292 · Vegas Dream

• This is the fastest paced video game anywhere
• NES Longplay
• Manual
• File this game under the category of things I wanted, but didn’t know I could have
  • A VEGAS RPG BABY
  • Anyone here been to Vegas?
• As a vacationing tourist, you have $700 and a chance to win big. Play Blackjack, Roulette, Slot Machines or Keno in your attempts to horde vast quantities of money and live the Vegas Dream. Along the way there are randomly occurring social interactions with various characters, such as business people, other patrons, or casino employees that based on what you say/do have various results. Thus elevating this game beyond the Arcade and adding in some RPG elements
• The Games
  • Blackjack
    • They are making you do the math!
  • Keno
    • Pick between 1 and 15 numbers on a board from 1-80
    • It then picks 20 numbers and you get money based on whether you got between 50 and 100 right
    • This is by far the hardest game to win on since it has such unbelievably bad odds.
  • There is the option to play the games solo without the adventure
• Your Adventure
  • Not often do I get to fit my full last name into my character
    • I chose Mr. Esposito instead of Mr. Michael
  • Challenged by Casino employees seems kinda strange
  • Woman Beggar
    • Lend her 200 and you either get 1k or lose the 200. What’s the game theory here? If my bankroll is 16k I think I’ll take the chance on the potential 800
  • The Stock Guy
• An old man will ask you to the lounge (this will occur automatically), where he will then give you the inside track on some "hot stock" opportunities. You will then have the choice to pick how many shares you want to go in at $200. Whether you decide to go in on this "can't miss'' venture, you will be updated by the news on what occcurs. You will
• either sell your stock for double the original price, or your stock will crash, and you will be out your stock money
  • The Scammer
• A Sunglass wearing looking crazy man will approach you, compliment you on
• your incredible luck, decline playing any games with you, and he wants to
• buy you a drink. If you say yes, you go top the bar for a few rounds, if
• you say no, you still get to gamble on. He will either give you a ring,
• which you auction off for a profit, or your character will fall down the
• stairs and owe the hospital $200 in bills (the ring somehow disappears in
• all this).
  • The marriage tree (or how I learned to just say YES to everything)
    • You can marry multiple times and every time you get the payout as long as you say YES to everything
• Endings
• It is possible to win the game by earning over $10 million, at which point the player is seen reclining by a pool with their household staff (assuming the player has moved into a mansion and has hired servants), and then taking a limousine to a show with their partner.
• “Bring me a beverage….John, the best one. Do you understand?
• Basically you became a DICK and the game congratulates you for it
• Should the player lose all their money, the staff at the HAL Palace give the player one final pull on a slot machine in a last-ditch effort to win some more money. If the player wins, they get to resume their gaming; if not, the player is bid goodbye, and a screen appears showing persons heading towards a plane, ready to depart Las Vegas, ending the game.
• How does it measure up to Casino Kid?
  • Casino Kid unique feature was the tell system
  • No walking around the casino, all chance encounters are 50/50 and repeat
• Sequels and Spinoffs
  • Vegas Stakes for SNES (also developed by HAL)
    • Can now walk around casino
    • Replaced Keno with Craps
    • The player gets to type in what they plan to do with their winnings. At the end of the game, a couple drive up to a casino with the player's name on it. Also at the end of the SNES version, the game tells the player what they typed in came true.
• EGL
• You spend a lot of money in this game, but what is the most you’ve ever spent on a video game?
  • I bought a PS4 just for Spider-Man so probably that? But in terms of individual games I’d say the Breath of the Wild Master Edition which I bought at Nintendo NYC at Launch.
• Next week -
• NEStalgia Byte -

Auto-generated transcript. Each paragraph starts with its timestamp. Speakers are not identified.

00:00 Vegas Dream, bring a casino home to your living room.

00:19 And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. And I'm Sean. Sean, got a little bit of an issue with that back of the box there. Bring a casino home to your living room. It should be like, bring the casino to your home, right? Like, a casino home? Has anybody ever referred to like, I don't know, what's like a famous casino place? But like, do you refer to that as a casino home? Like, this is, I know that you call them the house, right? Like, oh, the house always wins. But you don't refer to them as, yeah, you guys want to check out that casino home tonight? I think you're kind of missing up the, you know, the order of like, subject and, and it's

01:05 to bring the casino home. Like, bring the casino home. Bring a casino home to your living room. But not like, it's not a verb. It's not like a noun. Like the, it's not a casino home. You're bringing the casino home. Does it need a comma? Like, bring a casino home to your living room.

01:24 No, that doesn't work at all. So you're saying I just have to, it's the way I'm reading too fast. I've got that New Yorker mentality and I need to just slow down and it's, no, it's like, you know, home to your living room. How you can read a, a headline wrong, you know, because they don't use punctuation stuff. It's like that.

01:42 Okay, cool. Yeah. All right. So it is a casino game and, uh, I guess you could file this game under the category of things, uh, that I wanted in a video game, but didn't know I could have. Uh, and then I'll follow up on that later. But basically when you're reading about this game before you play it and everything seems like you're about to go to like a Vegas RPG where, you know, yeah, you're playing casino games and everything, but also like there's random social encounters and the decisions you make, uh, will cause things to happen and everything.

02:13 And, um, you know, it didn't fully deliver on that, but then that made me think like, wow, I would like a game where it's just like, for whatever reason, I can't exit the casino, but my whole entire life can be like, it's like the Sims casino.

02:28 Yeah. And that's sort of what I had in mind too. That's not quite what this is. It's almost like a, it's like almost that, but also a fever dream. Um, so, and we'll, we'll get into that. Sean, have you been to Vegas? Yes. Would you like to talk a little bit about the vibe there? Is it, is it as stereotypical as the, uh, movies in this game would have you believe?

