While growing up, a weird little casino game made its way around the neighborhood called Vegas Dream. It was pretty much your standard casino game fare, play virtual games with virtual dollars and try to virtually strike it rich at the casino’s games. Although this particular casino has a paltry selection of games, four to be exact: blackjack, slot machines, roulette, and keno. They’re all pretty much self-explanatory, except for maybe keno (which isn’t too complicated). But the little wrinkle comes in the… we’ll call them ‘events’.
Occasionally while you’re gambling someone will walk up to you and strike up a conversation. There could be someone downstairs that wants to talk to you. Do you meet them, and go down the perilously steep stairs? You might fall down them and end up in the hospital or you might find out that you have gotten an inheritance to add to your bankroll. Some guy propositions you to buy some ‘hot stocks’. Do you take him up on his insider information? The stocks could be big winners or big losers. It’s real similar to the stuff that happened while playing Vegas Stakes. Except that in this game whatever happens will end up on the local news. How a tourist falling down the stairs, getting married, or buying stocks is newsworthy is beyond me, but I found it to be pretty hilarious.
I guess I didn’t realize it at the time, but the goal here is to make a cool ten million by using your gambling moxie. And since I don’t really have any of that, I didn’t quite make it that high. I would run out of money quite frequently, betting it all on a lousy hand of blackjack, dumping it in the slots, betting on all the numbers on the roulette wheel all at once, or picking all the wrong numbers in keno.
Once you run out of money, which I did all the time, you get your ‘one last chance’ to pull a slot machine and not walk away a complete loser. I hit it big on the final slot one time, won big, then immediately lost it all to the keno table. Then the guy that actually owned the game moved away and I never had the chance to play it again.
[...] But I couldn’t get much past the qualifying laps. It was just so dull and monotonous. The most fun I had was grinding the walls and trying to make the tires turn red, and then burst. Then, when I go to the pits, I just kind of fire the pit crew, turn off this game, and then go play something fun. [...]