Things you miss about Wheel of Fortune

I miss the old "Changing Keys" theme music (the 1992-1994 "Dancing Wedges" version), definitely more fitting than the current one, seems like you can't mention "WOF" without someone humming that theme music.

I also miss all the Celebrity shows they used to do (more so than the ones where a celeb would be paired with a regular player), those used to be so much fun to watch.

But I guess the one thing that I miss most of all and kind of wish they'd bring back (highly unlikely) is the returning champion rule, I know if I got on and won the main game, win or lose the bonus round, I'd want to play again. I always wondered why (in the 80's) the nighttime show didn't have returning champions until Season 7 while the daytime show had returning champs from the start.

Free Spin token

Can I say that I miss daytime Wheel as a whole? If not...boy this is a hard one, given the above posts. Mine are more presentation-related:
* The classic intros, especially the 1983-89 style: logo on top of the spinning Wheel, the whole announcing spiel...man.
* Two of my favorite logo animations: the computerized version of the 1974 logo (1985-89), and the "wedges falling into place to make the Wheel" logo (1989-92)
* "Changing Keys". I know that's been mentioned, but I liked the 1992 and especially 1989 versions. The latter really fit with the whole audiovisual revamp that happened with the move to Television City.
* The Wheel spinning by itself during the opening and credits. I understand they set up the Wheel to a specific spot in each round, but it seemed more fun to have it be random.
* The host's opening spin while he explains the rules. I'm not really sure why it was done, and I really don't know why it stopped.
* I really miss the chroma-key shot as the host and hostess sign off; always thought that was a nice touch.
* "Wheel of Fortune is produced by Merv Griffin Enterprises. And is distributed by King World."
* Jack Clark. He was pretty much the voice of Wheel in the 1980s, and by all indication a really nice guy who loved the genre -- so much so that he hosted a lot of game show pilots and runthroughs (probably more than anybody else in the genre) and was willing to do so for little to no compensation. We need someone like that in the genre these days.


Related to that, I miss the classic "puzzle solved" cues. That, the flashing lights on the border, and the whole board lighting up at once (during the trilon era) made most any solve feel like a triumph.


Yeah, those were always fun. Some other ones were "Spice Girls calendar", "Cocoa Puffs", "Don King Chia pet", and my personal favorite -- "Viagra espresso".

I miss the Jackpot wedge and the celebrity shows.

Here we go...

• Changing Keys
• The golden-arched puzzle board border (especially the road show one and the one from Seasons 13-14)
• The "W burst" backdrops
• The Wheel layout changing significantly between rounds
• Four digit values other than the top value (Mystery and Express don't count, but you knew that)
• The Jackpot wedge
• Double Play
• The $10,000 wedge
• The Surprise wedge
• More than one Prize wedge on the Wheel
• The automatic Wheel spinning
• The occasional shot of the center-stage screen showing the Wheel stopping (they still do this but never show it on camera anymore)
• Invalid Final Spins not being edited out
• Vowels costing more than the Wheel minimum
• Short, straightforward puzzles being used outside of Toss-Ups and Speed-Ups (though they're somewhat improving on this)
• Three and four-row puzzles being used in R4+
• The neon around the Wheel and puzzle board changing color every week
• Prize Puzzles occurring weekly instead of daily
• Returning champions and Friday Finals
• Some of the Greats week
• Celebrity and athlete specials
• Bonus trivia categories
• Fictional Place
• Only one Bankrupt on the Wheel in R1
• The puzzles not being affected by the theme every dang episode...
• The audience actually cheering every single time the Wheel stopped on the top value or prize, and not just after a correct letter was called on it
• The Wheel-shaped car turntables (these were briefly revived around 2002)
• The $25,000 sign
• The Wheel rug center stage
• The guitar-based Speed-Up music used during the second half of Season 24
• $750 as a value (I'm sure it will return eventually, probably before $1500 ever does...)
• The scoreboards being surrounded by a flashing border adjoined with the arrow instead of being just a screen
• One-word bonus puzzles
• Red Letter puzzles
• The "rolling Wheel" category wipe and contestant window
• Road shows, especially Disney World

I miss the days when the show didn't feel so damn cheap all the time.

Sorry I bumped this up a bit, but I had been giving this a lot of thought, and just now, it finally popped into my mind. A lot of the stuff that MarioGS mentioned are things that I do indeed miss, but there's are a couple things that I don't think anyone mentioned.

First, I know MarioGS stated the golden-arched puzzle border. I miss the puzzle board just having a simple but nice decorative border like it used to before 2003. There's really no decor in the current one at all, although I guess it's for the sake of showing the total scores in Rounds 3+.

But one thing that I do miss that I don't think anyone mentioned here was the atmosphere. Today, our version as well as a lot of international versions in recent times have had a dark, black atmosphere that I've found similar to an indoor nightclub, something I'm not really too fond of at all. Twenty-five years ago, however, you had brighter background colors such as pink and light blue. Even if it had darker colors, it was still like a setting that I find similar to an outdoor carnival on a warm summer night with spotlights (and the themes used from late 1989 to early 1994) enhancing the effect. I really miss that bright, cheery, and more colorful look that the show used to have. How about you guys? Do you miss that atmosphere as well?

Yeah we could use more colors in the background besides "starry black" that's dull. Let's see all shows used to be mostly orange/red/purple during the arch or blue/pink/purple during early electronic days. We'd even get some combined colors a time or two especially when the neon debuted the studio walls took an approach with "sunset" colored backdrops. Now the road shows are also starting to get lack of atmosphere too, hardly anything outside of Vegas will have a special backdrop of any kind while the others just put bunting at center stage and a blue background for the studio, seems like black is the new blue.. ugh.

What, the actual beach in Hawaii isn't good enough for you?

Put me down for a changing wheel template for later in the game. I get why they don't do it anymore, but...it'd be nice to have some variation instead of the same damn wheel all game. And now that there's even less variety in the dollar figures than before...