02:56 Everything about Vegas is how you should expect it. Like it, everything that you, you think it is, it is, it is a hive of scum and villainy with glitz and glamor and people puking on the sidewalk and, uh, people trying to, uh, sell you, you know, fake stuff on the, on the board, not the boardwalk on the strip. And, uh, it's, it's a mess. The whole city is a mess, but I wouldn't have it any other way. And just, you know, a quick followup to that. How much did Vegas dreams live up to that?

03:35 Yeah, it, it kind of did it in some ways that did in some ways that very much did not. Um, but, uh, have you been to Vegas? I have not been to Vegas. And to be honest, it was probably something I wanted to do when I was earlier in my twenties. And now that I'm in my thirties, I'm like, I don't ever care if I get to Vegas, but, uh, it seems like something you got to do. So, um, who knows? Not ruling it out. I went for the first time in my thirties. Maybe it was a little too late. Yeah, but don't you file yourself under that scum and villainy category?

04:09 Yeah, sure. I do. Uh, okay. So Vegas dreams, you play as a vacationing tourist who, uh, walks into the casino with $700. And to be honest, uh, compared to the goal of like what it takes to beat the game, that is very little. But, uh, I don't walk into casinos with $700. And so I think, uh, again, maybe you could speak to this, Sean, as a, as somebody who vacationed in Vegas or went to Vegas for a few days, you don't live near the area.

04:36 Um, you do, you do probably plan to spend a little more than you do at your local casino. Yeah. Like when we would go to Niagara Falls, Canada, I'd maybe bring a hundred dollars. Uh, and maybe that was more so because we were college kids, uh, that didn't have access to too much money, but it's also like, you know, I had more opportunity to do that. I'm not going to blow my paycheck on just this day trip to, uh, to the Falls View casino.

05:08 Um, we, yeah, when I went to Vegas, I, I think I set a limit for myself of like $700 in, in gambling money. So, wow. So you were actually role playing Vegas dreams before you even playing the actual game. Yeah. That's amazing. So, uh, yeah, you have $700.

05:26 You're trying to win 10 million, which is crazy, but you know, technically it's a casino game. Uh, so technically it's just however much you want to win, right? You don't necessarily have to get the 10 million, but that's how you get to the quote unquote kill screen in this game. Uh, the way to see the ending. Is there, is there like a thing that says that's your end goal? Is it in the manual? It's, I don't know if it's in the manual. I will look through the manual now just to see if they gave any hints, but it's definitely not something that, uh, the game communicates to you at any point. You just keep winning money thinking, well, what's the point of all this money if I can't go and spend it on hookers?

06:04 Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much. Yeah. Uh, and then in addition to that, as, uh, as the, um, person at the casino, this is not a fully stacked casino, but you can play blackjack roulette, uh, two different slot machines. And then Keno, uh, which we'll get into cause Keno seems to be the, uh, differentiator from usual casino games. Usually I think Keno would be like replaced with, uh, what would you say there, Sean? What would, what would usually fit that spot?

06:31 Um, like a stereotypical casino game. I mean, maybe like, uh, like a poker or poker. Yeah. Video poker. Probably be more fun. Yeah. That's cool. I said Baccarat first. Who am I? James Bond. Where's my head?

06:45 Uh, I, I've actually never seen, maybe I just wasn't paying attention, but I don't even know if I saw Keno there. I attribute those number games more with like daytime bars. Like there would just be those screens in the corner, but who knows? So you're playing these casino games. And then along the way there are, as we mentioned, randomly occurring social interactions with business people, other, uh, casino goers, uh, employees of the casino, which seems a little out of line.

07:17 Uh, I don't think usually the people of the casino approach you and like to just like, Hey, I challenge you to my blackjack machine. You know, it's like, Oh, that's weird. Uh, but okay. Maybe they do. Uh, depends on how much money you're winning, I suppose. Cause I've never won that much.

07:31 But, uh, all of these things, uh, these, these occurrences have choices and those choices are supposed to, uh, represent some kind of result, either good or bad. And to be honest, even though it is something like, Hey, you met this specific person, the game is still randomizing the result to the player. So it's not like this character is always the thief, the pickpocketer, or this character will always run off with your money. It just depends on a dice roll. It seems like every situation has a 50, 50 chance of either being a boon or they're scamming you. Like there will be some, there'll be a girl that wants to go to a show with you and you'll go to the show.

08:15 Uh, but depending on whether it came back a one or a zero, she'll either make off with half your money or you'll win a raffle during the show and make 10 grand. Um, or there's a girl that'll spill a drink on your coat and you can have her take it to be cleaned. Um, and you'll either lose your jacket with your money in it or like the, the house will call you and say, so sorry, here's $500 for your coat. So it's, yeah, lots of weird things. And, and whenever this stuff happens and here's the fever dream part, after any indication, after any, uh, conversation that you have, the news will tell you what actually happened. And the news is always about the day to day life of you.

09:09 It's very, very weird. Yes. That's a, that's a great point because it's important to mention, unlike, uh, the other casino game we played Casino Kid, all of this is happening in, uh, either menus or within the, uh, casino games themselves. There is no walking around the casino, talking to patrons, talking to the people that work there. These people just randomly present themselves to you in a new screen. You are not able to freely roam around. And so, yeah, the only way to find out these results and you find out instantaneously, by the way.

09:45 So that's a little strange as well, but you find out the results from the news. And as I mentioned, they're all just coin tosses or RNG or whatever. So that leads me to my next thought, because you were mentioning a lot of the scenarios and they're all either win or lose. There's no like lose or lose bigger. There's no win or win bigger. So just to get into some game theory here, maybe, and you could tell me what you think. There is a woman, uh, in the game who is just down on her luck. And she says, lend me, uh, $200.

