Whammy! The All-New Press Your Luck - Gameplay

Gameplay

Gameplay remained largely the same as Press Your Luck, with the Whammy still taking away the winnings of any contestant who landed on it. However, there were some differences between the two shows.

Whammy! took away the first question round on Press Your Luck and went straight to the first "Big Board" round, with a few modifications. Each contestant was given $1,000 to start the show ($0 in the first two taped episodes of the run), and took turns taking one spin at a time, until each contestant had either landed on a Whammy (which eliminated them from the rest of the round), or chosen to stop by "freezing". Play started with four Whammies on the Big Board and after each of the first four rounds through the contestants, up to four more were added.

The show then had the Question Round and the final "Big Board" round the original show had with a few tweaks. A series of five questions were asked, and contestants had the opportunity to buzz in with an answer. The host would then add two other answers (three if no one buzzed in or if a contestant buzzed in and did not answer within the five-second time limit) and allow the other contestants to guess from those answers (the contestant who buzzed in and did not answer was not allowed to do so in the multiple-choice format). A correct buzz-in answer earned 3 spins while a correct multiple-choice answer earned one spin, so that up to 25 spins could be earned by all three contestants together. In addition to the original Whammies, Double Whammies added a physical element to the animated Whammy character; for example, if the animated Whammy ran over some dollar-sign hedges with a lawn mower, a pile of grass clippings was dumped onto the contestant. In the final Big Board round, contestants can pass their remaining spins to the opponent with the higher score (or their choice of opponent if both scores are tied) if they so desire. Contestants who receive spins passed to them must play those spins, unless they land on a Whammy, at which point the remaining passed spins are combined with that contestant's total of earned spins (if any remain).

The largest cash amounts remained $1,500 in Round 1 and $5,000 + One Spin in Round 2. The board still featured a "BIG BUCKS" square which advanced the contestant to the biggest cash square on the board.

Unlike the original series, there were no returning champions. If any contestants won the game with $0 and less than four Whammies, they were allowed to participate again in a future show, although only one contestant actually did so.

The second "Big Board" round played like the classic series, but if two or all three contestants tied in terms of money totals, the contestant with the fewest spins played first; like the classic series, contestants tied in terms of money and spins resulted in the contestant to the furthest left playing first. During the second round, the dollar amounts and prizes shown on the squares were rotated in a much different fashion. Rather than changing all of the squares' contents at the same time, they changed six squares at a time in one-third of the cycle time, thereby making the second round a bit harder by providing the illusion that the board was moving faster than it actually was (each individual square actually changed at the same rate as in Round 1), something that the classic series never did (except in the case of a minor malfunction). Unlike the classic series, Whammy! generated random prizes, Whammies, and light patterns for each space on the Big Board using a personal computer, running at a speed of 200 MHz, as well as a very large number of patterns for game play, to prevent memorization of patterns as Michael Larson famously did on the original Press Your Luck.

In line with technological changes, the Whammies were animated in 3-D, created by computer animation studio WIT Animation, instead of being hand-drawn as on the original series. Animations continued to feature humorous antics or spoofs of then-relevant pop culture (e.g., Harry Potter, N'Sync, Britney Spears, Godzilla, etc.).