Luck Be a Lady

Although there are exceptions, most forms of gambling are banned in Japan. The Yakuza series deals with Japan’s criminal underworld, however, so it’s only natural that you’d come across a gambling hall or two. When you enter a casino in a video game, you can usually expect to see familiar games like blackjack or poker. The Yakuza series is a little bit different in this regard, because it also features a number of games that originated from Japan. If you’ve never played cee-lo, koi-koi, or cho-han, then the Yakuza series might be able to teach you something. (If you’re not interested in dice games or cards, you can also link up with the Japan Catfight Club and place your bets indecent fights involving scantily-clad women!) Various gambling games are available at various points throughout the Yakuza series, so it’s hard to point to a single location to represent the series on this list. It can be a lot of fun to play mini-games with residents on random street corners, but if you want a more traditional gambling hall, the secret casino from Yakuza Kiwami might be what you’re looking for. Located in the backroom of an inconspicuous diner, the secret casino features blackjack, poker, roulette, baccarat, and pretty girls in bunny outfits. It’s not exactly Monte Carlo, but it speaks to the underground nature of Japan’s gambling scene.

Red Dead Redemption and its sequel are set in an era where gambling was widespread, and no depiction of the Old American West would be complete without some gambling thrown in. You could walk into almost any saloon and find a game of poker or blackjack, and there was tremendous potential to turn gambling into a full-time occupation. There are many forms of gambling in the Red Dead games, but the Grand Korrigan is easily the most lavish location in the series. The opulent riverboat operates around the city of Saint Denis and is famous for its fine cuisine, imported linens, and attentive staff. It’s also noteworthy for hosting gambling tournaments that are large enough to stimulate the local tourist industry. Upon learning of a high stakes poker game, Arthur Morgan visits the Grand Korrigan and takes a seat at the poker table. It’s exciting to play against high rollers and card sharps, and this is especially true when you’re cheating! Incidentally, Arthur’s associates give him subtle cues during the game to tell him which way to bet. Arthur entered the tournament because he had concocted an elaborate plan to rob the riverboat, so it’s not surprising when the whole thing devolves into a gunfight. Arthur doesn’t spend a lot of time on the riverboat and he obviously can’t return in the future, but it’s almost certainly the most upscale place he’s ever gambled.

Casinos are recurring locations in the Dragon Quest series. Gambling mini-games date all the way back to Dragon Quest II, and proper casinos have appeared in almost every game since Dragon Quest IV. The casinos all follow the same formula, for the most part. Essentially, players exchange gold for tokens, wager the tokens on various games of chance, and eventually exchange their accumulated tokens for special items that typically can’t be found elsewhere. If gambling’s not your thing, you might be enticed to visit a casino so you can hang out with beautiful young women in distinctive bunny outfits. Although many Dragon Quest casinos were considered for this list, Octagonia Casino from Dragon Quest XI stood out for a number of reasons. Firstly, the games were rigged in your favor! You were stuck playing the slots, but winning was guaranteed and the prizes were easy to obtain. Octagonia Casino also gave visitors a unique experience since it was run by a monsters who had besieged the town, and the establishment was important to the game’s plot rather than being a mere distraction. (The Definitive Edition of the game provided even more context to the story.) Unfortunately, everything in the casino turns out to be an illusion, and all your winnings will disappear! In this capacity, Octagonia Casino is almost certainly the worst establishment on this list. If you want to play a hand of poker, press your luck at the roulette table, or win prizes that won’t disappear, then you’d be better off visiting Puerto Valor Casino. Ultimately, I felt that Octagonia Casino was more memorable and eventful. I actually laughed when my prizes vanished, and I applaud the developers for trolling the audience. What happens in the Octagonia Casino, stays in the Octagonia Casino.

It’s a safe bet that any game set in Vegas is going to feature casinos, and Fallout: New Vegas is no exception to this rule. The game actually features six casinos, and they all have their own unique atmosphere. The Ultra-Luxe is the most extravagant casino while the Sierra Madre is probably the most interesting, but Gamorrah is the number one destination for debauchery and sleaze. Instead of creating a pretentious atmosphere, Gamorrah happily embraces the sordid themes of the New Vegas strip. Gambling is a vice, and Gamorrah doesn’t shy away from this fact. The establishment offers blackjack, roulette, and slot machines, but most visitors are there for other reasons. If you’re not interested in gambling, Gamorrah has plenty of alcohol, chems, and trashy hookers. It’s an extremely welcoming environment too, and it’s the only casino in the game that could be considered ghoul-friendly. They accommodate ghoul patrons, they employ ghouls bartenders, and they even have some ghoul prostitutes milling around. Gross! If you want to feel like you’re stepping into a 1950s Las Vegas casino, visit the Tops. If you want to get wasted and bang some whores, Gamorrah is waiting for you!

Throughout the course of Persona 5, the protagonists visit a supernatural realm known as the Metaverse that’s born from humanity’s subconscious desires. Individuals who have been corrupted form their own unique “palaces” in the Metaverse that are indicative of the distorted way they view of the world. Sae Niijima works as a prosecutor in Tokyo, and her palace in the Metaverse is an elaborate gambling house that reflects her desire to win at all costs. She faced tremendous adversity in her life and became the legal guardian of her sister at a young age, so her commitment for success is informed by both her career and her personal life. The Casino of Envy features dice games, slot machines, and bunny girl waitresses, but it also has complex mechanisms that rig things in the house’s favor. In the real world, Sae feels tremendous pressure to rig every case in her favor, so her palace is allegory to what she views as an unfair system. Japan’s conviction rate exceeds 99%, and this manifests itself in a biased casino that always wins.

