I Like Gambling in Video Games

No movie post today, I’m sort of on-call this weekend and I didn’t think about watching something new at home. I initially thought of skipping a post this week. However, recently I was talking to one of my friends about video games and ended up recommending Balatro again. For those not in the know, Balatro is a roguelike deckbuilder centered around poker cards. The conversation got me thinking about other games or sections in games where I enjoyed gambling. It’s Super Bowl Sunday. My family is downstairs watching some silly game and I’m in my room typing shit. During big sporting events like this, it’s pretty common for people watching to make bets with each other so that, even if their favorite team isn’t playing, they can still make some money off of the game. Gambling for real money is cringe though, so instead I’m just gonna use that last sentence as lazy justification to write about fake gambling in video games that have kept my attention.

If you have ever played Super Mario 64 DS (2004) and/or New Super Mario Bros. (2006) on the Nintendo DS, you likely know that aside from the main game, both titles also feature a minigame section. While many of these games were designed to be fun time sinks or party games to showcase the DS touch screen, the minigames that are associated with or prominently feature Luigi are all (for some reason) set in a casino and are centered on either cards, roulette, or even slots. The minigames that I’ve played the most are the card games, Picture Poker and Pair-a-Gone. In Picture Poker, the player bets coins that their hand will beat the dealer, Luigi, with the better hand winning the pot. Once Luigi deals, the player can bet more coins and/or replace their cards or whole hand with a random selection from the deck. In Pair-a-Gone, Luigi draws 50 cards face down, with the player attempting to match the cards in pairs (any direction) to win coins. These minigames are so funny to me in retrospect because, even though I ended up playing Pair-a-Gone more, I was basically being taught the gambling mindset at a young age. The vibes in these minigames are peak with the top screen showing our sharp-dressed dealer, Luigi, in a charming casino that features slot machines, a roulette table, and even a similarly dripped out Toad waiter serving refreshments in the background. The bottom touch screen shows the card table in that familiar casino green emblazoned with either the text “Super Mario 64 DS” or a classy emblem of Luigi’s head in the side profile. Perhaps our favorite younger plumber used some of the profits from Luigi’s Mansion (2001) to open up his very own casino. The music is nice and chill with a smooth baseline and piano mix. Plus to keep you gambling your coins, Luigi gives a hearty “yay!” and applauds your winning hand before he declares “Let’s-a-go!” and deals the next round of cards. I recall one time I was in the backseat of my parent’s Chevy Tahoe as my parents were running errands around town. As my Dad was pumping gas, I was in the car with my Mom and sister while playing the aforementioned Pair-a-Gone game on my DS. My mom took a look at what I was doing and said if I won the next two hands, then that was a good omen and we would go to Vegas. I did win, but we ended up just stopping at Primm, Nevada instead. I couldn’t complain because while my parents ended up losing at the Casino, I had fun walking around the Primm Mall and Buffalo Bill’s (back when those spots weren’t so empty and depressing). 

Alright now that the baby game is out of the way, time to talk about the real gambling minigames in some real big boy rated M games. The minigames that immediately come to my mind are the ones featured in Red Dead Redemption (2010) and Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018). The first game features a wide variety of games that you can bet your virtual hard-earned or ill-gotten money on, but the ones that stick out to me are the Poker and Liar’s Dice Mini-games. To go over poker in RDR1, it uses the same rules as no-limit Texas Hold ‘Em poker. I’ve never played poker IRL so I’m gonna move on from there. The buy-in is usually $25 or $50 at most saloons, but there is a single location in the final area of the game where the buy-in is $250 for some real high stakes poker. It’s not a bad way to earn money in the game if you’re looking to kill some time, but the funny often comes from the NPCs you play with. A lot of them have a set of voice lines that can sometimes loop the longer you play. They can comment on their hand or state of the game or they can say some unhinged shit. The NPC that immediately comes to mind is Herbert Moon, owner of a general store in the town of Armadillo, one of the first areas you visit in the game. You get a peak at just what kind of guy he is when you visit his store as he will often proudly proclaim that nothing in his shop is “Jewish-made” and has helped many true “American families” in the region. While playing poker with the guy, Herbert will often spout conspiracy theories on “the jews” or “the chili eaters” (i.e. Mexicans); it can vary from blaming them for the death of Abraham Lincoln to using the construction of a new railroad to spread lawlessness and disease. I would like to say he was definitely of his time, but that rhetoric was obviously all too common then and unfortunately today.