10:18 And, you know, the result again, because it's just up to chance is either you lose the 200 or turns out like she won big with that and shares the winnings with you. And now you get 1000 back. So early on in the game, when you only have $700, like 200 is a lot to give. But if my bankroll is 16,000, I think I'll take the chance on the potential $800 upside than losing the 200. It's just, it's no different than playing blackjack, right?

10:44 I mean, uh, roulette. Yeah. So basically in the early game, anytime some of this stuff happens, like you, you, you should probably think a bit more carefully as to whether you want to accept or not, because it's there. There are solid numbers that do not change, uh, for like what you can lose. Um, but the upside is, it'll be more impactful for you if you don't have a lot of money, but you also don't want to lose the money you already have.

11:14 The only scenario that changes the amount that you can lose is, uh, going to the show because then she just takes half your money. Even the scenario where a girl proposes to you and you decide to get married, like this happened to me. Um, I said, yeah, let's get married. And then there's like a screen where you get married.

11:38 And then it turns out that it was marriage fraud, which I'm not sure if that's a thing. Uh, and she only took, she only took $200 from me and I had like tens of thousands of dollars for her to take. Uh, so as the game progresses, you are more and more just, you should just accept everything except going to the show pretty much. Okay. Understood. And, uh, a couple, a couple of follow-up things there. Cause I think there is one other scenario where you could stand to lose more money and that is the stock trader. Did you run into him? Oh yeah, I did. Yeah. You only stand to lose money.

12:13 Yeah. You get to pick how many shares you want to go in at, at his $200 price. So theoretically, if you have $5 million, you can buy a crazy amount of shares. Um, but you will either sell the stock for double the original price. So again, you might as well just bet red on roulette, right? And just hope that it lands or, uh, the stock will crash and you'll be completely out of all your money. Uh, so again, the ice, I sold at half value. Oh, interesting. Okay. So there, I just didn't see that condition. So that's cool. I just thought it was win or lose. So there is a draw.

12:47 Oh no, it's still a lose. It's just like, don't lose all your money. Got it. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I like that. Um, it's better, better than losing everything. Cause you know, once you start to get a little frisky with the, the, you know, once you're trying to get it, once you know that you have to get to 10 million and you're sitting there at like one and a half million, it's like, yeah, you got a lot of money, but you don't have all the money yet. So you are betting a lot more and losing a lot more. How did you get that much money? Wait a minute. What are you talking about? I'm just so good at casino games.

13:17 Well, no, cause there's, I think that there is a specific, uh, random encounter, I guess we can call them where it's also a place where you can lose a lot of money. But again, you are in control of how you, how much you're risking, um, instead of just this behind the scenes coin flip. Uh, it's when a girl comes up to you and asks, Hey, you want to play high, low?

13:42 And when you play high, low, it's, you go to the casino board. I'm sorry, the keno board. And it just gives you one number. And all you have to do is guess is that is the next number going to be higher or lower. And every time you get one, right, it doubles the bet and you can choose to end whenever. But if it just keeps giving you these really high or really low numbers where did you've got very good chances of being correct? Like I think goes from like zero to 70 or one to 70, something like that. I think it's even to 80. Maybe to 80.

14:15 Oh no, it's 20 to 80. Sorry. It's 20 to 80 though. I don't think there's a one. Oh no, there's a one. Oh, okay. So then, oh, it is one to 80. Yep. I'm checking it right now. It's one to 80. So if you just keep getting like three 75, eight 69, like the chances are you're probably going to be correct if you're, if you're going on the, on the correct side. So I think I went from half a million dollars to like $8 million, uh, in that one screen.

14:44 And obviously if you are to lose at a certain point, you get nothing and you probably lose that amount or I don't think you can go negative, but you just don't get the money anymore. Uh, but if, but if, if you do it right, then you, it's almost trivial how quickly you can make money. There, there's many ways, uh, to make and lose money without ever playing the casino games. And I don't know how to feel about that.

15:09 I don't think you would have the same kind of luck just walking around a casino and expecting things to happen. Uh, but the truest of the, uh, I guess Martin Scorsese's casino experiences that you can have in this game. The stereotypical Las Vegas casino experience is with the scammer. Uh, he is a sunglass wearing, uh, man who basically, uh, compliments you on your incredible luck, says that he doesn't want to play any games with you, but he wants to buy you a drink because you're so good at gambling.

15:39 And if you say yes, you go to the bar for a few rounds. Uh, if you say no, nothing happens. He either at the bar, either gives you a ring, which you auction off for a profit or this is the bad ending. Your character falls down the stairs and owes the hospital basically $200 or whatever. And then here's the kicker. I like this part a lot. The ring has somehow disappeared.

16:06 And so clearly you were pushed down the stairs by the scammer while you were drunk. And he took back the ring that he gives to everybody in this situation. And I really appreciate, uh, the scum and villainy, uh, into Sean's words, uh, that we have here with this character. There's another character that had like tries to sell you a ring and it'll either turn out to be massively valuable or stolen. And then you have to pay or you get like five grand or something.

16:36 Yeah. We haven't talked about the casino games at all, really, aside from Kino. But that's important because, so I'm trying to avoid that for one reason. And that's because one, this isn't really a casino advice, uh, you know, podcast or whatever, but we can talk about the casino games. But I think really this is the experience of the game, right? The, the situations that you run into, they add the flavor. Otherwise you can play, you can download Blackjack, Kino, um, roulette. You can download any of those and play them on your mobile phone right now. And it won't be any different than what, than what Vegas dreams is offering you.