Casinos are often considered places of disrepute, and this is especially true in Cuphead. In that game, the casino is owned by the devil himself! As the story kicks off, Cuphead and his brother Mugman enter the Devil’s Casino and go on a suspicious winning streak at the craps table. The Devil takes advantage of the situation and offers to raise the stakes if they’ll put their souls on the line. When the Devil wins, Cuphead and Mugman are enlisted to retrieve the “soul contracts” of his runaway debtors. The events of the game were set in motion at a casino, so it’s fitting that all roads lead back to the casino in the end. King Dice is the sleazy manager of the Devil’s Casino, and he proves himself to be deceitful, untrustworthy, and downright manipulative. He acts as the gatekeeper between overworlds, and he also shows up as the game’s penultimate boss. The battle with King Dice takes place in the casino, and the fight plays out like a glorified board game. Players will have to roll a dice to progress forward on the board, and the spaces they land on ultimately determine what mini-bosses they’ll have to contend with. Depending on your luck, you could end up fighting anthropomorphic poker chips, martini glasses, cigars, dominoes, and basically anything else you might expect to find in a casino. When you reach the end, King Dice attacks with armies of sentient playing cards, but that’s par for the course by that point.

Casino Night Zone is one of the places on this list that I’d least like to visit in real life, but it was also one of the first things that came to mind when I started making this list. First introduced in Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Casino Night Zone was radically different than any other stage we’d seen in the series up to that point in time. The zone was lined with slot machines that gave Sonic a chance to rack up hundreds of rings – providing luck was on his side, of course. Oddly, there were virtually no enemies in the stage. Rather than fending off attacks from Eggman’s killer robots, Sonic merely has to navigate through environments based off of pinball tables and pachinko machines. Casino Night Zone is filled with bumpers, flippers, and catapults that bounce Sonic around like… well, a pinball. I don’t typically associate pinball tables with casinos, but I appreciate the electric colors and jaunty sounds nonetheless. Casino Night Zone is one of the most iconic locations in the Sonic series, and it has been featured in Sonic Drift 2, Sonic the Fighters, and Sonic Generations. It also served as the inspiration for Sonic Spinball, but I’m willing to overlook that transgression.

Set against the backdrop of a tropical island, the Dead or Alive Xtreme games focus on beach volleyball and various pool-related activities. After the sun goes down, players have the option of visiting the island casino. The casino provides a nice change of pace, and allows you to partake in poker, blackjack, roulette, and various slot machines. Inexplicably, the gambling games are themed after the DOA girls themselves. (I don’t know how I’d react if my face was plastered on a deck of playing cards, but I digress.) Depending on your luck, the casino can provide you with enough money to buy new outfits and fashion accessories for the lovely girls, and that’s kind of what Dead or Alive Xtreme is all about. Without question, my favorite aspect of the casino is the pole-dancing component. For some reason, the casino has a separate area where the girls can perform lewd dance routines. Teenage girls, slutty pole dances, and sleazy outfits is a combination that makes me want to put myself in jail. It might be in poor taste, but I’d love to get lucky in the New Zack Island casino.

The Sexy Brutale is an intriguing murder mystery adventure game with a time-rewinding gimmick lifted right out of Groundhog Day. The game takes place in a casino mansion called the Sexy Brutale during an extravagant masquerade party, but something has gone very wrong. The party had been a smashing success in previous years, but this time around all of the guests are being murdered in grisly fashion. You’ll be forced to relive these events over and over, since time rewinds each day at the stroke of midnight. By observing your surroundings and spying on the other guests, you’ll have the opportunity to gather clues and potentially save the party-goers. It’s a race against the clock, of course, because everything will reset at the end up the day. Casinos are specifically designed to keep patrons there as long as possible, and The Sexy Brutale‘s time loop takes this concept to its logical extreme. In fact, the casino motif is woven into nearly every aspect of the game. The user interface is patterned after poker chips, the staff are named after playing cards, and many of the guests die because they take too many risks. The game even explores concepts like gambling addiction. It seems unfair for The Sexy Brutale to be on this list since the entire game takes place in a casino, but it’s completely appropriate since casinos are unfair by their very nature.

The Gold Saucer was an elaborate amusement park in Final Fantasy VII that featured a number of mini-games and gambling opportunities. It was one of the most memorable locations in the entire game, and it was given a next-gen facelift in Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. The updated Gold Saucer still features bright lights and a carnival atmosphere, but the gambling aspects are expanded significantly. Chocobo racing is still one of the premier attractions, and players can also play a hand of triple triad, face off against other adventurers in a game of mahjong, or spend their hard-earned money Manderville Gold Saucer points on some lottery tickets. I can’t decide if the Gold Saucer feels more like a proper casino or a glorified Chuck-E-Cheese, but it’s a great place to hang out in either regard. How can you not love the giant cactuar statue? It’s not quite the same without having Tifa, Aerith, and Barrett by your side, but it still provides a healthy dose of nostalgia. I was especially pleased by the updated version of the Gold Saucer theme, and the music has been stuck in my head since I started writing this list. I can’t wait to see what the Gold Saucer will look like in the Final Fantasy VII remake.