turn is over and you also lose all of the points you have collected. From there, the other player plays until they guess a wrong consonant.
If you know what the puzzle is, you can solve it. If you solve the puzzle correctly, you keep all the points you've collected for that round.
R, S, T, L, N and E are the most commonly used letters in the English language. Keep that in mind.
After two rounds, you'll go to the speed-up round. The wheel is spun one final time, and whatever it lands on is the number of points you get for each successful letter guessed. Vowels are worth nothing, and consonants are worth whatever the wheel lands on. From here, both players guess letters until one is able to correctly solve the puzzle.
Whoever has the most total points from this and the previous two rounds at the end of the speed-up round is the winner and will go on to the bonus round. From there, you can use Down and Start to select your prize, then you can guess five consonants and a vowel (I stick to R, S, T, L, N and E). If you solve the puzzle correctly, you'll get your prize, the game will be over, and you can press B and go back to the title screen where you can play this game all over again.
Now to nitpick this game. The music here is not the best, given that three people - who probably didn't know much about how to program the Game Boy - were involved in this game. The gameplay isn't the best, either, as pressing A to select what you want to do is sometimes delayed and you have to press A again to get the game to confirm it. You only have two players instead of three, you only have three rounds, and the AI for the computer player is not the best. Sadly, this is the only Wheel of Fortune game to appear on Game Boy, and would be the only one on a Nintendo handheld until the Nintendo DS came out. Also, you have to pay attention during the speed-up round so you don't accidentally miss your turn. Other than that, it's a passable version of the game, but even then, there were better versions of the game on consoles and computers, and there definitely still are. At least this one has its place in history as the first portable way to play the game on a popular electronic gadget...so at least, there's that.
No comments:
Post a Comment