Whammy! The All New Press Your Luck

***Whammy!*** (subtitled ***The All-New* Press Your Luck** for its first season) is an American television game show that aired new episodes on Game Show Network (GSN) from April 15, 2002, to December 5, 2003. The series was produced by Fremantle North America, in association with GSN. The main goal of the game is to earn as much money and prizes as possible through collecting spins by answering trivia questions correctly, then using those spins on a gameboard to win various prizes and cash amounts while attempting to avoid the show's eponymous character, the "Whammy." Contestants who do land on a Whammy lose all their prizes accumulated to that point; four Whammies eliminates a contestant from the game.

The game was played exactly the same as the original *Press Your Luck* but with an altered format.

### Differences to this show and the original.

* **The Big Board** - While the board still had 18 squares, they were arranged differently inside a giant oval. The original board had slides, but this board had the slides replaced with monitors. (There was an extra monitor in the center in the pilot, but it was replaced by a picture of the Whammy.) For it was run by a 200 MHz computer, it carried digitized graphics and made the board super random so that no one would ever memorize the board patterns again. Plus, light bulbs were replaced by neon lights: the safe squares were lit up in blue, while the Whammy squares were lit up in red. In the final round, instead of changing altogether, a few squares changed in groups.
* **The Whammies** - The Whammy had a whole new look, for he had toes, a deeper voice, a hairy face, no cape, eye mask is green instead of yellow, and a "W" on his chest replacing a "$" (dollar sign). The new Whammy was animated in 3-D by WIT Animation. The Whammy indicators in the pilot were in circled lights, but in the series they appeared as statuettes. Even with the changes he still can take away the contestant's money when hit, and if a contestant hits four Whammies, he/she is still knocked out of the game.
* **Contestant Scoreboards** - The contestant scoreboards were now monitors (replacing green eggcrate displays). When hitting a Whammy, the contestant's current score would either fade away or fall down. In Season Two upon hitting a fourth Whammy, the contestant's scoreboard displayed the Whammy.
* **Big Bank** - In Season Two, all money and prizes stolen by the Whammy were placed into his own Big Bank which started off every day at $3,000, and got as high as $50,984. To win the Big Bank, a contestant must hit the Big Bank square on the board, and answer one special open-ended question correctly. This is all classified as "Whammying the Whammy".

### Round 1

In the first round all three players were given $1,000 to start ($0 in the first two taped shows). Each player in turn spun the board. As before, contestants stopped the board by hitting their buzzer and yelling "STOP!" Whatever they landed on, it was added to their score. After each go round (all three players or less have taken their turns), more Whammies were added to the board increasing the danger of losing the money. If at any time a contestant hit a Whammy, that contestant was out of the round; to prevent this from happening, before each spin players were given the option to freeze on their current scores. All the squares' font, small, and big were in Impact.

Also in this round, there was a square marked "Pick A Prize" which when hit would give the player in control a choice of any prize currently showing on the board.

In the pilot each contestant earned three spins to start with, and could pass them or play them, much like in the final round.

There was also a square that would give a player half a chance to win a car or another big prize. In the pilot, the car was a Chevrolet Camaro from GM; to get a chance at the Camaro, a play must hit the letter "G" in Round One, then the letter "M" in Round Three. In the first season, the car was a GEM Car; to get a chance at the GEM, a play must hit the GEM (or Spin Again) square in Round One, then the CAR or Spin Again square in Round Three. And in Season Two the car was a Suzuki Aerio SX; to get a chance at that car, a player must hit both halves of the car key (the top half in Round One, and the bottom half in Round Three). On a special Halloween episode in the first season, a trip to Transylvania was offered; to get a chance at the trip, a play must hit the Trick or Spin Again square in Round One, then the Treat or Spin Again square in Round Three.

The player with the most money at the end of the round earned the advantage of playing last in the final round.

### Round 2 (Question Round)

The Question Round was exactly the same as the original except that host Newton asked five questions instead of four (just like in the Press Your Luck pilot).

On each question the first player to buzz-in had a chance to answer. The answer he/she gave became the first of three choices for his/her two opponents to answer from. A correct buzz-in answer was worth three spins while a correct multiple choice answer was worth one spin. In the event a contestant who buzzed in first ran out of time, that contestant had to sit out the rest of the question while the other two players played the multiple choice part of the question. But in the event that no contestant buzzed in when time ran out, all three contestants played the multiple choice part of the question. 25 spins were available in each question round, but the highest one contestant can earn was 15 spins.

In the pilot, host Tomarken/Newton asked four questions instead of five (just like the original series) meaning that 20 spins were up for grabs with the maximum total for a single player being 12 spins. Also the player to earn the 12 spins by answering all four buzz-in parts also earned a Whammy Guard protecting him/her from hitting another Whammy.

The Larson rematch (see photo below) was played like the original series, with just four questions instead of five.

Note: If all three players ended the first round in a tie, the player with the most number of spins went last in the final round.

### Round 3 (Final Round)

In the final round, the players used their spins earned in the question round to play the board. The player to start was the player with the least money or the player with the fewest spins (in case of a tie); in the event of a tie for spins, money and correct buzz-in answers, the player at far left went first. Players can take as many of their spins as they wished, but if they feared that they were going to hit the dreaded Whammy, they can pass their spins to the player out in front or the player in second if they're out in front. As before, players with passed spins had to take those spins until they ran out of them or hit a Whammy (at which point the remaining passed spins became earned spins), and each time the passed contestant hit money plus a spin, the spin just played was transferred to the earned column.

As Todd would put it, as if the Whammies were not enough, the big board also featured a new element to the show, the "Double Whammies". When a Double Whammy was hit, not only would that player lose all his/her money to the Whammy but stuff would drop on the player's head according to the Whammy cartoon presented. On Whammy cartoons involving water, that player would be sprayed with water from the player's podium. At one time, there was one cartoon which caused a live Whammy to come out and dump confetti on the player's head. (This same Whammy appeared in promos for the show, as well as in that same episode when a contestant won with $0 [allowing her to come back in a future show] while her two opponents whammied out. He also made appearances on three episodes of the second season of *Whammy!* and *Russian Roulette*.)

Also in this Round one square would give players a choice of taking the money or spin again without having to use one of their earned spins. In the first season it was $1,000, but in the second season it was reduced to $555 making it easier to take another spin.

Should any player be halfway to winning the car, the square needed to make the chance at the car complete was also placed on the board.

The player with the most money at the end of this round won the game and kept all of his/her winnings. There were no returning champions in this version but with this one exception: players who won the game with zero dollars get to come back and play a future game.

## Whammy Animations

Whammy! The All New Press Your Luck/Whammy Animations

## Trivia

* There is a Disc-GO! Game based on the Show