How do you make a gambling sim interesting?

The rules for traditional gambling games are firmly established, and there isn’t much you can do to make them more exciting. Nowadays, you can appeal to a broad audience with mobile apps, online multiplayer modes, and social networking features, but I’d imagine that it was quite a challenge back in the ’80s and ’90s.

This was the problem developer Point of View faced when creating Golden Nugget for the original PlayStation. Their solution? The game shipped with an interactive full-motion video thriller starring Adam West.

Strangely, this feature is only mentioned briefly on the back of the game’s jewel case, and you could easily overlook the fact that it exists at all. The game dumps you into a standard gambling simulation mode at startup, and the “start adventure” option is buried in an obscure menu in a part of the casino you might never visit.

Golden Nugget’s adventure mode isn’t a last-minute throwaway addition, though; it features more than half an hour’s worth of live-action video, forcing the game to be released as a two-disc set. It was filmed entirely at the Golden Nugget Las Vegas casino, too. Its existence is both puzzling and fascinating.

Golden Nugget’s gameplay is nothing special, but the video segments are really something else. In the game, you play as a professional gambler, and Adam West is “Hugh Swain,” who is basically Batman. There’s some story about a stolen computer chip and chaos theory and…look, you really need to see this. I stitched together all of Golden Nugget’s FMV sequences below. Watch it all. It’s worth it.

[Previously: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.]

I can’t tell you exactly what happened over the next 48 hours. I have a general idea of how things unfolded, but the details are sketchy. Unemployed and now homeless, I wandered back over to Azemichi, where some quantity of alcohol was consumed.

From what people tell me, there was apparently some kind of incident at Dick’s Pachinko afterward.

There was yelling, and by the time it was all over, I somehow found myself in possession of a shamisen.

Also, I’m apparently banned for life.

Back at Azemichi — that’s today’s third visit, if you want to be a jerk about it — I managed to talk Chad into plugging in the karaoke machine.

(He later told me that he would never let that happen again.)

I found my groove soon enough, though. Something about this song always gets me a little weepy. Chad says that tears rolled down my face as I sung it for the third time in a row.

I tried to launch into an encore of “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” but the audience was having none of it. Things got a little rough.

And then it all took a strange turn.

I weighed my options.

Setting it on fire probably wasn’t a good idea.

Covering it in ink would’ve also been a dumb thing to do.

I could’ve gone the StarTropics route and dipped it in water, but that seemed kind of risky.

I even considered throwing the damn thing away. This might have just been a viral marketing scheme, after all.

Of course, the right thing to do was to let it sit in the sun for an hour. Obviously.

I thanked the old man the only way I knew how.

I recognized the place, somehow — it was somewhere in the Souch Pacific. Having nothing better to do, I bought a plane ticket out of here.

Chad and my oldest son greeted me at the airport. I told them I may not see them again. Chad grunted. My son responded with a blank stare.

I finally snapped out of my stupor as I boarded the plane.

I entertained fantasies of how easily things could go wrong.

What was I doing? Was the map even real?

I hoped it was.

[This entry is dedicated to my brother. It's his birthday today! Also, I guess this series is going to become a full playthrough, eventually. Previous episodes: Part 1, Part 2.]

My boss feigned surprise for all of two seconds before accepting my resignation.

And just like that, it was over. For my ten years of service to the company, I was given 500,000 yen — a pittance, really.

Luckily, I’d managed to funnel a nice 100,000-yen bonus my way after accidentally upping the interest rates on a few of our high-balance accounts some months back. I felt a little guilty about it at first, but considering that my severance pay was a goddamned disgrace, it was only fair.

You ever walk around town on a weekday afternoon with several hundred thousand yen in your pocket? It feels nice. It makes you want to explore the neighborhood and toss some money around.

I’d passed by this place every day on my way to work, but never went inside before today. These guys offered everything from foreign language instruction to guitar lessons to jazz dance practice. I didn’t have anything else to do with my afternoon, so I decided to sit in on a few classes.

I picked up a little bit of Hintabo while I was there. It’s sort of like Pig Latin, only more confusing.

Next up was a lesson on hang gliding. “Why not?” I reasoned. “Sure beats trying to sit through Yakuza vs. Yakuza.”

I jumped at the chance to learn a few shamisen chords. I always liked the way that thing sounded.

I also learned how to breakdance and picked up my pilot’s license. It was a productive day.

The sun was setting by the time the place closed, but I wanted to see what else had sprung up in the neighborhood since I’d last visited.