17:10 We'll talk about the little things that might be off about these iterations or that might compliment them. Well, but otherwise what you're looking for in the game is this adventure. In fact, some of the adventure that I thought was cool was even just being able to put in my full last name into my character. It's very rare in a game where they give you enough characters to fit in Michael Esposito. And here I was, I chose to be Mr.

17:32 Esposito though, instead of Mr. Michael, because they let you choose Mr. or Miss. And so I thought Mr. Esposito worked better than Mr. Michael. Yeah, I did my last name as well. Uh, but I, at first I'm like, does it want me to put my last name? Like, or is it just going to keep calling me Mr. Sean? Like, because that just gives me weird vibes. Uh, but no, it, it, it puts it in the game in places where you'd expect it. And it, it sounds normal.

18:10 And the most important part of the adventure that you alluded to, Sean, is the, uh, the marriage. And that is something that can happen multiple times in this game, regardless of whether the first one was fake or not. You can be married and get married all over again. If you play Vegas dreams long enough, these things just happen in loops. And what's interesting about the marriage tree, uh, the decision tree, yeah, the, the decision tree of the marriage situation is that it's almost unlike the rest of the game for its chance thing, because the chance only comes down to the part of like the result of the marriage. But basically if you want to get married to any of the characters, just say yes to everything.

18:50 Yeah. That's the only, that's the only thing. It's not even hard. It's just like, do you want to go here with me? If you say no, it's the end of the story. If you say yes, it continues on. It's like, it's so obvious that really like this was the cool moment where they could have made it like you unlocked something better by getting married or something like an additional credit line or something. Or like, I would have expected that I didn't actually, the only time that it popped up for me was when it was a scam for $200, a lot of work for $200.

19:23 But I would have thought that the, like the win state other than it incorporating into the ending of the game would have been like a dowry or something where you get however many thousands of dollars. That's not the case. No, that's exactly the case. You just, you just get money. It's not like, you get money. All right. Right. I was joking that like, you know, it would offer in like whatever that family's like net worth was could be like wired into your account or whatever.

19:49 And now you've had that added, or she also is playing around the casino. So from time to time she'll report her winnings or losses, but that just doesn't happen. Damn. You can't, you can't hire other gamblers. That sucks. Yeah. And I guess I'm wondering now, you know, as we're talking about all these different scenarios, we're clearly enjoying them because they're interesting or they tell, you know, they have some storytelling to them, but gameplay wise, are they offering enough for you?

20:17 Yeah. You know, going from what we expected this to be like sort of a, uh, casino kid plus, uh, it was a little disappointing. I appreciate there being roulette and it actually going by the rules of roulette and you're kind of staring at the, at the, I don't know, the spinner thing.

20:41 And when it actually hits, you can't exactly tell exactly where it hits. Like there's some good, like feelings, like it, it, it masters some feelings. Like I think when you, when you lose all your money, it gives you that, like, okay, just that last pull to get you back into it. I think it sends you to a, uh, a slot machine where you could just try and get a little bit more back. That's a feeling in a casino. When you feel like you got to chase, it's actually doing these things, but it, there, there's, there should have been more of that RPG flavor. Yeah. I really, uh, like the, from a video game standpoint, not from a real standpoint of like the casino actually being like, Hey, we know you just lost all your money. Here's $1.

21:25 Spin the wheel, spin the slots, you know? Uh, but I appreciate the game giving it to you because you know, if you, if you actually play this game with the intention of winning all your money, there is that one moment where you will just accidentally bet something the wrong way on too much money. And, uh, it'll crush you down and you'll have to, it takes a while to build that back up. So, uh, you do have to be cautious, especially if you're playing for the win, but that's not to say that, um, any of these games necessarily other than I guess blackjack is the, is does blackjack have the best odds for the player?

22:01 Um, cause roulette always has like the worst odds, right? Because of the zero and the double zero. So technically like betting just on black and red is only, you know, you have way more chances of losing than winning. It's not 50 50. I mean, roulette is kind of my game in general when it comes to gambling. I think like, you know, it's close to 48% win.

22:23 Uh, but the house always has an advantage. Uh, maybe I don't know what that percent is for blackjack, but I'm not sure. I don't really like the, uh, the payout potential of blackjack. You know what I mean? Like if you want to make money fast, you go to the roulette table.

22:39 Understood. And yeah, there, there's definitely casino, uh, thinking involved with getting to the 10 million, you know, you really do have to understand that, but for the most people, right, they just want to play the games. And so that's why to go back to blackjack, that's what makes it so frustrating to play this game's version of blackjack because they are making you do the math in a video game. They're usually in any other iteration of blackjack that I've ever played for video games. If you have your starting cards are a five and a seven, it's going to tell you that your score right now is 12, but this game doesn't do that.

23:15 This game only tells you at the end of the result, which is fine, right? Everybody can do simple math like that. You would hope at least, uh, I don't know, you know, kids probably shouldn't be playing casino games on the NES, but they did make one called casino kids. So anything goes that said like blackjack just feels like these are the quality of life improvements you expect from the video game side of things, right? The additional information. And this is more like it's withholding information from you. That's exactly.

23:42 I would also want there to be a, like, remember my bet, especially for, uh, slots. Like you should, it should, you should not have to go all the way back to max bet every time. Um, and also with roulette, like remember my picks, uh, sometimes I will just keep some, uh, chips on a, a, a square or like a, a number of squares. And I just, I just want to keep re-betting those. There's no re-bet option. This make, take my money game.

24:15 Is roulette also not happening fast enough for you? And what I mean, that's what I was going to say is like in, in an actual casino, it's fine because you're with people. You probably bought a drink or whatever you're talking. You don't want to lose your money all at once. Yeah. So you like the, the thrill of waiting for the result or whatever, but in a game where all you're trying to do is just continually bet correctly and bet often, it sucks when you have to see that animation of the wheel, which I'm giving him credit. It's great animation. Sure. Whatever. But it's too long for me to appreciate it more than the first time I saw it.

