Some of you old-school game show fans may remember a show called Press Your Luck. You answered questions, but those were just a means to an end. Ultimately the goal was to get spins on the big board and to turn those spins into money and prizes. Of course, the Whammy was waiting for you at every turn, and if you got four of them you were history. They would play the music, Peter Tomarken would go “Ooooh… a Whammy!”, and an animated Whammy would go dancing across the screen. When I was a kid I loved this show.
As did a guy named Michael Larson, who figured out how to beat the game in one of the most famous “scandals” ever to hit game shows (although his was legit). He wound up with $110,237 in cash and prizes, the most ever up to that time. He spun over 40 times, never once hitting a Whammy.
Well, here’s your chance to better that record.
Press Your Luck: the computer game
The creator of the game eliminated the question/answer part and distilled it to the Big Board part. You can set your spins to whatever you want to, you can set people up with Whammys, you can even download the Whammy sounds, along with Peter Tomarken’s famous “Ooooh… a Whammy!” call. Alas, there doesn’t seem to be the Whammy animations, but you can’t have everything, right?
It’s a fun little blast from the past. Enjoy it, and try to beat Michael’s score, if you can.
