I continued to forestall the inevitable this evening by further delaying playing some of the most bizarre Sega CD games in existence. Instead, I finally collected a full set of quality screenshots for Vegas Fever Winner Takes All. You start this game with $1000 and I was consistently, cluelessly losing money at each game I played for screenshot purposes. Wouldn’t you know– on the last game I played, Texas Hold ’em Poker, I actually won a sizable pot and ended up with over $1000, even though I really had no idea what I was doing.

I’m so strategically-impaired that stubbornly calling bets and refusing to fold is probably the best strategy I could hope to employ in an actual Poker game. Through it all, though, I must say that if I were partial to gambling-type games, this would be my casino simulation game of choice. Beautiful, authentic, diverse, and it claims to be highly accurate to boot.

Otherwise, I spent the evening playing through a bunch of old NES games. The reason for this is that, vast as it is, MobyGames is still missing over 150 NES games (American NES games; that I know of). I’m hoping to fill some gaps. Among the NES games were 2 racing games, one good and one not so good. The good one is a title of which I have fond memories playing and winning back when my interest in the system was waning: Eliminator Boat Duel.

This is a fierce one on one boat racing game where you claw your way up through the ranks of pro boat racers, winning prize money, upgrading your boat and generally earning respect among the boat racing community. Your first opponent is a curiously aggressive hippie. I seem to recall that the final opponent in the game is a high-class lady who comes on to you after you defeat her in nitro-fueled boating fury. Another curious feature of the game is that sometimes the races will finish too close to call, visually. That’s when the eye candy on the sidelines requests a slo-mo replay:

Consistently tanned, they are. I’m sure that’s attributable to their disciplined bikini team tanning regimen and not due to any NES palette limitations.

The not so good (but not entirely bad) racing game was Galaxy 5000.

Race against 3 computer-controlled spaceships. There are 2 control schemes to choose from, both of which require some adaptation. The first is to press the gamepad in the direction you want to go and the craft rotates to point in that direction and thrust. The second control scheme uses left and right to rotate and up to thrust. I had trouble getting used to either and couldn’t get past the first Mercury race. That meant that the race course disintegrated out from under me and I fell — in space — apparently into some water.

Another interesting facet of the game is high-pitched, comical, digital voices exclaiming “Hey!” and “Watch it!” when you bump into other cars.