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Author Topic: Spin the Wheel review  (Read 3142 times)

whewfan

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Spin the Wheel review
« on: June 21, 2019, 10:40:38 AM »
Nobody has said anything about the show on here yet, so here it goes. I won't go into too much detail of how the game is played, as that would just be "TL/DR", so I'll give a more general description.

The format: You have a wheel that is a much larger ripoff of the Big Spin Wheel. A contestant answers 16 questions to try to add money to the wheel. Starting in round 3, "Back to Zero" spaces are added, and an extra person is added. In the third round, that extra person decides whether or not to double the stakes for the question. After the third round, more "Back To Zeros" could potentially be added on, and also in later rounds, negative dollar figures are also added. The last four spins, the extra person comes into play, and decides on whether to take the "walk away" money or not with each remaining spin.

One more thing about the wheel: The contestant has no control over the strength of the wheel's spin, so the contestant barely has to TOUCH it to get it to start.

Dax Shepard: He's a decent host. Dax seems into the game, he seems to care about what's going on, he's not an "actor acting like a game show host." So if anything, he's not over the top, and he's not lacking in energy either. In terms with how he conducts the game, I am glad he doesn't draw out unnecessary suspense upon revealing the answers to the questions... he just cuts to the chase, I like that. He also doesn't cut to commercial before revealing the correct answer, and the show doesn't cut to commercial just before the wheel completes its spin, so there, the show gets good marks.

The Q&A is standard stuff... questions aren't TOO hard, but it doesn't really set it apart from any other game out there either.

Justin Timberlake's intro is longer than it needed to be, but what the hey, he's a big name, he's the producer.

The contestants, it seems, are ones with inflated back stories, and not "people like you and me." Yes we want a reason to root for the contestant, but not every person should be some extraordinary hero, come from very hard circumstances, etc.

For me, despite the inflated dollar figures and increased risks, the game did nothing for me to become more compelled or more excited, or give any reason to really root for the player. I'd say, maybe half way through, it did seem a bit "wash, rinse, and repeat." I won't likely watch more shows. It's not at all horrible, but for me it wasn't that great either.






TLEberle

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Re: Spin the Wheel review
« Reply #1 on: June 21, 2019, 10:46:51 AM »
“I won’t go into every detail, but here’s every detail.”
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whewfan

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Re: Spin the Wheel review
« Reply #2 on: June 21, 2019, 12:11:13 PM »
What I meant was, the more details of the gameplay itself, the blue wedges that can be converted into higher dollar figures for a correct answer and "back to zero" wedges if answered incorrectly, the number of "back to zero" wedges that could be added on depending on the wager and if answered wrong.. the increased dollar figures for each round, how the walk away amounts differ depending on the outcome (I assume, but could be wrong, that the walk away amount could DECREASE, but we didn't see that scenario last night.)  and the other details that in the review, I felt made the synopsis of how the game works too lengthy, and besides, if one wanted to watch the game in its entirety for the details, that's up to them.

I should've said, instead, that what I gave before was a more condensed overview. I guess I didn't care enough for the game to give every single little nuance.


TLEberle

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Re: Spin the Wheel review
« Reply #3 on: June 21, 2019, 02:57:11 PM »
One more thing about the wheel: The contestant has no control over the strength of the wheel's spin, so the contestant barely has to TOUCH it to get it to start.
I wanted to call attention to this (not the least of which because you continue to shout at us in CAPS LOCK rather than using bold or italics to emphasize a point:

The title of the show is Spin the Wheel. There's a big beautiful wheel at center stage commanding everyone's attention, but the player doesn't really do anything different than pull a lever and yell "C'mon jokers!" This seemed at best a counterintuitive oversight. Shrink the wheel down to eight or twelve feet in diameter and allow contestants to give it a spin.

The most/best praise I can give to the show is that it is employing people to work on it.
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whewfan

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Re: Spin the Wheel review
« Reply #4 on: June 21, 2019, 04:32:54 PM »
I think that the key is to have a premise that doesn't seem so repetitive to watch on a daily (or in this case, weekly) basis, and that the show's gimmick isn't exactly the focusof the game.

