So it was with great hope that I bought the three (three!) new Deal or No Deal games available at my local big box retailer: a board game, a card game and a DVD game.
Well, my wife and I have played all three, and I can report without fear of contradiction that each and every one sucks.
Note: Irwin Toy has released two electronic Deal or No Deal games. I have not yet played them.
Deal or No Deal Board Game
For 2 to 6 players, ages 8 and up. Published by Pressman Toy Corp.
On the plus side, this version has a large plastic board to approximate the television show's big money board, along with cardboard suitcases into which money cards are placed. Alas, the positives end there.
Inexplicably, the rules as presented don't allow the game to be played like the television show -- as a solitaire, press-your-luck game. (You can play it that way if you want to, but the rules don't provide for it.)
In the two-player version, one player is the host and banker; the other player is the contestant. The host/banker has complete control over how much money to offer the contestant; after both players have either accepted an offer or opened their own briefcase, the player who earned the most money won. Without extraordinarily fair-minded players, however, the game breaks down because the second host/banker has no incentive to make an offer which would cause him to lose.
The version for three to six players injects a "kitty" into the game which players can win by opening either the $750 briefcase or the $0.01 briefcase. It also includes a guessing element, where players can win money by guessing what amount is in the briefcase about to be opened. (Neither of these additions makes sense to me, either.) Each player is the host/banker once, and the contestant once. Players start with $1.125 million and any offers they make as host/banker must come out of their own cash. At the end, the player with the most money wins.
In addition to the square-peg-in-a-round-hole problem of forcing a naturally solitaire game to become a multi-player game, this game suffers from excessive setup time (placing the money cards into the cardboard briefcases and setting them out on the table just takes too long).
Deal or No Deal Card Game
For 1 or more players, ages 7 and up. Published by Cardinal Industries.
The setup issues are similar to the board game (takes too long), and the components are of lesser quality (a pad of paper instead of the plastic board and briefcase cards that merely cover the dollar cards, as opposed to the board game's cardboard briefcases which let the cards slip inside).
On the positive side, the rules are closer to those of the television show.
But the "offer cards" are shuffled randomly. This solves the problem of a competitor being the banker and refusing to make a fair offer, but it also means that it's possible for a player with $1,000,000 remaining on the board to be offered $500 or some other ridiculously low amount.
Deal or No Deal DVD Game
For 1 or 2 players, ages 13 and up. Published by Imagination Entertainment.
I had the highest hope for the DVD game because there would be no setup time, and the DVD would control the banker -- solving my complaints about the board game and the card game. Howie Mandel would be energetic and funny. There would be joy as we played and laughed.
There was no joy, no laughter. Only disappointment.
Without an audience, Mandel seems oddly subdued. He tries to be upbeat, but his best moments on the television show are when he plays off the audience. He doesn't get to do that on this DVD game.
And in a design choice that boggles the mind, here's how briefcases are chosen to be opened: flip through them all, one by one, until you get to the number of the case you want. Sound fun? You'll love this: flipping through the cases takes 2 or 3 seconds each. So if the screen is showing case #1 and you want to open case #13, it can take more than 30 seconds to get there. Yawn. Double yawn.
Why not have all 26 briefcases on the screen at the same time, allowing players to quickly move through them using the arrow keys on the DVD remote? It's a mystery to me.
The higher age recommendation on this game (13, compared to 8 and 7 for the other Deal or No Deal games) presumably is due to the few scenes on the DVD which feature the Deal or No Deal models. Or, more to the point, scenes which feature the cleavage of the Deal or No Deal models.
In Conclusion
I truly like the basic game at the heart of Deal or No Deal. Unfortunately, the Deal or No Deal television show, the board game, the card game and the DVD game all take way too long.
Deal or No Deal should be as quick as it is simple. And there's only one place that happens -- NBC's Deal or No Deal online game.
