Caesars Palace

"A few chips short of the jackpot"

Las Vegas. The City of Sin. Flashing neon lights, the sounds of chips clinking in the slot machines, alcohol flowing- everybody loves a good casino. Caesar's Palace for the Game Boy attempts to bring this carefree risk to your home. It's designed to give you all the thrills of a casino- the opportunity to earn big, the risk of losing it all- without the small trifle of money. You can very well win (or lose) a thousand dollars here while keeping your savings intact (or too low, depending on your point of view). It isn't bad, but after a while I soon tired of it- after all, it's only a game. The gaming can stir up latent addictions in some restless souls, the graphics can attempt to pixilate Vegas's showy glitz, but nothing compares to the real thing, and this game is lacking in several aspects.

After an opening sequence consisting of the casino signs, parking, and getting your chips from the counter, you're taken to the casino screen. The games are arranged throughout this screen; they include slot machines, video poker, roulette and blackjack. Not a bad assortment, although a few more would have been nice- perhaps craps, other card games. You receive $1000 dollars at the beginning, which the cashier doles out in $100, $25, $10, $5, and $1 chips. (For the obsessive-compulsive: If you get irritated if you have 60 $1 chips and no $25 chips, you can shift the chips around...a time waster in itself, so beware.) While you play the games, of course, you can get rich or go broke, depending on how the dice fall.

The games have some variety to them- for instance, you have three different slot machines to try. Namely, Fountains of Fortune (gray sevens, black sevens, white sevens...), Riches of Rome (plums, lemons, etc.), and Magnificent Sevens (sevens and bars). There are 5 different video poker machines, identical except for the amount of money you bet, from $1 to $500 (the latter is a good way to get broke quickly). In most of the other games, you choose your own bets.

This is all well and good, but it gets tiring after awhile. As far as I know, you don't receive any rewards if you make a certain amount of money- no special games, etc. The only way to end the game is to go broke or to cash in your chips. There's no save feature. Of course, real life doesn't have a save feature, but it is irritating when you've racked up a high score and your battery runs out. At times the games and pursuit of money can be addictive, but it can sink into monotony with surprising speed.

The designers of Caesar's Palace did take the time to put a few little quirks in, however. On the main screen, there's a door that leads outside where you can watch the ''time'' pass (not the actual time, of course; the game starts at 8:00 PM and as you play, it slips into the wee hours of the night) and the ''temperature''. You can pop into the men's or women's bathrooms, located on opposite ends of the main casino floor. The brunette woman who gives you your chips at the beginning wears a small name tag reading ''Suzy''. When you quit or lose, you're shown a sign reading ''Now Leaving Las Vegas''- what, you're not staying at a hotel? However, these details are at most mildly amusing the first time around, and then become just as monotonous as the gameplay can be. They certainly aren't going to draw your attention away from the games; all it is is window-dressing attempting to give this game some depth.

The controls can be annoying. Some of the games (roulette and blackjack for example) require very precise pointer positioning to get the results you want. And if you slide the pointer just a tad too far, you'll put your chip on the 4 square instead of the First 12 square, slashing your odds of winning roulette. Or, you could click ''Hit'' in Blackjack instead of ''Stand'' with a score of 20 and lose outright. This is a problem that could potentially cost you all your savings if you're going for the big bets, or at least irritate you when you lose a game that could have been a win.

The graphics aren't bad, considering this game was made in 1990 for the Game Boy, never known for its Michelangelo-esque digital artistry. Nevertheless, I have one major nitpick. If you're going to use a background of an actual casino, you could do better than have a pointer walking around it. It isn't every day that you'll see a big white arrow gliding around Caesar's Palace; the artists could at least have used an image of a person. Even a stick figure would seem more realistic than an arrow. The icons used on the main casino screen aren't realistic either- often, you have to click on them before you figure out what it is. Otherwise, the graphics are all right for the platform- monochrome, grayscale. The text is easy to read, you can tell the symbols on the slot machine and the cards from one another; what more do you expect?

The sound, again, is all right for a 1990 Game Boy game. A few of the music selections get very repetitive very quickly (i.e. the music played while you're in the main casino), but you probably won't be on that screen long enough for it to really get on your nerves. And if you are, there's always the volume control. Most games are silent except for the sound effects such as the ''boop'' you hear when you place a chip, the spinning of the roulette wheel- nothing that grates the ears, but if you close your eyes you're going to think ''Game Boy'', not ''gambling''- they sounds aren't meant to be realistic.

Overall, Caesar's Palace doesn't attempt to be much more than a compilation of casino games, and it just might hold your interest. It's certainly competent for pickup play, for example on a road trip, when you're bored and need some quick, mindless entertainment without being bogged down in storyline and other bells and whistles. However, the whole game seems shallow, in desperate need of some finishing touches, depth, general replayability. If you want the game, go ahead and buy it; at used-game prices, it's cheaper than a flight down to Vegas to hit the casinos- especially if Lady Luck decides to side against you. There are better gambling games out there, however.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 03/01/03, Updated 04/04/03