The Price is Right

When I first launched it, I expected a show. Instead, I got a math problem. The Price is Right for computer isn't the TV lottery you know, but a logic game about guessing prices of groceries and appliances from the supermarket. No audience, no hostesses, none of the craziness the host brings. Just you, a list of items, and a digital calculator.

The game works simply: you see an object, it asks you "How much does it cost?" and you type a number. If you get close without going over, you earn points. In basic rounds you play solitaire, later opponent duels are added where players take turns. Compared to the original show, it's like comparing tequila to non-alcoholic beer — structurally the same, but missing what makes it fun.

The mechanics are ancient: the idea is simple, but practice is awkward. Guessing the price of a banana or trousers without any hints isn't fun, it's blind guessing. The game won't help you unless you're a Czech living in some corner of 1990, where you actually see prices in real life. To today's player it seems absurdly outdated — prices are meaningless and without the personality behind them, it falls flat.

Yet that's exactly why it has something to it — it would be mindlessly dull even if I played it in a doctor's waiting room, but here, in DOS, in those grey menus and monochromatic colors, it gains a strange aesthetic. It was a hobby for PC enthusiasts in the early nineties, a digital imitation of what they had on TV. The game itself isn't bad, it just isn't for anything.

Today? Only if you want to see what entertainment looked like thirty years ago when people were cramming everything from the screen into PCs. Not even for retro fans is it a must-play, more of a curiosity — proof that not every license should have been given to computer gamers.