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The Fake Gambling Games Finally Grabbed Me
I have to help these raccoons slide these coins for a few hours
When I was a kid, my mom played so many hours of Casino Kid for the NES that its looping music track is permanently ingrained into my brain. The game combined simple implementations of blackjack and video poker with an RPG framework where you had to wander around a map and battle other NPCs, and it had a story you could “win” by becoming king of the casino.
She would have probably loved the weird modern rise of digital fake gambling-themed video games, if she’d lived long enough to see it.
In the 80’s and 90’s the genre was mostly limited to licensed re-creations of real casinos or games, and weird one-off stuff like Casino Kid. Now it’s an entire thriving category that’s particularly popular on Steam and mobile devices.
I think it’s probably Balatro’s fault, and like so many fads, I don’t think it was intentional. When the wildly popular poker-based indie hit was shipping around the world, some ratings boards and gaming companies took issue with its gambling-adjacent design, and decided to slap undeserved “adult” ratings on to it. The worry was that the game would teach kids how to gamble, an admittedly valid concern in the wake of other controversies like Steam/ Counter Strike loot box…
