Game Review: Las Vegas Video Poker (MSX, Entertainment USA)

Some four months after the ZX Spectrum conversion of Las Vegas Video Poker, the MSX version was released – using the later Entertainment USA type cover art – and indeed a catalogue number from the 310 range rather than the USA ones. This happened to be the only Entertainment USA game that was released on the MSX.

When loading, the game has the same loading screen as the Spectrum version, which does at least look nice. When the game does load, you soon are presented with effectively a carbon copy of that Spectrum version. All control is via the keyboard, and you can select your skill level from 1 to 5, with 1 being the easiest. Once done, you can select which type of coin to use, from nickels, dimes, quarters or dollars. You can then press the space bar to see what the odds are for each of the winning hands of poker, meaning how many coins you would win, and then you can press the RETURN key to start.

Busted Flush

You start by adding money to the stake by pressing space, up to a maximum of ten coins, before then pressing the return key to start the hand. The five cards show on screen, and are turned over. Whilst the animation of flipping the card over seems nice enough, you cannot fail to notice how slow this is. The five cards are shown, and you can press keys 1 to 5 to hold the card, with the same key to cancel if you held by mistake. Once you are happy with your selection, the return key can be pressed again in order to then be dealt the new cards. This means the cards are flipped one at a time and scrolled out of the screen, then scrolled in and flipped over. If you decided to hold no cards at all, and so change all five cards, all the flipping and time taken to reveal the cards takes twenty-seven seconds, which is much too long to wait around.

The cards are then shown as your final hand, and if you do manage to get a winning hand, the odds multiplied by the number of coins that you bet is then shown as your win. The cards flash various colours to indicate the win with a sound effect, and this cannot be skipped either. For each hand that you win with, there are odds that come with it. So, if you get a pair of jacks or higher, you get your stake back. Two pairs or three of a kind are odds of 2-1, a straight is 4-1, a flush is 5-1, a full house is 7-1, four of a kind goes up to 20-1, a straight flush is 50-1 and the royal flush a massive 250-1. Not that you will get that often, of course, but good to know.

Don’t Touch the Pack, We’ll Be Right Back

On the other hand, if you lose, the sound effect plays for some time, which is just an escalating note of white noise that can be quite painful to the ears. Sadly, this cannot be skipped. After you have won or lost the hand, you are then back to press return to start or space to display the odds, and you continue until your money runs out. A win is obviously welcomed to boost the balance of coins, but the delays do spoil things. It would have been a nice idea to have an option to turn off the animations and instead just see the cards flipped over straight away, with them showing their values. That may have also alleviated the boredom that will set in.

The odds are very much what the chances are of getting a hand, and after a few goes I was at least able to get a full house, at the 7 to 1 odds, nicely increasing the balance to forty coins. At least on this version, like the Spectrum, you can add ten coins at a time, so you can fritter away the virtual money quicker should you feel the need to be extravagant. The lure to actually do so though may be something else entirely, but perhaps it would be interesting to see how long it would take, time wise, before you would land a royal flush. Days, possibly weeks, by which time the internal power supply of your MSX would be screaming for mercy.

Graphics and Sound

The graphics in Las Vegas Video Poker have been ported straight from the ZX Spectrum. Whilst the display at least looks clear and uncluttered, the MSX’s colours could have been used a lot better here to actually make the cards better. The animation is painfully slow when flipping the cards over to reveal the hand, and the feeling is that so much more could and should have been done. The sound is a mixed bag – mainly sound effects, some are nice when you do win a hand, the others are more painful to the ears. Perhaps a tune during play, even if it was a version of the one Rob Hubbard used in the Commodore 64 version, would have been nice.

Final Thoughts

Las Vegas Video Poker feels like a wasted opportunity to have a good poker game on the MSX. The fact it looks and plays like the ZX Spectrum, only a lot slower, really feels like it was done for the sake of being done, without the right amount of care and attention being put into the game. The slowness is what ruins the flow of the game too – everything from the flipping of the cards to the fact you cannot skip the sound effects when you win or lose, all just feels too slow. That makes the game both dull and boring to play, and whilst at least you will not break the bank, entertainment value is limited here. One for completists only, I am afraid to say.

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