If I Could Bring Back: "Press Your Luck"

Hello, everyone...and welcome to the first of what will be another regular feature on this blog of mine. Allow me to set it up a little....

I enjoy watching classic game shows, whether it's to relive memories of my childhood when I first watched these shows (1980s to early 1990s), or to see how games worked before I was around to watch them (1970s and earlier). Needless to say, I was really happy to discover Game Show Network back in the late 1990s. I didn't understand everything that went on in these game shows back when I was a kid...but being able to see them when I was older helped me to appreciate them that much more. I wish they hadn't stopped production of these games before I was old enough to play them, such as "Scrabble", "The $100,000 Pyramid", "Super Password"...maybe even "Blockbusters" or "Card Sharks."

Anyway, sometimes I see a game show that has a great basic concept...but the implementation of that concept could use some work. One example that comes to mind is "Now You See It", which I will discuss in a later post. For this post, however, I will focus on one of my all-time favorite game shows: "Press Your Luck". I never did understand why it went off the air in 1986 after only 3 seasons...maybe they just weren't getting the ratings they needed. I was happy at first to see "Whammy: The All-New Press Your Luck", but when I saw exactly how the game was changed, as well as the new format for the Big Board...I was disappointed. But again, that's for a later post.

Personally, I think "Press Your Luck" was great just the way it was. I might change the question rounds a little bit...in which the three players got a free spin, followed by 3 questions to add to those spins for Round 1; then 5 questions for the second round (with no free spins), so players would have more shots at the bigger bucks in Round 2. The one change I'd really like to make, however, involves the elusive "Add-A-One", a prize square that Press Your Luck added to their Round 1 Big Board around the beginning of their third season (September 1985). Any "Press Your Luck" fan knows that this square puts a "1" in front of a player's current total when hit: $0 would become $10, $100 would become $1,100, and $1,000 would become $11,000. Here's my question...what if a player already had $10,000? I'm sure the producers of Press Your Luck already thought of this...which is why Add-A-One only appeared in Round 1, where it was virtually impossible for any player to amass $10,000 in winnings. Perhaps they weren't prepared to pay a player who won the game by hitting Add-A-One after amassing $10,000...as they already had to make a six-figure payout to Michael Larson. If you haven't already figured it out by now, this would be my idea for Press Your Luck...the Add-A-One should be put in Round 2! How exciting would it be to watch a player win $100,000 in a single spin on the famous "Big Board"? I can see the tagline now: "Ever wanted to beat Michael Larson's record? Here's your chance!" There is a catch, of course. Unless the $100,000 spin is the very last spin of the game, which is pretty unlikely, that means there are going to be spins left over...spins which will most likely be passed to the player holding the $100,000+ bank, since there won't be any way to beat said player except by forcing him/her to hit a Whammy. If that happened, not only would that be heartbreaking to watch...it could actually kill the show if too many players lost the $100,000+ too often. On the other hand, there's always the possibility (miniscule as it may be) that while the $100,000+ player is being forced to take passed spins, he/she could hit the equally elusive "Double Your $$ + One Spin." The possibility of a $200,000+ winner would make watching "Press Your Luck" that much more exciting, even though that would be incredibly rare...and even getting the $100,000 spin wouldn't happen very often. But if "Wheel of Fortune" can pull it off, I don't see why "Press Your Luck" couldn't.

I'd appreciate hearing some other opinions on this. In the meantime, keep your eyes peeled for my next post....