Grabbed the TPIR tabletop game at my local Target. If owning your very own miniaturized Plinko board and Showcase Showdown Wheel is worth $30 to you, then by all means grab it. The rest of the games range from mildly interesting to achingly tedious. Clock Game is impossible given the keypad layout. Cliff Hangers is neat (yes, Hans yodels!), Grocery Game is pretty well done... the remaining games are pretty much a waste of effort. Really, how hard would it have been to swap Lucky Seven and Any Number for Magic Number and Pick-A-Pair?
My only other big gripe is that there's no place on the game unit itself to store the 175 cards and six tiny, tiny Plinko chips (seriously, they're about half the diameter of a Certs). You are provided with a flimsy plastic case in which everything can fit... I guess I just assumed there'd be a storage compartment under the unit itself. I also expected it to be a wee bit bigger, but it's not as if it's too small. The screen readouts are backlit and vivid, the graphics are very nice given the limitations of the unit, it runs on AA batteries... and it's Plinko! It's a freakin' Plinko board! No, the physics of the game aren't hampered by the smaller size... sure the chip falls a bit faster, but it's hardly a free fall; the unit was excellently crafted.
You might want to wait for the game to come down in price if you're not a fanatic, or if you're looking for more in-depth game play. Actually, combining this with the 2nd edition Endless TPIR game would give you the ultimate at-home Price simulation. I'm not usually impressed by electronic or DVD home editions, but this is a definite exception. I love it.
