I was very intrigued to see Westwood when this game booted up. Looking it up, and this is the first game developed by Burst Studios after EA purchased them and rebranded them as “Westwood Pacific” (they would later make Red Alert 2). This is a casino game based on an actual casino, and you can even have a tour of the hotel with a slideshow of a whopping six images.

This is a collection of casino minigames, starting with Blackjack, which N64 magazine says is more known in the UK as pontoon (looking it up, apparently pontoon is very similar but completely unrelated – I knew it as Twenty-One), although that’s definitely changed now. It’s not relevant to the game itself, but I found it interesting. Personally, my favourite version of “draw cards and try to get to 21” is Pazaak.

You register at the casino and start with $1000 to gamble. Outside the games themselves, there’s nothing to unlock or spend money on. You pick your game and play for as long as you like, or until you run out of money (although you can just re-register to reset to $1000).

You can’t walk though the casino, you just pick a game and it loads an individual table. Random names are given to your opponents. The games work well, but there isn’t much to them, all simple and mostly just choosing things at random.

The pure luck ones I feel at the worst, just place your chips and watch the roulette or wall wheel spin. There’s no atmosphere or excitement of winning or losing due to the nature of this being a game (and even more so by money not having any use in it). The same with the slot machines – I just personally don’t get why people would enjoy digital versions (although if they can somehow satisfy their addiction with a digital version that doesn’t use microtransactions, then I suppose that’s a good use).

The best game by far is Texas-Hold-Em. Golden Nugget doesn’t do anything special with it, it’s just an acceptable version. Of course, this one is limited to singleplayer (an option to hide cards and let players tell others to look away and press a button to see them would have been nice), the same applies to the other poker variants – which means the actual competitive games aren’t available in multiplayer, just the ones where you’re all betting individually.

When this came out, the main novelty of the game was that the games took place on 3D tables, which isn’t really needed to enjoy them anyway. They could have perhaps set it apart by having it be a casino you could explore (has that been done yet? The same idea could also be used for seaside Arcade-style minigame collections, where you can join a lobby and move between games while your friends play something else there), but this is just a basic minigame collection of regular casino games.

Poor

Golden Nugget… well, you know, it’s fairly good as gambling sims go but, er, it’s a gambling sim so it’s as dull as dishwater. Not even the coin-operated machines can help out.

Tim Weaver, N64 Magazine #26. Review Score: 52%

Remake or remaster?

There are better collections – Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics has the best games from this and much more variety.

Official Ways to get the game

There is no official way to get Golden Nugget 64.