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Game Overview

Casino for the Atari 2600 is basically four card games crammed into one cartridge. You've got two versions of Blackjack—one for 1-2 players with splitting, another for up to four players but no splitting. The betting feels oddly satisfying once you get the hang of rotating the controller knob and slamming that big red button.

The difficulty switches actually matter here. Set them wrong and the dealer starts playing smarter—staying on harder hands or shuffling the deck more often to mess with your card counting. I lost way too many virtual dollars before realizing that.

Then there's Five-Card Stud Poker, where you're squinting at those chunky pixels trying to figure out if your pair of eights can beat whatever the dealer might be hiding. The switches flip whether cards stay face down or not, which changes the whole bluffing dynamic.

But the real surprise? Poker Solitaire. You're arranging cards on a grid trying to build scoring hands in rows and diagonals. It's weirdly addictive, even when the Atari's idea of a "flush" is just five same-colored blocks. That 3340-point perfect score taunted me for weeks.

For an early console game, it's shockingly deep—just don't expect the dealer to go easy on you.