Ritsubundo didn’t have anything worthwhile, as usual. I don’t know who this “Takeshi” guy is, and like hell I’m paying 6,000 yen for his autograph.

I always thought that Nagahana’s was overrated, honestly. I could get better pastry at the gas station.

Grilled Mormons, despite the scandalous name, is just a Chili’s knockoff with a crappy beer selection.

Bar Gold turned out to be a snobby sort of place. I don’t think I’ll go back. They have great tequila, though.

Next door was Azemichi, the only place in the neighborhood where I could be considered a regular. I knew the bartender (sort of — I’ve never asked his name, but I think I once heard someone call him Chad), and the other customers were always focused on their drinks, so nobody ever tried to talk to me. It was perfect.

I gave Chad a brief recap of what had happened today. He gave me a sympathy grunt and refilled my glass.

It wasn’t long before I needed another. I switched to whiskey.

This was the longest sentence Chad had ever spoken to me, by a good seven words or so. I was touched. I couldn’t refuse another drink after that.

That turned out to be a mistake.

It wasn’t the first time this had happened. I came home late at least once a week, reeking of karaoke bars and depression. The routine was firmly established by now.

If I asked about dinner, my wife would direct me to the oven, if I was lucky. Most of the time, she’d laugh in my face and tell me to heat up a frozen burrito.

Other times, I’d just roll my eyes and head straight for the shower.

On the off chance I was feeling amorous, I could always count on her to shoot me down.

Sometimes, I’d stop listening to her entirely and start rambling about my lifelong dream of traveling to a faraway island. The wife usually stopped me before I got to the part about how we’d discover treasure there and set up a chain of family restaurants.

Tonight, though, emboldened by my recent unemployment, I blurted out something I’d wanted to say for years: “I want a divorce.”

It went over better than I expected it to.

Minutes later, I was out on the street.

At last, things were starting to look up.

It’s my birthday, and that means I get to post about whatever I want. With that in mind, here are the top three Internet rhythm game videos that have animals in them.

This first one is fairly straightforward. A pudgy cat observes in bored silence as its owner hits every note in a hard Guitar Hero song. His post-song celebration is obviously not appreciated.

I love this one, and I can’t explain why. A guy repeatedly plays a distorted segment of Rush’s “Working Man,” as a rather large iguana watches with interest.

It’s the collision of specific yet incongruous interests that makes this beautiful. I can’t guarantee you that this is the first Internet video in which a man practices a warbly, fake guitar solo for a cover of a Rush song while being observed by his pet iguana, but it’s the only one I’ve found so far.

I wonder if the iguana’s impressed? It’s hard to tell.

This final video really speaks for itself. Not even Linkin Park’s acclaimed blend of rap and rock can stop kitten cuddles.

New Year’s Day often begins in a confusing haze. You may not remember much of what happened the night before, nor can you explain the aftermath.

This year, for instance, I woke up to find that, during the previous night’s festivities, I had fully produced a tool-assisted speed run for Sachen’s quintessential NES platformer Jurassic Boy 2.

It’s annotated throughout. Happy 2012!

[Credit: This video was inspired by Frank Cifaldi's wonderful Mr. Gimmick annotated longplay. It may have also been inspired by Kentucky Deluxe brand whiskey.]

I woke up sweating.

It was freezing outside, but under those blankets, I felt like I was roasting alive. I had a lot on my mind, I suppose. I’d been fretting about my yearly bonus at work, and my dreams were a feverish mixture of financial failure, attempted murder, and my own death, many times over.

I kicked off the blankets and looked at the clock on my nightstand. It was two hours before the alarm was set to go off. Might as well go in to work early, I reasoned; maybe that’ll make my boss forget how much I’d been slacking off over the last few weeks. Well, months. Years, actually.

[Takeshi no Chousenjou is now fully playable in English, thanks to a fan translation released by KingMike and friends. It's the best Christmas!]

It didn’t take long for my nightmares to sync up with reality.

My bonus was only 200,000 yen, just like in my dream. I briefly considered the possibilities.

I was feeling pretty sick, but the chief was never much for sympathy.

Or ass-kissing, for that matter.

Paid vacation? Man, I wish.

Paid vacation and then quitting? That wouldn’t go over too well.

And I wasn’t prepared to re-explore that particular scenario.

Instead I took a long lunch and decided to walk around town to clear my head.

The movie theater was showing Michael Bay’s Yakuza vs. Yakuza, and nothing else.

I walked out in the first ten minutes. To make matters worse, I lost 40,000 yen in the seat cushions.

I needed a haircut. I was getting a little shaggy, and dye jobs and perms did nothing for my look.