24:47 Yeah. Uh, that whole, it would also be weird. If it was just an immediate response. Uh, I think that would make it feel like a really cheap experience. And I'm not saying this, this is like a tasteful experience, but going in the extreme opposite, uh, also isn't the answer. It just needs to be a little, little shortened. The first time I ever went to a casino was with you, Sean. And I hadn't, I, you know, I had played all my childhood, whether it was with my, uh, grandmother or family or whatever. Like we played casino games. We had like a little fun slot machine that just had the seven and the bars or whatever. And you'd hope that they would lemons and you'd hope they line up, but it wasn't anything too complicated.

25:35 Uh, so I was familiar with casino games, but because I was with you and you had already been before I was like, well, what do you do? And you brought me over to the slots and I watched you play like, I think one or two or whatever. And then I put some money in and I remember pulling the handle on the slot, bunch of things happened. None of them resulting in any payout. I couldn't understand any of the fucking symbols cause it was like seals and it was like water themed aquatic or whatever.

26:00 So seals, mermaids and other things. And I'm like, do I want all these things on the board? And I just remember thinking like, well, I just lost a dollar 25, like that fast, like nothing happened. So I don't understand slots. And I really, other than like a couple of playthroughs of just, you know, very low stakes money just to see how it worked in this game. I still don't feel like I fully appreciate even this more basic version of slots than what's available at modern casinos. But did you know, you have a take on slots, you, you have a rhythm to it. So what was your take on, uh, these two iterations of slots here? Was it just that one was more simple than the other?

26:35 Well, okay. In general, in real life slots, um, I've, I've outgrown them. I, I feel like I only played them because you didn't have to interact with a person and there's an anxiety that comes with gambling with another person. Um, so that was why when, you know, when we were in our early twenties, that's why we were doing that. Um, but in this game, now modern slots has a bunch of different, like different lines that you can have. And they're in these two different versions.

27:09 There's one that has three lines. I think they're all just straight across. And the other one has the one. And I don't really know the difference in payout potential is between those. Um, I will tell you in the video game logic of it all, I use these to just like, it was just the fastest way to get to new random encounters. Cause I was just trying to see all of them or like, I just wanted to see the marriage again work correctly, but I didn't end up doing that. I just got bored and wanted to finish the game.

27:45 Uh, so I don't really know, uh, what the difference is in the mechanics of these two slot machines other than one has three lanes and one has one. Got it. Yeah. So it's just more chances for payout though. Correct. In the more, in the larger one. Maybe, maybe the, uh, the jackpot bar one, uh, it has a, like, it's going to be less often that you hit, but you're going to hit bigger. Maybe that's the concept. I'm not sure.

28:13 And last is Kino, uh, a game that I've never played before. Uh, and I'm, I'm not sure like how popular this is. You know, you mentioned that you've seen it more in bars than in casinos, but it does feel like it's like a holdover. Cause remember how laboratories made this game. So it is a Japanese company. It feels like it's a holdover from whatever casino Japanese game they made first.

28:36 Uh, but Kino is basically for those of you uninformed, like I was, uh, you can pick, uh, uh, one to 15 numbers on a board. And those numbers range from one to 80. Uh, it then picks 20 numbers randomly. Uh, I imagine it's through some kind of wheel or, you know, uh, similar to bingo, like a bunch of balls around and they plop out, but you get money based on whether you got between 50% and a hundred percent, right. With obviously like if you got a hundred percent, right. And you guessed a bunch of numbers, it's a much bigger payout than just guessing the,

29:10 you know, um, guessing 15 numbers and getting half, right. So there's a, there's a lot at play here in a lot of different variations, but my understanding is that this is by far the hardest game to win on other than that high and low bonus game, because it there's unbelievably bad odds here. You can only pick 15 numbers on a board between one and 80. What are those odds even? I, I don't know. I only played it a few times and then never hit. So I just never went back to it.

29:39 Right. And it feels bad, but I also imagine that's exactly how it would feel in real life. Like there's just very little feedback. You have no control. It's not like you're pulling the balls out of whatever they're coming from or whatever. You're just watching. Like when you're at a bar and you're having drinks with people and it's just like, oh, there's going to be another, another like a pull in 15 minutes. So you fill out your card and then you just continue to drink and let it happen.

30:04 That's why it's a, it's a very passive game. It's weird that it's in this. And am I correct in thinking that your strategy was to pick 15 numbers, like just throw as many numbers on there to increase your quote unquote odds of getting anything hit?

30:19 I did. I don't know if that helped or like, I don't know what the actual odds are for any number of picks. But I did that a few times and then I think I got half right once and just, I didn't get anything. So yeah, I don't know. Yeah. It's just wild to think like you would put down, you know, I'm feeling really good about landing on 37. So you just put down just on 37 and then just watch it, pick 20 numbers and hope one of them is 37. But again, I never went to school for math. I don't pretend to know anything about math. So I can't even think about the odds of picking one number, them pulling 20 and knowing that 20 out of 80, right? So it's a 25% chance, right? Oh, that's pretty, that's pretty low, right? Like that's got to, that's really bad.

31:02 I agree. I think your odds would go down though, if you pick more. Well, no, if you pick more though, then still just based, like again, it's not, you don't have to get all 15 correct to get the payout. It's just between 50% and 100% correct. So for 15 numbers, you just have to hit eight, which sounds terrible. Yeah. It's like if you just pick eight of the 15 numbers out of the 20, they pick out of the 80 choices. It's like, what's happening in this game? It sounds like, it sounds like chat GPT made it up.

