It's Optional

It's Optional was a pricing game on the American television game show, The Price Is Right. Lasting from September 4, 1978's show to May 9, 1983, it was played for two cars, both of the same make and model.

Gameplay
The contestant is shown two cars, both of the same make and model, and given their prices. The one that was displayed on the right was higher priced and had some unidentified options on it; the one on the left was the base model and had no options on it.

The contestant is then told the difference in price between the two cars. It was up to the contestant to add a limited number of options – usually, three or four – to the base-model car to increase its price to within $100 of the price of the more expensive car without going over. The contestant made his/her choices, one at a time, from a list of nine options displayed on a gameboard.

For example: The cars being awarded are two Chevrolet Malibu Classic 2-door coupes. The base model is $5,313, while the more expensive model is $6,638. The contestant must add between $1,225 and $1,325 of options within four turns to win both cars. Should he/she add, say air conditioning (which costs $601), the less-expensive car's price would increase to $5,914; the contestant would have three more turns to add between $624 and $724 to the more-expensive car's price.

The game ended in one of three ways:


 * Pricing the less-expensive car to within $100 of the more expensive one without going over, thus winning both cars. He/she could use less than the allotted number of turns to reach this goal, and more than one winning combination of options was possible.
 * Going over the price of the more expensive car, resulting in a loss.
 * Running out of turns before reaching the $100 margin, also causing a loss.

Trivia

 * The prices of the two cars in It's Optional were represented by two 1920s-style automobiles on a prop painted to look like a country road. The road on the prop had a price track running along it, and the base model moved down it toward the more expensive car as options were added to it, rumbling and sputtering all the way.


 * A contestant who won It's Optional received the right-hand car with its predetermined, unidentified options and the left-hand car with the options he had added to it while playing the game.


 * It's Optional had different rules on its first playing; all that is known of them at this time is that there was no cap on the number of options a contestant could add.


 * Until the premiere of Triple Play, It's Optional was the only pricing game to regularly be played for multiple cars.


 * It's Optional made its first appearance on the same episode as another now-retired pricing game, Shower Game. This is one of three known instances of two games premiering in the same episode, the others being the very first (Any Number, Bonus Game, Double Prices) and second (Grocery Game, the original Bullseye) episodes of the series.

Retirement

 * No official reason for It's Optional's retirement has been given.