Author Topic: Retired Games Idea  (Read 11188 times)

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Offline blozier2006

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Re: Retired Games Idea
« Reply #45 on: May 23, 2020, 06:32:39 PM »
How do we know what Double Digits' first rule set was?
As far as I'm aware, we don't.

Offline SteveGavazzi

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Re: Retired Games Idea
« Reply #46 on: May 23, 2020, 07:31:54 PM »
I think I remember reading years and years ago that it involved being given all the numbers in the car and having to place them all in the right prices (and thus in the right order), and I think Jay Lewis played it like that once on Net Price Is Right, but I wouldn't swear to either of those.
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Offline gamesurf

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Re: Retired Games Idea
« Reply #47 on: May 25, 2020, 02:33:42 PM »
I took a crack at reimagining Mystery Price's presentation. The goal was to see what "confusing parts" could be eased with a better set or a simpler explanation, and what "confusing parts" are baked into the game's format and the host just has to deal with.

---

Quote
Welcome, Contestant! Where are you from, blah blah blah... You're going to play Mystery Price!



And the Mystery Price today is the price of these binoculars. To win the game, you need to bank enough money to buy the binoculars. Tell us about them!

It's a set of binoculars! These binoculars make stuff look bigger and blah blah blah...

And if you win the binoculars, you can use them...

*doors open*

on your trip to Bali!

You and a guest will blah blah blah...


Like I said, to win the game, you need to bank enough money to buy the binoculars, and if you do that we'll throw in the trip for free! And how do you build up money? One by one you'll bid on four smaller prizes.

Try to bid as close as you can on each small prize without going over. If your bid is under the price of the small prize, we'll add your bid to the bank. For example, if you bid $10 on one of them, and it's $10 or more, we'll add $10 to the bank. But if you overbid, you'll get $0 for that prize.

You need to bid well enough that after bidding on all four small prizes you have enough money in the bank to buy the binoculars. If you have enough to buy the binoculars, you can take them to Bali!

---

He says the blender is $35. How much is the blender?

*Model pulls a small card from a reveal on the podium with the prize, similar to Punch-a-Bunch or Shell Game*

$42! You were right, so we'll add $35 to the bank!




---




You've gotten three out of four prizes. And you've banked $175. Now comes the moment of truth. If those binoculars aren't over $175, you're going to Bali. What is the price?

*the game's logo flips around a la Stack the Deck*



You're a winner!

---

Some changes: the Mystery Price prize is given its own emphasis, separate from the big prize or the four SPs. We're aping Bonus Game's "game before prize" reveal--the big prize isn't relevant to the gameplay and you need to introduce the most important things first. The SP ARP reveals are moved away from the board; now they are shown once on a little pull card on the prize podium, and then they are wheeled away after they are revealed. The visual emphasis is on the player's bids, and building tension as the bank builds up.

The trickiest part, IMO, is that prizes have to play three different roles (the big prize package, the Mystery Price prize, and the four SPs), and a lot of work needs to be done to keep them all straight. There's no getting around that.

The Mystery Price is the object of the game, but it's not necessarily the prize the contestant is getting excited over. So you need to balance hyping the big prize with giving appropriate focus to the binoculars. And then you have to introduce the four SPs as well...

The other tricky part is you spend four SPs emphasizing you win if you're under, under, under, under the ARP... but for the big reveal, you need to be over the ARP. I repeated "the object is to buy the binoculars" about five times.
Quote from: Bill Todman
"The sign of a good game, is when you don't have to explain it every day. The key is not simplicity, but apparent simplicity. Password looks like any idiot could have made it up, but we have 14 of our people working on that show. There is a great complexity behind the screen. It requires great work to keep it simple."

Offline Vgmastr

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Re: Retired Games Idea
« Reply #48 on: May 25, 2020, 09:20:05 PM »
An idea for Joker:

Played for three prizes like Rat Race, two medium range prizes and a car.  The pricing part involves three small prizes. 

Eight cards on are the board, four pairs, two Queens, two Kings, two Aces and two Jokers.  Each card has one digit on it's backside, and each non-Joker pair is associated with the price of one of the small prizes.  So, for example, if one of the small prizes was $26, card #2 and card #6 would be the pair of Queens.  The two Jokers would have numbers not found in any price. 

The contestant picks cards one at time, trying to find the three pairs.  Each pair the contestant finds earns them a big prize, first pair gets them the first prize, second pair gets the second prize, and all three pairs gets them the car.  However, if they pair up both Jokers, they lose everything.  They can quit and take what they've won if they don't want to risk losing it.

