Summary
A disappointment for the first console implementation
The Good
Very little. When I was done playing it. When it was over. That was the best part.
The Bad
With something as simple as blackjack, which requires no AI or strategy on the part of the computer, how could, one ask, they possibly get it wrong? Here's how:
This game employs a variant of blackjack rules that is so extremely unfavorable to the player, that it would almost certainly never be seen in a real casino because no one would be willing to play. Splitting pairs is not allowed, and even more substantially, draws are won by the dealer (your bet is not returned to you if you and the dealer get the same card total and neither busts). Together, these two represent over a 10% house advantage, which almost puts this version of blackjack on par with keno, and even with the best counting, is still a stronger house edge than roulette.
In addition, due to a glitch in the program, while a player is selecting among the options of what to do with the current hand by pressing left or right with the paddle controller, the amount of the player's next bet is modified even though it is defined by a variable that will not be visible until the end of the hand, requiring the player to carefully re-enter it at the start of every hand without pressing the button carelessly or risk wagering an unintended amount.
Granted the original 1970s Atari 2600 games were written on ROM chips with 4 kilobytes of memory (and they were limited to 128 bytes of RAM), but since it's in assembly language, the programmer could have easily made it much less half-assed, maybe even putting in options that let the player select from different choices of rule variants and even 1 or 2 decks.
The Bottom Line
A waste of time - if it was still the 1970s, a waste of money.