One last thing about RDR1’s iteration of poker is that, by wearing a certain outfit, the player can cheat by hitting a button at just the right time when dealing cards. However, if you miss the timing, you’ll be branded a cheater by one of the other players and challenged to a duel. So if you want to unload on ol’ Herbert Moon, go ahead and purposefully cheat at poker and allow him to challenge you, or just put a bandit mask on and shoot him in his store. It’s up to you. That being said however, I actually prefer poker in RDR2, namely because you can often play poker at base camp with your fellow outlaws. As such, I found the atmosphere to be richer as I saw it as spending time and shooting the shit with my fellow brothers and sisters in arms as it were.

I didn’t think I would write that much about poker in RDR1 as Liar’s dice is actually my favorite gambling mini-game of the two. It’s a dice game that I used to think was original to Red Dead. Every player at the table starts out with a cup and five dice, with one of them deciding the first “bid”. A bid in Liar’s Dice consists of stating how many dies of a certain face there are across all players, an example would be “there are 3 fours”. As the game rotates, the next player can either make a new bid (without going lower in number or die face), declare that the previous player’s bid was a “lie”, or declare the bid as “spot on”. If a player declares “lie” or “spot on”, all players lift their cups to reveal their dice and see how the total adds up. The person accused of lying will have to discard a die if the total amount of dice is less than the stated bid, however the accuser will have to discard if the total amount is greater or equal to the stated bid. Calling “spot-on” is more of a gamble as the player calling “spot-on” has to hope that the total amount on the table exactly matches the called out bid, or sacrifice their own die. The last person standing is the winner.

Now I know I just went into huge detail on how to play this minigame in a 15 year old game, but that’s because I really enjoy it. Doesn’t matter if I had to play a round for a quest or to get certain outfits, I would often play Liar’s Dice just for fun as I thought it was a compelling gambling game. Back in the early 2010s, I would often find myself booting the game up just to play Liar’s Dice for a little while. As such, I was disappointed that the minigame didn’t make its way into RDR2. Recently though, my friends and I stumbled on this newer game on Steam called Liar’s Bar that features a card game and dice game with rules very similar to that of the RDR1 minigame. At the time of writing, it is in early-access and is fun to play with friends, but be forewarned as the devs did use generative AI for the character voices in the game. If that precludes you from purchasing, I would also recommend Buckshot Roulette as a fun game of Russian Roulette with friends, only this has a shotgun and a creepy sketch vibe.

The last game I’d like to talk about is Star Wars:Knights of the Old Republic (2003), a now classic RPG set in the Star Wars Universe that takes place about 4,000 years before the movies. I can go on about this game all day, but for the purposes of today’s post, I’d like to highlight its “original” gambling minigame, Pazaak. The minigame is pretty much Blackjack with slight differences. It wouldn’t be Star Wars if the game didn’t borrow from existing material, but I find Pazaak to be pretty engaging. Unlike IRL blackjack, Pazaak is only played between two people with the goal of making it to 20 without going over; the player with the highest score wins the round with the game being 3 rounds long. There are 2 decks in the game: a main deck and a side deck. The main deck consists of yellow cards numbered 1-10, while the side deck consists of cards that can either add or subtract (or both) a numerical value. The player builds their side deck throughout the game by buying new cards from shops or NPCs, or looting from locations or dead NPCs. As you enter a game of Pazaak, you can only select 4 cards from the side deck you’ve built up to take with you. When a round starts, a random card is dealt to the player. From there the player can choose to add in a card from their side deck, or not, and then select “End Turn” or “Stand”, with the former allowing them to be dealt more cards after their opponent’s turn, while the latter means you settled on the total numerical value of cards you have and are now letting your opponent finish. I enjoy this game as, similar to Blackjack, there is a layer of strategy involved (especially with the side deck). Everytime I encounter a new NPC in the game that plays Pazaak, I often spend 10-30 minutes cleaning them out of credits as it’s not only a good way to get money in the game, but fun as well. Perhaps I shouldn’t admit this, but I have been known to save often before starting a Pazaak game with a NPC just in case it doesn’t go well for me, so I can reload the save and try again.   

Well it may not be a movie related post, but I hoped you enjoyed reading through my thoughts on gambling in video games. It should go without saying that I’m not really a fan of IRL gambling, nor a fan of gambling for digital items in games using real money. There’s certainly other examples I have not covered, Fallout New Vegas (2010) comes to mind, as well as games that specifically put a fun and wholesome spin on real world gambling games: Balatro (2024) and Ballionaire (2024). But like I said, I’d be here all day writing, so I’ll just leave it at that. Next week will be a movie post for real this time I swear not clickbait. Have a good night.