Systems: Intellivision
Release Date: 1979
First off, I did not alter or rearrange the title of this game, it really does say "Blackjack & Poker" when you boot the game up, but the official title is Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack. Even the box has the full title, and I can only assume that the title was shortened because it would have otherwise been too long to fit on the start-up screen. But as to why the games are out of order is beyond me.
I will be the first to admit that I view this game through heavily deep rose-tinted glasses and over the years I have talked about this game potentially being one of the first video games I ever played. After replaying this game (granted not on an Intellivision system but on an emulator through my browser which is why the images will be presented in a widescreen format, and not formatted to fit your screen), I still think that it is a really fun poker game with simple rules and a dealer who is not out to destroy your bank account.
Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack is made up of four standard casino card games, Five Card Draw, Five Card Stud, Seven Card Stud, and Blackjack. You play through one hand of one game and then you can choose whichever game you want to play next, using the same amount of money that you selected you would start out with at the very beginning of the game. I love that there is a random/Dealer's Choice option otherwise I feel like I would only play Blackjack or Five Card Draw. I cannot say how fairly the dealer plays in that I am unable to count cards to figure out if the cards are shuffled after each hand or house frequently if at all, the house cheats. I do become a little suspicious though when playing Blackjack and two hands in a row I was dealt cards totaling 12, then received a 10 or a face card on a hit. Luckily you can jump into another game immediately so do you not have to dwell on whether or not the game cheated.
In this iteration of the game through Archive.org, you use the 10-key number pad and unfortunately, the number row keys do not function, so there is that limitation right off the bat. Secondly, you need to know how the overlay card for LVP&B is laid out to know what number does what, which is where having a second screen, be it a second monitor or a phone screen comes in handy. But even then, the 10-key is reversed compared to the overlay which is close to the layout of the keypad on a phone. I have noticed a quirk or two that may or not be a bug due to emulation, or if I just pressed the wrong button at the wrong time, but on at least two occasions, I accidentally dropped my hand playing Five/Seven Card Stud when I thought I was raising.
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Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack is where I learned how to play each of these card games, probably around the age of 5-7, although I did not learn the finer points of the games until much later. The beauty of this game is that it feels like it was designed to be fun, not punishing the player. If you end up being bankrupt, you are almost immediately prompted to enter a new amount to start playing again. There are no leaderboards, or high scores to hit, just an arbitrary amount to start with so that you can somewhat accurately ante up, bet, or raise along with the dealer (or other players if you are playing a two-player game which I have not figured out how to do on the Archive.org emulator).
I would not go into this game, especially in this day and age, expecting a robust poker simulator, just a fun early iteration of four three poker games and Blackjack. And even though the emulation from Archive.org is not a perfect one visually, and does not allow (that I could find) for button remapping, just seeing the game, hearing the shuffling of the cards, and even the overlay, brings a flood of nostalgic memories of summer vacation in the San Bernadino mountains for a few weeks until 1992-93 when the house my grandparents rented changed and we no longer had access to the Intellivision.
~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
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