So Bad It’s Scary: Dutch “Wheel of Fortune”
Here’s a nice little Halloween video for you all. It’s from the new Dutch edition of Wheel of Fortune. I know a lot of game show fans complain about our version, but after watching theirs I’m pretty happy with whatever we cobbled together. That little shanty town they have there is screwed up. The entire set is a video wall. The entire set. The backdrops, the decorations, the contestant podium, the puzzle board, everything. It’s all a giant LED video wall. Dollar values are tiny. It’s airing in the same time slot where a few times a year they play Deal or No Deal for five million euro and on Wheel there’s a few 0 euro spaces and some 50s and 100s. The highest is 500 it seems. You’re lucky to win more than 5,000 euro. The end game is equally as cheap. The game is unbearably slow as well. We go through two puzzles and that final spin thing in 27 minutes. Here’s the first round. I’m not throwing up the entire video because the site would weep in misery if it were to show up. They threw so much money onto their set it looks like they had no budget for anything else.
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The one thing I will say is whenever our Wheel of Fortune gets a new set I’d love to have the audience on camera like they have. I do think it adds something to see their reaction and it’s better than the vast world of emptiness they seem to have from the YouTube clips of this season I’ve seen.
Hey, that's Carlos from Cash and Carlo!
Ever get the feeling that the hostess is quite literally nothing more than eye candy on this version? She pretends to sweep the letters on a projected board.. and as they did the reveal, someone forgot to wait for her cue to start the reveal.. lol
I actually like the look of this set, at least in theory… with some tweaks, I wouldn't mind seeing it imported to our version. But other than that, yeah, throw this show under the bus with that execrable Wheel 2000 thing from the '90s.
Wow! This show is horribly slow. That set is giving me seizures, the money amounts are small, especially coming in the same time slot as DoND occasionally shows up, and the hostess is useless in this version. Million Dollar Wheel from Australia was 100x better than this mess, and it was canceled.
When did Kelsey Grammer become a Dutch game show host? Just wonderin'.
(Sorry for the double post here) What exactly happens when you land on "0"? "Joker"?
When you land on 0, you have to call a correct letter to keep your turn–you don't get any money for it. The Joker is their version of the Free Spin. Verliesbeurt is "Lose a Turn", and Bankroet is "Bankrupt". I don't know about "Overval" (Attack)–no one's landed on it yet.
To be fair on the original wheel pilot they did have a $0 space, but didn't work so they dropped it. Wheel is a tough show to mess up but they succeeded here. i mean even the uk version was cheap and a little slow paced but they still managed to get a long run.
Agreed. And probably the one thing that irks me most is that the value of the spin is a flat rate–it doesn't multiply if you get multiple letters.
Once, a long time ago, I had heard about someone proposing a Wheel space, probably for one of the international versions but maybe for ours (I honestly don't remember), that worked something like this: If you spun it, you could force one of your opponents to solve the puzzle right then and there, and if they couldn't do it you got their money total. However, if they were able to solve the puzzle they not only got the money in front of them, but your total as well. Unfortunately, that's all I remember, and my memory is so hazy that it's just possible my imagination made the whole thing up.
Still, since "Overval" evidently translates to "Attack," I wonder if it's not similar to what I've described; at the very least, some kind of "screw an opponent" twist to the game we haven't seen in our Wheel in nearly 35 years.
The Filipino version has something similar, I think…
Well, those are the Australian rules. That's the way they've played the game ever since it was introduced to the Continent way back in the 80's.
Slow show perhaps, but that contestant over by the host is quite pleasing on the eyes.
This Wheel isn't half as bad as some of the other international versions I've seen. Some of the ones from central Africa and Western Asia… oh my… make me die a little inside…
What's obvious to me here is the Dutch based their version on the French version and maybe a bit of one of the Italian incarnations. In both cases, the show is aimed more for being both half variety show, half game show (as a lot of games are seemingly approached the pond), as opposed to ours. If you've ever seen the French version, you'd see how slow theirs can go at times. BTW, if you pay attention to the one guy's turn, you'll see the wheel values ARE multiplied by the number of consonants that appear in the puzzle.
As for the set, it doesn't bother me that much, it works for their version, and there are some nooks and crannies I like, and the graphics package looks well done. It's not the Wheel I'd prefer and I'd gloat over, but then again, neither is ours here right now, and the same basic game is there, so if it's aimed at being half-variety and half-game, they didn't do half-bad. (There's a joke in there somewhere)… :P
VANNA WHITE HAS BEEN USELESS ON THE AMERICAN VERSION OF WHEEL OF FORTUNE FOR THE PAST 20 YEARS! THEY PAY HER TO DO NOTHING BUT CLAP!
Yes, it's called the "POWER" Space. One of the better ideas for a wedge I've seen the past few years…
I was wrong. (Not the first time, not the last time.) "Overval" actually means "robbery" in Dutch. My guess is whoever spins it can steal an opponent's score, much like the Filipino version's "Power" space.
What are you talking about?? Who would touch the letters without her??
if they wanted they could just pop the letters up themselves, notice when the puzzle's solved it all just fills in. and Vanna hasn't been totally useless, her and Pat banter at the end, she's done a couple of prize plugs and models prizes aswell, but yeah, her main role was turnign the letters.
Holy hell it's even worse than you described!
I'd hit the host, though :)
Crap, I meant the hostess… Sorry…
I suppose it could always be worse… it could have some unholy abomination like the endgame of one of the German versions (Glüksrad, from the early '90s), which featured five criss-crossing words all on the same 13×4 matrix. (The same size as our puzzle board at the time, in fact, except ours had the four corners deleted just as they are on the modern board.) Talk about a visual mess!
Here's a sample of the "Superspiel," which actually ends well. Still, this thing just gives me a headache trying to contemplate (and not just because I don't speak German).
Sorry, I botched the YouTube link in that last comment. Here's the correct one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sq4-JlIlKvg
I say get rid of Pat. Vanna could host the show by herself, and the board could be automated.
Because it really comes down to one thing — who would you rather stare at during the bulk of the show, Pat or Vanna?
Yes, I know about the German "Super Puzzle," it was there from day one of the German version, which started in the 80's, and the show itself, with its iconic Superpiel, reached comparable levels of ratings/shares success in Germany at one point as the American version did.
I liked the idea of the Super Puzzle, but I also know it wouldn't work here for a boatload of reasons I don't think I need to go into. However, it was a neat idea, and definitely a fresh take on otherwise the same basic ideas for puzzles on the show.
Maybe I should be less hard on our version — at least it didn't spend all of its budget on something stupid like a huge LED video wall (or did it?).
The wheel layout made Goen's layouts look good in comparison, while the puzzle board was cool but painfully out-of-sync with the hostess.
And even though I couldn't understand it I can still say that, due to its pace and the guy trying to solve by hitting his buzzer (which is actually a cool idea), this show feels rigged. Even moreso than our version, which is sad since the payouts here are painfully-small.
If you remember the 100E the woman started with from the Toss-Up (what a weird way to do it), the contestants earned no money during the whole thing… What a round! @_@
Also, I find it funny that, given the incredible glitziness and flashiness of that entire set, the wheel looks like something some guy built in his backyard with spare parts.
I can't help thinking that, given how much everyone feels like they can talk, and the one guy tried ringing in when it wasn't his turn… are those celebrities playing? That would explain some of the awfulness of the show.
Um…dude…have you played the video games?? She could NOT host the show, her hosting skills suck and that's nowhere near at best.
Just out of curiosity, in the bonus round, what letters would they use in place of R, S, T, L, N, & E?