Trips to the casino are an obvious hoot. Why not get your 8-year old hooked on Blackjack now so he can be bankrupt when he finally turns 18 or 21 or whatever? That’s clearly what Sofel were thinking when they created this horrible, Amstrad looking, moral smashing, pleb of a game. Pleb of a game? Don’t think that term will catch on. We’ve laid our hands on the North American version of the game and I’m told the Japanese version is a lot better but unreadable to us, obviously.
I have no commentary for this…
Casino Kid must beat the evil bosses of the Casino in the town of Lost Wages! Did you see what they did there? I’ll afford myself a “lol”. It all looks terrible, 4-bit terrible. The green, purple schema could have been lifted right off a Spectrum or Amstrad. The NES can handle over 20 colours people! Our protagonist wonders around the “casino” finding enemies to “challenge”. Most of the lobby, and yes it looks like a hotel lobby, is blocked off. I tried to get a game of roulette only to discover that it’s been removed from the US version (grrr).
If this is what casinos look like, I’m out
So you have to start with Blackjack which as anyone will tell you, is bloody difficult. The game makes no attempt at trying to teach you the rules and there is no learning curve whatsoever. Who would buy this game? It doesn’t appear to be targeted at adult gamers but they’re the only ones who’d be able to work out what on earth is going on. So you challenge Lisa and she basically takes all your money. The game crashes on the “Game Over” screen which meant I had to keep resetting the console. Lisa also doesn’t like it when you say you’re only going to play one more hand. She eventually caves at the fifth time of asking or something.
There’s also 5-card poker to “enjoy” if eventually you flee from Lisa but that’s it. Apparently the Japanese version lets you fly to different casinos too. Whilst that Japanese version sounds like a great advert for gambling, with its lurid graphics, awful sound and gameplay this feels like anti-gambling propaganda. Go into a casino, lose all your money, repeat. Except life has no reset button.
