Vegas Party for Wii: Casino Board Game

Vegas Party is a Wii party game that wraps a Mario Party style board around casino mini-games, released in North America on 27 October 2009. Both of the reviews found for it gave 3 out of 10.

Overview

The setting is a cartoon Las Vegas. WorthPlaying counts eight stylised character models and eighteen environments, and a June 2010 preview from the same site adds hazards such as twisters and earthquakes, on top of gambling opponents. The main mode is called The Strip, which the preview describes as a race through fifteen casinos, each dressed differently; Aztec and Area 51 are the two examples it names.

Visual Impact is named as developer by WorthPlaying. The same studio is credited with System Flaw on the DSi.

How it plays

Nintendo World Report’s Pedro Hernandez explains the cycle: each turn begins with a roll of the dice, done by shaking the Wii Remote, and a casino space starts one of three gambling mini-games. Tokens won there settle the winner. Menus and darts use the remote as a pointer. He gives the controls 7 out of 10 but says the rules are barely explained, for example how rolled numbers accumulate.

Brad Hilderbrand at WorthPlaying describes three modes, a board game, a tournament and quick play. The board is a straight line, the computer opponents are very hard to beat, and gathering three friends for multiplayer is a stretch. He says Texas Hold ‘Em lets players grab shared cards rather than receive two of their own, that bingo turns into snatching matching balls as they roll past, and that roulette is left mostly untouched. Blackjack, he writes, keeps its basic rules and is the only other game that works.

Hernandez adds slot machines to the list and notes that in multiplayer all players choose one shared line, which hurts the slots.

Release and credits

The United States release date of 27 October 2009 is given by both reviews. WorthPlaying’s European preview gives 9 July 2010 for Europe. The ESRB entry names Storm City Entertainment as the publisher, rates the Wii game T for Teen, and lists Simulated Gambling as the only descriptor. Players range from one to four. Sources split on the mini-game total: the review mentions 13 other mini-games beside the four it names, while the preview says ten unique ones, and Nintendo World Report counts ten card games.

Reception

WorthPlaying scored it 3.0 on 9 January 2010 and called it shovelware that mashes casino and board games into one hot mess. Nintendo World Report scored it 3 on 10 January 2010, with Graphics 4, Sound 3, Control 7, Gameplay 4 and Lastability 3. Hernandez found the concept neat but the delivery weak. One point both reviews share is a mild fondness for the stereotyped characters and the Vegas scenery, which Hilderbrand called goofy and detailed enough to entertain.

Can you still play it?

The game is a Wii disc. It plays on a Wii, and on a Wii U through Wii Mode, where a Sensor Bar is needed for most software and GameCube controllers are not supported. Wii discs are region-coded, so a North American copy suits NTSC-U consoles and the July 2010 European edition suits PAL ones. The Wii Shop Channel closed on 30 January 2019, though a boxed copy never depended on it.