Black Jack (2600) Review

Date purchased: Sept. 18, 2012
Price paid: $12.88
Dates played: Aug. 1-4, 2018
Playtime: ~3h
Date reviewed: Aug. 1 & 5, 2018
Date posted: Feb. 8, 2023
Rating: 4/10

I tripled my starting stack of $200 in about 15 minutes, so I'm calling it beaten.

The back of the box lists it as Black Jack, while the only image they have during the game is of those generic 2600 cartridges and it's "blackjack" on that.

The dealer wins ties (although I did get a tie somehow once) and you can't split pairs. Whatever positives it has are completely offset by this. If you can't get the rules of a simple card game right, don't make the game. It also doesn't include the option to buy insurance. I wasn't able to start another 1-player game when I ran out of money without completely exiting out of the game, which is a slight annoyance since it'll take 5 or so seconds to exit and re-enter.

The game does go quickly, as should be expected since I don't think it would take much computing power to run a game of blackjack. You can play with up to three people, which would be a plus. I would have been extremely upset if I had paid full price for this back in 1977 or whenever.

I originally gave it a 1/10, but after someone mentioned that the manual has the goal of 1000 chips, I played around with the difficulty switches and found out that if you set the right difficulty to A (the left setting, which would be the "Expert" difficulty on the VCS/2600 models that label them Expert/Novice, like my 2600), ties are a push. After I did "break the bank" with 1000+ chips, I looked up the manual online. The A/Expert setting on the right switch sets it to the "Casino" rules, which also has the dealer hit on a soft 17 and stay on a hard 17, as well as only allowing double-downs on a dealt 10 or 11 and not giving you an automatic win if you hit 5 times (which, from my limited real casino blackjack experience, it is). It still doesn't allow splitting pairs, and doesn't have insurance.

I got over 1000 chips (1022, to be exact) and it displays "WIN" where your chip stack normally is. Unfortunately, this causes the Blackjack game to lock up (except for the slider on the touchscreen), and you have to quit out to the game menu and re-enter if you want to keep playing.

If I was playing an actual 2600 cart, I'm sure I would give it a 6, taking off points for the lack of splitting pairs, which I think is a pretty important aspect of the game. The reason my score is lower than that is because this compilation has a couple technical issues that I can't compare to the actual cart as I don't own one (and won't buy one), and the lack of a manual which leaves you guessing as to what the difficulty switches do. If the left difficulty is set to B, the dealer shuffles after 32 cards are dealt, rather than after every hand on A. The problem is that this causes the game to freeze, requiring you to exit to the DS cart's game menu and re-enter (the game setup screen on the touchscreen appears and the switches move, but they don't do anything). There's also the aforementioned freeze when you break the bank. If you play two- or three-handed by yourself, you can't bet different amounts for each hand -- again, I can't compare it to an actual cart to know if you can on that.

So, this is another 2600 game where having the manual is rather important, at least initially.