If you wanted to take a game show and translate it into a handheld video game, The Price is Right seems like a pretty good choice. It's well known, it's got a lot of different games, it's easy to pick up and who wouldn't want to play for A NEW CAR, even if it's fake? The problem is that when figuring out how to turn the game show into a game, no one bothered to find out if would be any fun. While The Price is Right for the DS faithfully recreates the various games and prizes found on the game show, it only takes a few rounds to realize that it's not all that much fun.

Back before the days of digital cable and a bazillion channels, The Price is Right was pretty much the only thing of interest on at 11AM on a weekday morning. Being successful on the show didn't require fast reflexes or an amazing stockpile of trivia knowledge, but instead only required that you knew the retail price of nearly every item ever made, from canned pineapple to A NEW CAR! This not only made it a show that anyone from the studio audience had a chance of doing well in, but also made it the greatest temple to consumerism ever created as well as a constant reminder that your pets live for nothing but procreation.

The game follows the basic outline of the show, with some small changes to keep the flow going. When you start up the game you'll pick one of four contestants from the studio audience. There's the old guy in the generic armed forces uniform, the middle aged, somewhat larger lady, the young skinny dude and the elderly woman who looks like she attended prom with Moses. Whoever you pick, you'll enter your name and then COME ON DOWN to face off against the other three contestants you didn't choose. Once you're down, as it were, you're shown an item and everyone is given a chance to bid on it. Whoever gets closest to the actual retail price of the item without going over goes on to play one of several different mini-games.

This is where the video game needs to diverge from the game show. In the game show, if you don't win this first part, you wait until you get another chance to show how much you know about recliner pricing. In the game, you simply get a red X and move on to the mini-game of the day. Speaking of the mini-games, they're all here: Plinko, Cliffhangers, Punch-a-Bunch, The Money Game, all of them. They're all represented fairly well, which isn't surprising given how simple they are on the show. They all revolve around being able to correctly guess the retail price of items, differing in execution and difficulty. If you've ever wanted to know what it was like to play Master Key, well you're in for a treat.

However you do at the mini-game, once you've completed it, you and two other contestants are invited to spin the Wheel, a giant, well, wheel, with various numbers on it ranging from 5 to 100. You get two spins of the wheel with the object being to get closest to a dollar. If you get closest to a dollar, you head off to the Showcase Showdown. If you lose, you get another red X and the whole game starts over again from the beginning. If you're lucky enough to head to the Showcase Showdown, you'll be shown a showcase of various items. If you're the money leader of the day you can either bid on the showcase or pass it to your opponent and take the next one. Again, the person who bids the closest to the value of the showcase without going over wins the showcase with those that come within 250 of the value winning both showcases and quite possibly, you guessed it, A NEW CAR!

Like the mini-games, the Showcase Showdown is handled well and is very similar to the show, complete with photos of the items up for bid with models draped over them where appropriate. The somewhat cheesy writing is also present along with the always odd selection of items, unless you don't find a trip to Acapulco, an indoor bar and a marble globe an odd selection. If you lose the Showdown, you get another red X and go back to the beginning. If you win, your total winnings are combined and you go back to the beginning.