My barber tried to laugh it off, but really, I lost a lot of blood. A crimson pool formed near the cash register as I paid; I nearly slipped in the stuff on the way out the door.

I couldn’t afford a visit to the hospital, though. It probably wasn’t the best decision, but instead I stopped at Club Akemi before heading back to work.

I don’t know what possessed me to do what I did next. Maybe it was anger over losing a big chunk of my bonus to a Michael Bay movie. Maybe it was the 10,000-yen whiskey. Maybe it was my gaping head wound. Quite possibly, it was a mixture of all these things.

I decided to quit my job.

Despite his recent discovery and encouragement of That which will bring about the End Of Days, I have a grudging respect for game music composer Tommy Tallarico. He created some great stuff with the Sega Genesis’ sound hardware, and his Video Games Live concert series does admirable work in promoting video game music as an art form.

His music credits extend as far back as 1993′s bizarre non-game Color A Dinosaur for the NES; incredibly, he’s not afraid to talk about the experience. More recently, he contributed to the PETA parody game Super Tofu Boy, which makes for a wonderfully obscure footnote in one’s career.

One particular track from his discography stands out, however. “Cybertek,” a song from the Sega CD game The Terminator, is Tallarico’s take on the rave genre. It plays in the background of the game’s Tech Noir club stage. To discuss it further would spoil the experience of a first-time listening, but it suffices to say that it’s a remarkable piece of work.

Obviously, the song deserves a tribute that could only be produced with Windows Movie Maker 2.6. After capturing a handful of screenshots and scripting a high-concept music video, I partnered with Movie Maker expert Bridgeport Cat to bring my vision to life. I think she did a bang-up job.

It was Christmas, 2006. I wanted to get a present for my girlfriend, who 1) loved cats, and 2) was totally into the Nintendo DS. Since Nintendo had yet to produce a cat version of Nintendogs, I got her the best thing available at the time: Ubisoft’s Catz.

The game itself was fine, if a little primitive in comparison to later pet-raising games for the DS. It let you use the DS stylus to pet fuzzy little kittens, and that’s really all I wanted. At the time, it seemed like the perfect Christmas gift.

Unfortunately, it also had a vocal theme song.

There’s just something about the singer’s voice, the low-quality sound sampling, and the way it crackles through the DS speakers that makes this song incredibly depressing. I gather that it’s supposed to be a song about a newborn kitten looking forward to a bright future, but the delivery makes it sound more like a baby animal dirge.

It’s the first thing that plays when the game powers up, too, so it instantly saps away all desire to brush virtual kittens. My girlfriend described it as producing a “Li’l Brudder” kind of effect — it’s just not possible to enjoy the game after you’ve listened to a song about a weak, possibly crippled kitten who isn’t yet aware of the hardship that awaits him in life.

(The title screen isn’t much help, either. Those poor kitties seem so sad! And just look at their misshapen little triangle heads! Why?)

To my surprise, I found out recently that the song wasn’t an original recording produced specifically for Catz. “Meow Meow Lullaby Remix,” as it’s called, was originally written for the charity album “For The Kids Too!” It’s performed by Nada Surf, who you might know for their ’90s hit “Popular.” What a strange discovery that was, by the way. It’s like finding out Butthole Surfers did a track for Mario Teaches Typing, or that Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was the theme song for a Korean Sega Master System game or something.

The full version of “Meow Meow Lullaby” is here (warning: do not under any circumstances watch the meme-filled video itself), and if you want to hear Nada Surf drop the f-bomb while performing it live, that’s also an option.

Several years back, a few of my friends from Kentucky came down to visit. With them, they brought — among other things — some beer, an Atari Jaguar, and a giant plush crab. It was a weird weekend. At one point we ended up playing SoulCalibur with Dreamcast fishing controllers.

Another highlight to that weekend was what you see above. The Super GB Booster was an unlicensed pass-through cartridge that allowed you to play Game Boy carts on the Nintendo 64. A similar device was also released for the original PlayStation.

Despite being an aggressively unofficial piece of hardware, it worked pretty well. Games ran full-screen with minimal hiccups. If but for one small problem, it would otherwise be an acceptable alternative to the Super Game Boy and the GameCube’s Game Boy Player.

The problem? The Super GB Booster did not output audio.

Well…that’s not entirely accurate.

To clarify, it didn’t output Game Boy sound effects and music. It did play an endless loop of something else, in an attempt to hide the lack of actual sound emulation.

The result has an interesting effect on any game you plug in to it. Below is a simulation of the Super GB Booster experience.

[photo credit: Retro Gaming Life]