31:31 I, yeah, I, I think it's probably pretty easy to come out with the, the percent chance, but I don't want to do it right now on the podcast. So, and if you don't feel like playing any of the adventure, adventure mode stuff, there is a availability to play these games single player with no adventure mode. And I think that's strange to, to include that because there's really no penalty for playing with, you know, the money that you had in the game. It's the same technical adventure. So what, what, what's the thinking here, Sean, just in case you want to play blackjack fast or you could still do that in the adventure mode.

32:09 It is strange. So there's no multiplayer component to this. Uh, not that I understood. So it's weird because this is going off of what you just said. Oh no, wait, apparently there is. I'm looking at it now. Okay. It's in the manual because I was in the adventure mode and I, there was just like, if you press B or a, whatever, whatever button doesn't just like confirm the bet you want to make. It's like, do you want to pass on the game?

32:35 And I'm, you know, I'm playing by myself. I'm like, okay, what does this do? Do I step away from the machine and then something will happen? But no, just like brings you right back to where you were. So there seems to be a lot of weird features that don't need to be there. But if there is a multiplayer mode, I guess that makes sense that you were just passing to the next player. Uh, yeah, because actually in the multiplayer mode, there is a money change mode where it's possible to loan money back and forth between players.

33:05 So you can actually be like, Hey, uh, you know, Mike, could I borrow? So notice how in this situation you have to borrow from me. Uh, Hey Mike, can I borrow $500? And I, you know, I, of course I'd give it to you. I'm good. You know, I'm good for it. Yep. I think that one time I sent you like a random Venmo request for like $900 and said, I'll explain later. Yeah. You never declined it. Yeah. You declined it. Yeah.

33:28 Which is smart. Uh, you know, funny as I'm continuing to dive deeper into this manual, I'm noticing that they have the payoff odds for everything. So that's very nice of them. Oh wow. Okay. What's the keynote payoff odds? Would have been great to include this in a game though. Right? Like inside the game, they could have easily have displayed this information and I'm sure it's hidden in a menu somewhere, but I'm talking about like in the freaking screen while you're playing the game, right? What's the harm in telling me?

33:52 Well, casino would never tell you. That's true. That's the point. Yeah. And this is the authentic casino experience, obviously. So for keynote odds, they are saying that if you put down on one spot, right? Like say you pick the number 37, I'm going back to that 37 option and it, one of those 20 landed on 37, your $1 ticket pays out $3.

34:16 So again, that's awful. Oh, that's the payout. Okay. Yeah. I was looking for like, what is the percent chance to win? Apparently that means your keynote, uh, I'm sorry. I just started reading in the other thing I had without giving any context. I Googled this earlier and it said general keynote guidelines are just making selections with between four and eight numbers. And that means that your keynote odds will range between one in 327 for getting four out of four and one in 230,115 for getting eight out of eight. Wow. I don't like that. Those are bad odds. Those are terrible odds.

34:53 So what's the payout if you get the, if you get all eight? Yeah. So going back to the Vegas dream calculator, if you picked eight spots and you got all eight on a $1 bet, it would pay out $18,000.

35:07 Okay. I guess that tracks. But even if you just, just to, just to get back to the 50% thing, right? It has to be higher than 50% obviously. So the four doesn't count, but if it caught five out of your eight that you guessed, your $1 is $9. So that's still better than betting just on one for one. But wait, do you have to put in $5 then? Is that how that works? I don't know. I think, yeah. I think you have to put in, I think you'd have to put in $8 actually. So when it catches five and you get only nine, you only made a dollar. I just want the multiplier, you know?

35:47 All right. So we talked about the ending and there is one, if you can believe it. It is possible to win the game by earning over $10 million, at which point you see you, assuming you played as yourself and not role-playing as somebody else. That's weird, right? Like Mr. Dukakis. Yeah. Would you do that? Would you be like, you know, I just finished a run at Mass Effect and now I want Shepard to go to the casino? Like, you know, I'm sure there's somebody that would. Great. So let's say that you win the game with a $10 million. Now you have Shepard reclining by a pool.

36:23 It's his pool, of course, in his house. And he's being really rude to all of his staff. Really rude. Okay. He says this. He goes, bring me a beverage. And then that's it, right? It's like, okay, that's not too rude, but there is a way to say please, right? Then he says, John, the best one. Okay. Now, first off, that's just not how people talk. Okay. No. Bring me a beverage. The best beverage.

36:48 I mean, what is that? Is that Mountain Dew? And then he says, to be a digital jerk, he goes, do you understand the order I've given you? Like, it's not your favorite. It's my favorite, John. And if you don't get that right, you will be fired. And so basically, you know, you became a dick. And the game congratulates you for it, too. The game is like, wow, you're amazing now. You've finally become what all of us want to become, a huge piece of shit. Yeah. And then you take your anonymous date out in your kind of crappy car. Like, didn't even make it a limo. But I guess that's not either here nor there because you're still a bad human being.

37:32 Right. If you got married in the game, there is no way that's your wife in the limo with you. That is obviously another woman. Yeah. For sure. You've gone full Wolf of Wall Street at this moment.

37:47 And as Sean mentioned, should you lose all your money, then you get the chance for the slot machine. And if you lose that, you are. When you go home. Yeah. You bid goodbye. And it shows you heading towards a plane ready to depart Las Vegas, which could honestly, that could be. Yeah. It's a movie in itself. But this could be the better ending, depending on which way you look at it. You probably keep your soul.

