The Hall of Shame 09.18.08: Deal or No Deal

Posted by Vincent Chiucchi on 09.18.2008

Whether in game show form or video game form, Deal or No Deal just plain sucks.

If there's one thing I'm sick of seeing on television, it's this wave of EPIC Game Shows that have shown up to take over the primetime slots of the weekday line-up. It's not that I don't like watching game shows; it's that these game shows try to act so EPIC that sometimes I wonder if the producers remember that the whole point of the show is contestants trying to win money through challenges. The worst of these EPIC game shows is the show that became a national sensation when it has absolutely no right to be, Deal or No Deal. This week, Deal or No Deal gets inducted for being not only a lousy game show, but for also having very lousy video games.

I hope it turns out the show is just some kid's snow globe.

How Deal or No Deal become such a national hit of a game show is beyond me. The concept of the game is nothing more then guessing numbers and relying on pure luck. Yet somehow, it takes an ENTIRE HOUR for a person to get through the entire game. Personally, I blame the fact that Howie tries to keep stalling at every turn until it's finally time for a commercial. It wouldn't be so bad if he did once in a while, but he does it on EVERY SINGLE SHOW. Contestant picks a case, they'll find out after the break. Dealer calling to make an offer? Cuts to commercial. Contestant has to make a decision? It'll cut to commercial, contestant will still take forever to decide, and pretty soon it goes to a commercial again!

So why is popular? It's likely that the typical television viewers are a bunch of idiots. My guess is that NBC did a terrific job hiding the horrible structure of the game with such a huge amount of bullshit. First, they unnecessarily making the banker seem like an evil bastard. Of course the guy doesn't want you to leave with so much money, IT'S HIS MONEY! Plus we don't even know if the banker is actually evil. How do you know he's not willing to give that money away? Second, this show gives away such stupid prizes. If they offered cars, trips, or similar game show prizes, I wouldn't mind. But then they start giving away ponies as prizes. Yes, I swear to the lords above they actually offered a guy a living, breathing pony. The guy pretty much had to accept or else his daughters would hate him for life. Finally, there's the reality show bullshit, such as marriage proposals and long lost relatives reuniting with their loved ones. And what does all this have to do with trying to win a million dollars with a strategy of picking balls out of a bag some loony brought? Imagine how funny it would be if after some heart warming moment like a relative showing up out of nowhere, the contestant fucks up and winds up having to leave with a small amount of money. I would PAY to see an episode of Deal or No Deal like that.

So because the game show becomes a phenomenon, it gets licensed to all sorts of crap, including video games. When a game show become a video game, you pretty much get what you expect. But instead of being a regular boring video game, it became a piece of worthless shovelware. How the HELL do you take a basic guessing game and make it shovelware, and worse, you're doing with a nationally popular game show? In the DS version, the first time you play the game, the million dollar case is always going to be in the same case. That's right: the first cases are ALWAYS going to be the same. I really want to know how in the hell did this company screw up the random number system. I've been taking computer programming classes for several years and learning all sorts of languages. Randomizing numbers and assigning them to integers is one of the easiest things to do. But this company somehow failed at programming random numbers in a game in which all you do is pick random numbers. This people is the very definition of THE ULTIMATE EPIC FAIL!



All the times after that are different though, but why would you want to play more then once? Even if you do, the game will always use the same patterns, and once you figure out the pattens, you can basically play like the guy who won over $100,000 on Press Your Luck, except you don't win any actual money.

The game also has what is quite possibly the most pointless feature I have ever seen. There's a two player mode where one plays the contestant and the other plays as the banker. Now, let's say for some odd reason, you decide to get this game, play this mode, and make yourself the banker. Are you honestly going to play fair? Wouldn't you rather keep offering 1 cent just to screw with the other player?

And this game costs thirty freaking dollars. If I was going to waste $30 on absolute garbage, I'd buy that new lottery ticket where I can win a million dollars a year for life. If you're really that bored and want to play Deal or No Deal on the go, get the freaking LCD handheld versions. At least you won't immediately know where the million dollar case is the first time around, and compared to the DS version, the LCD versions will have much better graphics and sounds, especially since it doesn't have Howie Mandel in it.

The PC version is just worthless garbage. Although the basic version of the game works unlike the DS version, that's basically all there is to the game. You can make your own avatar and decide what kind of people help you, but is there any point? There's a few mini-games thrown in but all of them are even more boring than the main game, and considering the main game is about picking random numbers to win imaginary money, that really says a lot.

Plus, there really is no point in getting the PC version when there's a flash version that is a LOT better then the video games.

Literally a million times better then the actual Deal or No Deal.

Pacdude Games is a flash games site created by Cory Anotado, where most of the games are based on game shows. When Deal or No Deal got very popular, he made a flash version based on that. It's still just a guessing game, but since it was a free flash game, there wasn't much to complain about, and his Deal or No Deal game had reached over 10 million hits until Endemol, the studio that created the game show, shut him down. Apparently Endemol feared that people would confuse his version as Endemols official version and wanted it taken off. But last time I checked, I don't think anybody was actually confused nor complained about the game, and the guy wasn't even making any money off of it. Why couldn't they pay Anotado to license the game and have it on their site instead?

In order to avoid further legal action, he took down the game and in it's place created Meal or No Meal, where the dollar amounts are made equivalent to meals. It plays like Deal or No Deal but adds a few twists like the offer being automatically doubled or cut in half at random times.

If you like playing Deal or No Deal, I suggest you play Meal or No Meal instead. It's much better then the video game versions and a hell of lot better then the EPIC (FAIL) game show on television.