Wheel of Fortune (Wii)

Wheel of Fortune
Developer: Pipeworks Software Publisher: THQ Platform: Wii Released in US: November 2, 2010 This game has hidden development-related text. This game has unused text. This game has debugging material.

The Wii version of Wheel of Fortune marked the long-running franchise's triumphant return to a Nintendo system after GameTek's swansong on the Nintendo 64 thirteen years earlier. Unfortunately, this was also the only time Pat Sajak, Vanna White, and Charlie O'Donnell were together in a single Wheel game - this and the DS version were released the day after Charlie died, making it bittersweet.

Pipeworks recycled many of the game's assets for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Wii U versions in 2012.

Unused Puzzle Banks

Though they certainly aren't large by any means, the puzzles directory in Wheel.bdg contains two text files meant to be read by the game as puzzle banks, their file names corresponding to two of the three mini-games.

wheel_puzzles_highlow.txt

FOOD|UTZ POTATO CHIPS
THING|XBOX DEV KIT
PERSON|CAPTAIN JAMES T KIRK
PERSON|RAY BERWICK
EVENT|PARTIAL LUNAR ECLIPSE
#EOF|

Most of these puzzles can be solved with only RSTLNE revealed.

Note that "FOOD" is marked as a category instead of the standard "FOOD & DRINK" used everywhere else. Nintendo wouldn't have been too happy about "XBOX DEV KIT" being a puzzle in a game on their console for obvious reasons.

wheel_puzzles_mostfrequent.txt

PHRASE|GLASS HALF EMPTY
THING|STICKY NOTE
PERSON|PRESIDENT THEODORE ROOSEVELT
PERSON|SAMUEL L JACKSON
EVENT|TOTAL LUNAR ECLIPSE
#EOF|

Unfortunately, there's nothing hilariously crazy in this puzzle bank, but nevertheless...

Other Puzzle Oddities

THE 70s|THE BEE GEES

This poor Toss-Up puzzle, due to its nonstandard category "THE 70s", claims the dubious honor of containing the only lowercase letter in the entirety of all 32 puzzle banks, along with being the only puzzle in that category.

Corrupted Batch File

Present in the root folder is a file called RunWheelRD.bat. The file is corrupted, as opening it doesn't seem to do anything and opening it in a text editor just displays a bunch of garbage text.

ELF Executable

Also present in the root folder is default.elf, a Wii executable with debug symbols. The MD5 hash matches with default.dol after stripping the symbols and converting it to a dol file.

Build Information

Found in version.txt on the root of the disc:

1.0.0.415
08/11/2010 11:54 AM
build@14BUILD04