The Joker's Wild had a larger than life slot machine (the gimmick). The game worked because it wasn't just spinning a slot machine. The outcome of each spin determines what category you choose, and Jokers, you can do several things with. The bonus game was basically all luck, "man vs. machine." Fast forward also added possibilities, as well as the other specialty categories, Mystery, How Low do you Go?, and Stumpers.

The Magnificent Marble Machine had a larger than life pinball machine (the gimmick). However, that game didn't really work so well because with the technology available, it's hard to follow a very large ball as it bounces against bumpers and other bells and what-nots. A large, lighted back board kept track of any prizes won. Here, the pinball machine was the "larger draw", as the main game didn't really offer much beyond crossword puzzle type clues to words. The thing is, how exciting is it really to watch someone play pinball, even if it was a monster sized machine? The cameras had to stay at a wide shot to have any hope of capturing what was going on. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy it. The one episode I saw, I liked it for what it was, but I am not sure I would watch it every day.

The funny thing about Wheel of Fortune, from Peter Marshall's perspective (as he has said in his book) was that he couldn't help but think "Who would watch a game that is nothing but watching a wheel spin?" (The wheel in the pilot was loosely calibrated and seemed to spin forever. Once the show became a series, they got a stage hand to help slow down the wheel from below, until they figured out a way to add weight to the wheel so it didn't spin for such a long time.) Of course, the draw of Wheel is the puzzles. Prizes and cash are nice too, but without the puzzles, we'd have... well... Spin the Wheel.


BrandonFG

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Re: Spin the Wheel review
« Reply #5 on: June 21, 2019, 04:44:42 PM »
I think the difference between two of those three games you mention is that, while the chrome sits at center stage, there's still some game surrounding the larger than life set piece. TJW has questions determined by the amount on the board; Wheel has Hangman; Marble Machine had the same problem as Spin the Wheel: the chrome hopes to make up for a weak game and fails. Not that Joker or Wheel are rock-solid formats, but at least there's enough filler to make you forget, plus it's not stretched across an entire hour.

Now that primetime game shows are going back to the idea of having two or three people compete against one another, and mostly divide the show into two half hours, I'm remembering just how tiring the One vs. The House for 42 minutes format really is.
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JasonA1

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Re: Spin the Wheel review
« Reply #6 on: June 21, 2019, 05:45:24 PM »
The funny thing about Wheel of Fortune, from Peter Marshall's perspective (as he has said in his book) was that he couldn't help but think "Who would watch a game that is nothing but watching a wheel spin?" (The wheel in the pilot was loosely calibrated and seemed to spin forever. Once the show became a series, they got a stage hand to help slow down the wheel from below, until they figured out a way to add weight to the wheel so it didn't spin for such a long time.)

You're confusing parts of the story. They put a guy under the wheel to slow it down for the pilot, because it's a pilot, and they could do that sort of thing. They improved the wheel pointers by the time they went to series.

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Joe Mello

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Re: Spin the Wheel review
« Reply #7 on: June 21, 2019, 06:36:43 PM »
The title of the show is Spin the Wheel. There's a big beautiful wheel at center stage commanding everyone's attention, but the player doesn't really do anything different than pull a lever and yell "C'mon jokers!" This seemed at best a counterintuitive oversight. Shrink the wheel down to eight or twelve feet in diameter and allow contestants to give it a spin.
I do wonder how much you can scale down while still able to do all-LED everything. I just pulled up an episode of The Big Spin for reference and that wheel looks to be about 8 feet. The spaces look too tiny to waste LED's on.
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TLEberle

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Re: Spin the Wheel review
« Reply #8 on: June 23, 2019, 06:48:26 PM »
Not that Joker or Wheel are rock-solid formats, but at least there's enough filler to make you forget, plus it's not stretched across an entire hour.
I would posit that most game shows don't have format issues. Joker's Wild and Wheel of Fortune don't pretend to be anything that they aren't but you take an interesting enough game and either competent hosting or the fact that the host didn't matter that the show works. Spin the Wheel doesn't really have anything going for it other than the giant wheel and commas on the scoreboard--it's basically a Michael Bay movie in game show form. It'll be gone by September and likely forgotten, but again it is nice that people are able to work on a project.
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