38:10 Yeah. And you get to keep your soul. Yeah. There's no way in the game to go to the bank and take out a loan or to drain your savings or to talk to a loan shark or anything. Like, you only ever just lose the 700 that you've decided to bet with. So you're right. This is actually a pretty good ending. If Charles Dickens was alive in 1990 and hadn't written A Christmas Carol yet, he would have had Ebenezer Scrooge be visited by three ghosts who make him play Vegas Dream and realize that he needs to lose in order to understand the spirit of Christmas. Well, I really appreciate that we came to a moral of the story this one.

38:54 Sean, this might be an Essential Games List question, so I'll save it, actually. I was going to ask how it measures up to Casino Kid, but you'll answer that in the Essential Games List because, remember, Casino Kid's unique feature was the tell system.

39:06 That was like you were able to basically figure out your opponent. It was a one-on-one duel with each of these in two different kinds of games, and you were able to tell if they might be lying based on a particular thing they said or did with the animation. That was a pretty cool spin, but there weren't these chance encounters that we have built into this game. So we'll compare them in the Essential Games List. But on the meantime, sequels and spinoffs, they did get one. Also developed by HAL Laboratories, Vegas Stakes for the SNES. You can now walk around the casino.

39:40 Wow. Unbelievable, right? Yeah. Get a load of this. They also replaced Kino with, your choice, craps. Hey, that's fun. I barely understand craps, but I think it's more at home in a casino than Kino. Yeah. Friend of the show, and I'm Joe, loves craps, and he probably would have had some input had he been on this episode.

40:05 The player also gets to type in what they plan to do with their winnings at the beginning of the game. Wait, before you go in, it's like, what would you do if you won all this money? Blah, blah, blah. And at the end of the game, basically, you're seen driving up to the casino with your name on it, and the game tells the player that what they typed in came true.

40:26 Wait, when does this happen? Oh, in the SNES version. We're talking about Vegas Stakes. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Sorry. You forgot we were in the sequels of Spinoff Session because of the whole craps thing. Yeah, yeah. Don't worry. Ah, crap. Get it? Ah. Yeah, yeah. So I think that's kind of funny.

40:40 It's, you know, that feels very Hal Laboratories to do of just like, what would you like to see done with your winnings? And rather than like give you choices for a cool visual ending, instead it just does the and the player did it. You know? If you wanted to save the animals, it will tell you and the players save the animals with the money. Yeah, that's great. And if I was going to put in what I plan to do with my winnings, it would be to do the Essential Games list.

41:13 And Michael Esposito's wish came true because he was able to make his Essential Games list vote. All right. How does it measure up to Casino Kid? Because that's really the most important part. Casino Kid wasn't an Essential Game. Vegas Dreams needs to beat Casino Kid to even get on the Essential Games list. So it's got that hurdle going on for it already because we're not talking about whether it's an Essential Game. We're just actually right now saying, is it even better than Casino Kid? And to be honest, I don't think the Casino Games are any much of an improvement over Casino Kid's two games.

41:42 And Casino Kid's whole like tell system thing was really unique and fun. And yeah, it could make it easy to cheese it a little bit, but you have to catch on first. Like playing a game with a guide is no different than rewinding your Vegas Dreams save states when you, you know, like when you lose a bet, you're just like, no, that never happened. You know, it's like, sure. Okay. Try and use a save state at a real casino. Like you have to know the tells and you have to same thing with Vegas Dreams. You have to bet the money.

42:13 There was also the ability to walk around the casino, which I think was really missed here. It was a little strange, even just like the fact that people would approach you and say like, hey, do you want to come to the bar? And then like, you didn't even get a choice there. You were still just essentially listening to dialogue of other people. Like there wasn't fun things you could do at the bar.

42:31 I know that sounds strange, but we live in a time now where these social interactions are much more built into video games. So they're kind of missed when they don't happen, even if they weren't a thing back then. All that to say, I don't think Vegas Dreams is better than Casino Kid. And so therefore it can't be on the essential games list. Sean? I do think it's better than Casino Kid, but I don't think that that is saying too much. I did appreciate the just the weird vibe of this game. I think in Casino Kid, it felt too not kiddy, but it didn't actually feel like a casino. It felt like you were in like a clubhouse because everyone seemed to like know each other.

43:16 Um, and the thing about casinos is, you know, that the, there's an anonymity and, uh, it, it, it just feels wrong. You always feel wrong in a casino and, or at least you should. Uh, and I think this game sort of gets that. Like, you know that you're, that you're just making poor moral choices the entire time you're playing. Whereas in Casino Kid, it's almost like, you know, isn't this fun?

43:40 Like this is, this is how, this is how the world is. Um, and yeah, I like that you can get married and then it turns out that she just married you for $200. I like that, uh, the news just keeps talking about you specifically and it, it just feels like a, a hot mess. Uh, but no, it's not, it's not an essential game. I don't think there will be a casino game that is, uh, until there's, I, I don't think a game like that has ever been made. Uh, so. Crypto casino games.

44:13 Yes. True. Well, I can't wait until the metaverse is real. Thank you for your vote, Sean. Uh, it is unfortunate, um, for Vegas dreams and for casino games in general. I agree. They do have a lot going against them. Uh, especially in the regards that like they're emulating something that is also questionably fun depending on the person. Like some people just don't enjoy casinos, period.

44:35 You know, you spend a lot of money in this game and that leads me to my question. Uh, my final question of the night for you, Sean, what is the most you've ever spent on a video game? And so, uh, I don't think you have to include, uh, downloadable content unless you bought it all at once or down the line, but, uh, microtransactions, all that stuff. Don't count. What's the most you've ever spent on a video game?

44:58 Oh, um, okay. If we're not counting DLC, I mean, I'm just going to answer that and say, I think I've probably spent over $200 on Stellaris because I just keep buying the expansions whenever they come out. Which is great. Uh, but if it's just talking about a base game, probably $80.

