Game EXP: Atari Greatest Hits Volume 1 (NDS) -Atari 2600- Gambling

Today's article is a bit of an outlier compared to the rest of the articles in the series.  In the self-titled categories created by Code Mystics for Atari Greatest Hits Volume 1, they titled this category as "Gambling," but only one game apparently was a fit for this classification: Slot Machine.  I fully acknowledge that I am already biased towards video game-centered gambling although I would not be surprised if there were some kind of tells to help you win this specific Slot Machine.

Slot Machine

I am not a gambling man, let alone a video poker or video slots person.  I have been wary of video game gambling since the mid-'80s thanks to Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack on the Intellivision, but I did love that game.  A video game slot machine on the other hand seemed odd and honestly kind of confused me on some of the game modes.  Granted, my idea of a slot machine is the simple one where you are trying to get two or three of the same on three tumblers on a single line.  Slot Machine here has two primary games, one where you only play the center line or one where you play five potential lanes.  There are also two forms of payout, either payoff or the jackpot.

I will be honest with you that I am not sure based on the game manual what the difference is between the jackpot and pay-off form of winning and I need clarification about how all of the numbers work.  The numbers at the top I kind of understand are the money you are betting with, with the number on the right being your money and I guess the number on the left being... someone else's bank that you are playing the slots against?  I think you are playing until either side hits zero first and once a side reaches zero, the game is over.  The question mark at the bottom of your column next to the zero was confusing too.  It really just felt like error text, or the game not knowing how to calculate a lower than zero score, "I guess you won zero?"  I also thought that the symbols on the slot machine itself could have been clearer as to what you were trying to aim for.  It could also be that anything beyond a single-line slot machine is just too confusing for me, although even playing the center payline was not as clear as I wanted it to be.

This really just is not fun for me because you could hypothetically play forever if the game gives you good results on the slots but to what end?  A high score I guess.  Yeah, not fun.

Verdict: No.

Game 1: 0:12? (1-Player, up to 5 paylines, jackpot)

Game 2: 0:22? (1-Player, center payline, pay off)

Game 3: 10:0? (1-player, up to 5 paylines, pay off)

Game 4: 4:0? (1-player, center payline, jackpot)

Game 5: 0:1? (1-player, center payline, pay off)

Hunter S. Thompson's interior monologue really sums up my feelings about video poker and overly complicated slot machines and while this likely spilled over into my psyche while playing Slot Machine, I still submit that this was not a fun game to play, and at least there was only one game in the Gambling category.  Next week we will return with a great follow-up to Gambling, Mind Games which includes a few surprisingly fun and innovative titles.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

But Then They Cry Themselves To Sleep