Casino games for Nintendo

Casino games have been a source of entertainment for hundreds of years, and brick-and-mortar casinos remain popular the world over. As the internet became available to everyone, online casinos grew popular too, letting people play their favorite casino games whenever they liked with nothing more than the click of a mouse. Home consoles have followed a similar path, and Nintendo hardware in particular has carried a long line of casino-themed titles.

The Nintendo Wii built its reputation on mini-game collections, and while that format does not suit every genre, it fits casino games especially well — Nintendo has released several titles built around exactly that idea. One of them, Vegas Party, packs in a full spread of casino games including roulette and Texas Hold’em poker, playable solo or with a group of friends for a real sense of competition.

Nintendo’s dominance of the handheld market carried casino games onto the DS as well. Golden Nugget Casino is one such title, letting players work through all the different casino games they want, including several types of slots. Click here if that still doesn’t cover enough options — online casinos will have more to offer. What sets the DS apart is portability, letting a casino experience travel wherever the system goes. Whichever Nintendo system is at hand, there is a decent casino experience to be found on it, whether it is a home console built for group play or a handheld built for taking the games on the road.

Nintendo carried the same idea forward into the Switch era with Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics, a tabletop compilation that mixes card and board games — blackjack and poker variants included — alongside billiards, mahjong and dominoes. It leans more toward a family game night than a themed casino floor, but the card-table half of the lineup sits close enough to a casino session that fans of the older Wii and DS titles will feel at home with it.

Between the Wii’s party-style multiplayer and the DS’s pick-up-and-play portability, Nintendo has managed to cover both ends of how people like to enjoy casino games at home — a reminder that the appeal of roulette wheels and card tables translates just as well to a console controller as it does to a felt-covered table.