45:21 Would you, would you think it was for like an RPG from PS one days or like is $80 is a weird number. I'm, I'm, I'm, I know games now are 70 and games back in the day on the Super Nintendo used to be like whatever, you know, if it was a large enough game, they could justify a larger price. I think it was a, uh, like a deluxe edition. Again, I can't quite remember which game this was, but I just remember that being an amount of money I paid. I think it was like a physical deluxe edition where you got like a trinket. Um, and so maybe you could count that as, uh, paying for the little trinket instead of the game itself. But, uh, yeah, it was the same transaction.

46:03 Yeah. A collector's edition thing is usually what's going to get you. Um, I bought the breath of the wild master edition at the Nintendo NYC launch event for the switch. And that was like, I think $150, but it came with a master sword statue and it came with a case for, uh, the Nintendo switch that looked like the Sheikah slate and a bunch of other cool things too. So, um, again, yeah, not really the game, but $150 a lot for one video game, but also I bought a PS four just for Spider-Man. So if we're counting in like the fact that I needed the PS four at the same time, that's expensive too. That's like $400 now.

46:41 Yeah. Um, I thought, I think it was like 300 cause it was a black Friday thing. I didn't own a PS four at the time. Like I waited for Spider-Man to come out. So that was pretty clutch and I'm doing the same thing with the PS five. I'm waiting for Spider-Man two to come out so I can bundle those things together. Um, yeah, you know, I don't know whether this question was geared towards like people who buy, uh, retro games too.

47:01 Cause that can become expensive. I've actually exited, I've exited that scene now that it is grossly expensive. Like I'm mostly now just a seller, not a buyer because I refuse to pay that kind of money for games. But I did enjoy the thrill of finding like, you know, a copy of super Metroid 10 years ago for 15 bucks. Like that felt great. And I'm glad I have it because now it's way more expensive, but I'm not going to pay the,

47:29 I don't know. I think it goes for like 70 now. I wouldn't pay $70 for a loose cartridge of super Metroid when I can just play it many other ways, guys. You know, like there's that whole element. I've definitely paid close to sticker price for old games that shouldn't warrant it anymore. Um, but I, I will never pay for more than that.

47:52 Yeah. Sticker price is a good question though. Cause I think about that with like, um, I, I, again, I own this game. So bad example, but like Paper Mario, the thousand year door, uh, is, is a great game. It still holds up by today's standards. I would easily throw that on the GameCube essential games list, but now I'm actually, let's see Paper Mario, the thousand year door. Like, I think that's going to be like a lot of money because people want that game. It's not even like rare. It's just people want to own it. So it takes up the price. Like I paid, I paid six, not six, I paid 50 bucks for, you know, the PlayStation 2 release of Silent Hill 2 maybe three years ago. And I'm sure if I tried to buy that five years ago, it would have been $8.

48:35 Um, yeah. So look at this. It's, it's a hundred dollars now for a complete inbox Paper Mario, the thousand year door. And like I said, essential game, no questions about it. I wouldn't have much issue paying $50 for it, which was the sticker price back when it was a GameCube game. I don't think I would object to that, but to double that price is a little crazy. Uh, but if you look at the map of the, the, sorry, the graph of the prices, a complete in box version of Paper Mario, the thousand year door just in 2020 was going for that $50 price. So it has doubled. And you mentioned Silent Hill 2, Sean. So that was for PlayStation 2.

49:13 Yes. Okay. So that is now complete in box $120. Are you kidding me? That is $120 complete in box. And in just, when did you buy it? Not even sealed? Uh, not even sealed. No. Sealed price would be $393.

49:30 Jeez. And I don't believe in buying sealed video games, but that's not, uh, that's nobody's like, that's just me. I'm not saying that you're a bad person. If you buy them, everybody has their own collections. I think it's just too crazy, too lucrative a hobby to get into, you know, like all of a sudden we start buying sealed ones on top of that with the idea of not opening them.

49:47 Like cool for everybody who's into sealed or even graded, uh, video games. I'm into graded comics, so I'm not really that much better, but like, it's just a hobby I can't do with. So to be honest, now I'm, yeah, I'm strictly loose. I'm, I don't even care if they have the box and the manual. Get those loosies. Yep. But when do you think you bought Silent Hill 2? I mean, it was, I think it was, uh, early 21, maybe.

50:13 Okay. Early 21. So yeah, it was going, it says it was going for 80 bucks. Well, I must've got a bit of a deal then. No, I know, but that's still pretty good. So you got a bit of a deal, but even then $80 and then just in, just in two years, it's gone up another 40. Yeah. That's crazy. Wild. I love it. Um, so yeah, what's the most you spend on a video game really depends on the person, especially with those mobile games. Sometimes, you know, people get stuck in those. They don't even realize how much money they've spent.

50:40 Uh, whoopsies. Yep. And that's the same thing with the casino though, right? Sometimes you don't realize how much you're going to spend. And so that's why it's good to go in, even if it's a high limit, just go in and say, this is my casino money and I don't care if I lose all this. Yeah. You kind of have to do that or you're going to have a bad time. Yeah. This was a PSA from the government by nostalgia. And, uh, this whole episode was just a long con to get you guys to understand that it is possible to lose money at the casinos and the house always wins and Keno has terrible odds.

51:09 And we've been sponsored by a fan duel, fan duel, fan duel, uh, sports betting, sports betting, bet on all the sports, but on your favorite team, but on your least favorite team, bet on whether the coin flip of every game will be heads. It's possible. Not likely. What if you were actually all of the quarterbacks pretend that you had a team of all the quarterbacks? Would you win football? Who knows? Put a bet on it. Uh, Uh, Uh, Thank you.