Offline 123123123

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Re: Retired Games Idea
« Reply #49 on: May 25, 2020, 09:48:36 PM »
An idea for Joker:

Played for three prizes like Rat Race, two medium range prizes and a car.  The pricing part involves three small prizes. 

Eight cards on are the board, four pairs, two Queens, two Kings, two Aces and two Jokers.  Each card has one digit on it's backside, and each non-Joker pair is associated with the price of one of the small prizes.  So, for example, if one of the small prizes was $26, card #2 and card #6 would be the pair of Queens.  The two Jokers would have numbers not found in any price. 

The contestant picks cards one at time, trying to find the three pairs.  Each pair the contestant finds earns them a big prize, first pair gets them the first prize, second pair gets the second prize, and all three pairs gets them the car.  However, if they pair up both Jokers, they lose everything.  They can quit and take what they've won if they don't want to risk losing it.

I really wouldn't call this Joker since the only real similarity they seem to have is they both use Joker cards. The idea is good, but guessing the second digit of 3 small prizes might be a bit too random. In case you want to see how your game might work on the show, the link below is a LMaD game called Pair-a-Dice which plays similarly to your idea, except for the truly random style of LMaD. It could definetely be retooled into a pricing game.


Offline 123123123

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Re: Retired Games Idea
« Reply #50 on: May 25, 2020, 10:28:15 PM »
I took a crack at reimagining Mystery Price's presentation. The goal was to see what "confusing parts" could be eased with a better set or a simpler explanation, and what "confusing parts" are baked into the game's format and the host just has to deal with.

Sorry for the double post, but your Mystery Price board came out really nice. It does a great job of visually focusing the contestant on the essential information. Plus it's a lot easier on the eyes than its predecessor.  :-D

Some changes: the Mystery Price prize is given its own emphasis, separate from the big prize or the four SPs. We're aping Bonus Game's "game before prize" reveal--the big prize isn't relevant to the gameplay and you need to introduce the most important things first. The SP ARP reveals are moved away from the board; now they are shown once on a little pull card on the prize podium, and then they are wheeled away after they are revealed. The visual emphasis is on the player's bids, and building tension as the bank builds up.

The trickiest part, IMO, is that prizes have to play three different roles (the big prize package, the Mystery Price prize, and the four SPs), and a lot of work needs to be done to keep them all straight. There's no getting around that.

I think this first problem could be remedied by the order you present the game. The game might benefit more from a traditional "prizes then board" presentation. While the binoculars are more important AND you say that they need to bank enough to buy them, revealing them first separates them from the gameplay, when it may become most apparent to the contestant of their importance and what you mean by bank enough.

Using your example, I would go as follows:

-walk to turntable
-present only trip to Bali
-game appears with binoculars, explain that we gave you the price of trip to Bali because you don't need it. I know Drew says this commonly in some of the fee games, and it would work great in this instance to eliminate one of the prize roles for the contestant to worry about
-describe binoculars, explain if you get enough to buy the binoculars, you also get the trip
-game explanation as you stated above

Either way, the board will make it a lot easier to follow.
« Last Edit: May 25, 2020, 10:37:34 PM by 123123123 »

Offline gamesurf

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Re: Retired Games Idea
« Reply #51 on: May 26, 2020, 04:05:40 AM »
I wanted to try to see if playing around with the reveal helped (and I wanted to try to get away from the 1973 one)—but after hearing you go through it I think I like your explanation better.

You’re right, it’s cleaner to reveal the big prize, get a reaction, and immediately say “we told you the price because you don’t need it” so the focus is kept on the SPs.

There’s a good game trapped in there—Jay Wolpert was unbeaten at marrying cool, innovative game show formats with terribly convoluted presentations.
Quote from: Bill Todman
"The sign of a good game, is when you don't have to explain it every day. The key is not simplicity, but apparent simplicity. Password looks like any idiot could have made it up, but we have 14 of our people working on that show. There is a great complexity behind the screen. It requires great work to keep it simple."

Offline MrPlinko

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Re: Retired Games Idea
« Reply #52 on: May 27, 2020, 08:28:46 PM »
Love Mystery Price! A great idea for a game revival  (I had to look up the playing of the original version to remember how it played.)

Joe
« Last Edit: May 27, 2020, 08:32:35 PM by MrPlinko »

Offline PricingPatrick

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Re: Retired Games Idea
« Reply #53 on: May 29, 2020, 03:22:41 AM »
What I would do for Hit Me is make it a cash game, $21,000 top prize game with the original rules and a super prize of $32,000 if the player gets the A-10 blackjack. Since Drew is a Vegas and Blackjack guy, I think he would handle the game well.

This might not fit but I would love to see the old UK Side by Side with the two prizes on the American version, obviously wouldn’t be called Side-by-Side, maybe Back to Back.