There’s no Pat Sajak and no Vanna White, but it is Wheel of Fortune nonetheless. Regardless of what you think of the TV show, this is a pretty solid version of the game from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. Spin the wheel, guess the letters and solve the puzzle before your opponents whether they are AI or real people.

The game gives you a variety of ways to play. You can play a traditional set of rounds against AI opponents in TV show mode, play a toss-up round which starts with a total prize and starts subtracting cash as it shows you letters, a speed-up game which spins the wheel once and every consonant is worth that value all in Single player.

In Multiplayer you’ve got a local Pass and Play game where you and one or two friends can take turns in a hot potato way. You can also play LAN and Internet games. For Internet games you’ll need to register with their servers which just takes a quick user/pass/email form.

There are also two currently locked modes which are Hawaii Week (unlocks August 1st) and World Travels Week which unlocks August 29th. On top of that is the shop that has avatar and puzzle packs to help expand your wheel spinning experience. Each pack is 99 cents, the puzzle packs contain 180 puzzles each while the Avatar packs contain new clothes, hairstyles and accessories to outfit your player with.

It’s nice to see a studio taking an actual interest in transforming their TV game show to a real, robust game experience on the iPhone. This is certainly one of the best transitions from TV to iPhone game I’ve seen yet. Of course Wheel of Fortune has just a basic mechanic that it would work on even an LCD screen on your high-end refrigerators.

You not only get to customize your player (I gave mine a Rollie Fingers stash and a mop with some product in it), but you can choose the level of the competition, easy, medium, hard or none in the TV show. It says there’s a Daily Game where a puzzle is sent from the server to you but can only be played that day, however, I’ve been unable to find that option in the game at present (it’s mentioned in the help though).

NOTE: The Daily Game is not currently available in the iPhone version though SPHE is planning on putting it into a future update. The help text was never removed as it is available in some other versions so just a minor oversight, but good to know they have plans on further updates.

If you’re worried about sitting through lengthy wheel spin animations and all that, don’t be. You can generally skip over most of the stuff that you don’t really need to see. To spin the wheel is a simple finger swipe and to solve a puzzle you get a keyboard. You can even give the wheel a good hard yank or a sort of soft one. But it will usually go a fair distance either way.

You can share your scores on Facebook I think I saw as well. If there are 180 puzzles in the main pack, which is included with the game, then that’s quite enough for some good long word game fun Alan, the Producer of the game at Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, contacted me to state that there are 1200 puzzles in the main pack. So if you managed to get through that and want another 180 for 99 cents that doesn’t seem so bad for a few more hour of puzzles.

Overall, the graphics aren’t spectacular but it doesn’t matter, if sounds like and feels like Wheel and everyone should take a spin on this one if you love word puzzles.