Why the hell did you license that?

Wheel Of Fortune | Various | Various | Seemingly since the dawn of time

For the last time, games based on game shows are pointless. Suchprogrammes are always centred around limited and repetitious interaction and a very narrow set of rules, meaning that videogame versions are dull beyond belief and usually the kind of thing you could play with a pen and paper. Not only that but you have to spend a sizable lump of cash for the pleasure of not winning any money at all, and the prospect of infesting your living room with a digitised game show host is even more loathsome than having to put up with the real thing. At least on TV they have more than ten things to say before they start looping their dialogue.

Wheel Of Fortune is perhaps the perfect example of the pointless game show videogame. What you get for your money is essentially a spinning wheel animation and an on-screen variation of Hangman, that game that you used to play as a kid over rainy break times at school. For free. The only thing that beggars belief more than the fact that the game exists is the additional fact that versions have been released for every format imaginable from the Commodore 64 to the PS2. Someone must be buying them, which means that someone really needs to take a long hard look at why they play videogames in the first place.