Vaguely based on Wheel Of Fortune, this one is called Las Vegas! because it's also very much like the hangman game upon which it was based.

• Each time a game starts, you automatically get a "free" $100 to work with. At this point it is "Your Turn". There are many ways to start a new game but if you are starting Las Vegas! from the beginning you should click the New Game button.
• Normally every time it is "Your Turn" you Spin which means that you click the button twice - once to start the random pictures being shown and once to stop it. Where "the wheel" stops determines what you are allowed to do next. Other options when it is "Your Turn" include the Solve Puzzle and Buy a Vowel buttons. Both of these let you immediately guess a letter with a fixed built-in wager amount for each guess. The Solve Puzzle interaction lets you keep guessing letters until you make a mistake or until the game ends when you solve the puzzle.
• When you guess a correct letter, the wager amount is added to your "Game Total" , but you don't actually get this money until you win the game. If you guess a letter incorrectly, you lose the wager amount. Likewise, if you get more than one correct letter from a single guess, you win the money for each of those letters.
• After you guess a letter, whether it's a correct guess or not, you cannot continue guessing - you have to go take Your Turn. The only exception to this is when you try to Solve the Puzzle.
• A single game ends when you run out of money or when you solve the puzzle, whichever comes first. You are allowed to have $0 dollars, but you cannot go negative.
• Another way for a game to end is when you Spin and get "Bankrupt". This never takes any money away from you, you simply lose what you might otherwise have won in the current game.
• Once a single game is over, the Web context is retained as you see in the "overall summary" that is displayed at the end of the gameboard. The total money won thus far is shown as the Grand Total and the number of games won and lost is retained. There is no way for you to lose any money that is displayed in this "Grand Total" display at the bottom of the screen.
• If you click Solve Puzzle or Buy a Vowel and then decide that you want to change your mind, just Spin and the previous commitment will be abandoned.

• My number one wish item would be to figure out how to make this game work with Netscape. Clearly, there are JScript™ (Microsoft's name for Javascript) features that are used here that just don't work with Netscape. My suspicion is that this involves the use of <IFRAME> (as opposed to pure Javascript's <FRAMESET>) but I haven't looked any more into this. If you figure out anything about this, please let me know.
• The layout of the screen could be made to adapt to the user's screen settings and fonts, but currently no attempt is made to do so. Basically, Las Vegas! works fine with a screen resolution of 1024x768, no matter which IE font size you chose, but with DOS screens like 640x480 and even with 800x600, you can easily get into situations where there's so much scrolling around that the game is just not fun. For more details see my FAQ about changing your screen resolution on Windows 95.
• I should invent a Gim'me a Clue button which helps you with the current word or phrase. Ideas for heuristics: if it's an uncommon word, a dictionary meaning might be appropriate. For Geography places, clues could be categorizations like country Vs city or what continent it's on, etc. For Kid's names, whether it's a boy or a girl and/or whether it's a first name or a last name might work. The point of this would be (a) a button which is an HREF link, but the target of which changes dynamically, and (b) some practice at using scripting languages to provide dynamic heuristics.
• The gameboard images could certainly be improved. Fancy pictures was not at all one of my goals in producing Las Vegas!, however. Rather, it was to investigate how well JScript™ can do the "animation" described as random pictures being shown and to better understand its ability to handle an intensively interactive game such as Las Vegas!.
• I would like to use cookie technology for two purposes: (1) so that each time someone comes into the game, I can tell them if they've ever played before, and if so, what their personal best score is. And (2), to be able to know who got the highest scorer "ever".
• It sure would be nice if the gameboard didn't come out blank when the browser prints this web page. I have no idea why this is the case.
• My kids would like for there to be a "Print" command to be used at the end of a game. The amount of money that you won would be printed on a suitable device near you, presumably with Uncke Sam's approval. We're still waiting for this approval to come thru.
• I've thought of having a Play It Again button because sometimes a game ends and I wanna backup because I can't believe that I couldn't have seen that that was the answer.
• The random pictures being shown is meant to be an illusion, but for this to work effectively in differing environments, some research may be in order. In particular, the time period that is used to control the clock interval between pictures is not necessarily optimum for all CPUs. So, perhaps it would be fun to have some sort of slider (or other graphical control) that would let different people try out the animation control running at differents speeds.

If you are interested in grabbing this game for your own use off-line, remember that Las Vegas! is JScript™ and [therefore?] doesn't work with Netscape. Of course, if you figure out how to change this so that it does work with Netscape - I'm all ears! Afterall, JScript™ is supposed to be Javascript compatible... If you do anything other than just use this source privately, you might want to give credit to the original model that this source was based on (and did I mention that yours truly also had a hand in it?).

Thankyou for playing Las Vegas!