One of the more interesting things you discover as you watch Press Your Luck is the incredible two-part set that the game plays on, including the magnificent board. In this section, I am going to attempt to guide you around the set and describe each of its components.

The Contestant Island

This is the main piece of the set where the contestants and host Peter Tomarken were located throughout the show. At the beginning of the show, the island faced the Press Your Luck game board. After Rod Roddy did the intro saying, "It's time to PRESS YOUR LUCK!", the island swung around 180 degrees to face the audience. As Peter Tomarken was introed onto the stage, he would take his place at a small standup podium at the lower right corner of the island. This podium was where his question cards were located, as well as a small monitor that reveled the values of any prizes that were hit at the board.

Each of the players' podiums were connected side by side. The podium showed a long green window with 3 smaller square windows beneath it, yellow, orange, red from left to right. During each part of the game, some windows were covered. For the question round, the green window was covered with a large sign reading SPINS (The typeface was MicrogrammaDBolExt, which you see here.) Any spins the player earned were placed in the orange box. When the money round began, the green window was revealed again, and the orange box was covered with a sign with two arrows. The top one was yellow and it read, "Earned", while the bottom one was red saying, "Passed". Spins earned in the question round were placed in the yellow window. Spins that were passed during the round were placed in the red box. (On the pilot, the number of passed spins would blink.) The large green window kept the players' scores. The players could see the same information that was on their podiums on a small electronic strip that was located on a small wall of lights in front of them on the island.

On top of the podium were two items. In the middle was the player's buzzer. This would be used to stop the board in the money rounds, and to buzz in and answer questions. In the question round, when the player hit the buzzer to buzz in, a small neon light around the SPINS sign would light up. This same light lit up around the winning player's score at game's end. The other item on top of the podium was a thin horizontal slot on each side of the buzzer. When a player hit a Whammy on the game board, a Whammy card would pop up out of the slots. This helped the player keep track of how many they had. Each slot contained 2 Whammy cards, for a total of 4 for each player's podium.

The island itself was covered with translucent windows covering light bulbs throughout: behind the players, in front of the scoreboard & at the front of the island. There was a red walkway between the last two sets of lights where Peter would walk and talk with the players at the end of the show. The entire island would turn 180 degrees several times during the course of the show. During question rounds, the island would face away from the board and toward the audience. When the money round started, the island would swing around to face the board. When facing the board, you could see the audience in the background along with a backdrop of blue windows on the sides. (On the pilot, there was a starry night backdrop instead of windows.)

The Press Your Luck Game Board

This was the marvel of the Press Your Luck set, and many are confused about how it worked. The board was surrounded by the same window/light bulb combination that was on the island. The board showed 18 boxes, with red light strips on the sides. In the middle of the board was the show's logo. (Note: This same logo was on the back wall of the contestant island, facing the audience when the players were at the board. Also, the logo for both was different on the pilot.)

As mentioned in the rules, when a contestant chose to spin, one of the boxes lit up. The light would jump from one box to another. However, contrary to original belief, the light did not jump to any box at random. Originally, the light had a set of 5 patterns to it, where in each pattern, the light would touch each of the boxes once. After Michael Larson discovered the patterns and used them to his advantage in May of '84 (June '84 air date), the producers changed the setup. During the summer of '84, two different sets of 5 patterns were used for around a month each. Ultimately, for the start of the 2nd season in the fall, a master list of 32 patterns were put into place, some of which were part of the temporary sets of 5 used in the summer. (Frankly, they SHOULD have made it random at this point in time. Some people never learn.)

SPECIAL NOTE: THANKS TO J.V. MARTIN, PRODUCER OF BIG BUCKS: THE PRESS YOUR LUCK SCANDAL, FOR PROVIDING SOME CORRECTIONS TO THE FOLLOWING INFO.

For the squares themselves, the values that were seen in the squares were actually slides. All the slides were placed on separate projectors for each square. Each square had 3 projectors attached to it, each with one of the slides for the 3 items found in that square. The projectors were shuffled back & forth about every 3/4 of a second (with the light hitting an average of 2 3/4 boxes per shuffle). The mechanism that shuffled the projectors was designed to give the look of the slides morphing into each other. Also, in the event that 1 of the items in a square was a prize, when hit, the slide for that prize would be removed and changed with another prize slide while the board was off-camera (or at least they tried to do that, as the flip was caught on-camera on numerous occasions).

(Note: On the pilot, there were more than 3 slides in each window. This explains why more than 1 Whammy slide appeared in each square, and why there were instances where the item in the square did not change, including changing between Whammy slides. It sounds confusing, but if you watch the pilot, it's easier to understand.)

Granted, of course, this operation did have its flaws. Malfunctions came once in a while that caused some slides to fail to appear. (You wound up seeing a black box instead.) In once instance just before Labor Day '85, a malfunction caused ALL the screens to blow, and some of the slides were damaged in the process and needed to be redone.

In addition, the board was occasionally seen to have one other small oddity. Normally, all 18 squares would shuffle slides in unison. However, on occasion, it occurred that some squares changed, while the rest did not change for a spilt second later. This would present the illusion that the board was shuffling faster. In actuality, it turns out that the projectors were semi-linked together. All the odd squares (beginning with #1, the top left corner) had their projectors linked together, while all the even boxes were linked to each other. Normally, both groups of projectors were started at exactly the same time. But once in a while, the machines slipped up somehow, and one group started shuffling a split second after the other group. (This is a little strange to describe unless you see it.)

The board had some other small operations. During the question round, the lights on all boxes were turned off (or all turned on during the pilot), and the screens were all filled with blank slides of various colors. When the game was over, all the lights around all the squares would light up and blink in unison.

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