Anyway, a couple of months ago I was at the local grocery store, picking up... yes, groceries. On my way out I noticed this blisterpack joypad thingy on a shelf and decided to take a closer look. What I saw was one of many many "x in 1" gamepads sold in denmark, though this was not like the rest as it only included 6 games, all being casino games, which I guess is why they called it "6 in 1 casino games".

The screenshots on the back didn't look like ones from an 8bit game, but I decided to pick it up anyway eventhough the price was a bit on the wrong side, US$22.

I then forgot all about the purchase, until now...

The VsMaxx joypad brand is distributed by K.E. Mathiasen in Denmark, who used to be official distributor of Nintendo gear back in the mid 1990's. The VsMaxx Casino joypad looks a bit like a Sega Saturn joypad (ST Pro). It requires 4 AA batteries and features the usual buttons, including turbos, known from a NES joypad and of course also has a power and a reset button.

When powered up, the player is presented with the titlescreen above, which also acts as a menu screen. When I saw the screen, I was pretty sure that I was holding a clone of the Nintendo Entertainment System, though it wasn't using pirate games.

The 6 games included in the unit are:

First game is blackjack, pretty funny for a while, probably the best game in the unit.

Second up is video poker. I've never really been great at this type of game, so it sucks ;-)

Third game is Texas Hold 'Em. The game is great, but seems to be a little slow at times.

Fourth game is called Slot Machine. This is probably the most boring game of them all, it's no fun just sitting there pressing A to insert coins and then B to stop the slot machine, hoping for a win... yawn!

Fifth game is Solitaire, a very strange version of Solitaire i might add. There's no cards to turn to get new cards, and all cards are visible for the player. At the top of the screen there's the usual 4 places for aces, but then next to the aces there's another 4 card storage places for other cards. They can be moved here to be able to grab another card in the row.

Well it's a bit hard to explain, but honestly the game sucks, I'd rather play Odyssey Software's (American Video Entertainment's) NES version of solitaire.

Sixth and final game is Roulette, fun for a while, but it would've looked a lot cooler if the roulette was animated so it would be spinning, but no.

The 6 in 1 Casino Game is invented by Senario LLC, in the US. All in all it's a pretty fun gadget and it's always fun to explore new NES releases :-)