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Good but not great cartoon poker game

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 9 / 9
Date: November 20, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Far from a simulation, this is cartoon poker with four-person tables. The computer starts out easy to beat but does get more somewhat more difficult as you progress through the "career mode." The noises made by the "personalities" at the table - grunts and sighs, mostly - quickly reach the point of annoyance. If anyone else is within earshot, turn the sound off! The interface is clean and generally usable for poker, although the blackjack and video poker games are not nearly as well thought out (no re-bet button, for example, so you have to re-enter your bet each time.) It's whimsical and fun for what it is, but with this, Ultimate Card Games poker section, and the Texas Hold 'Em cart all having shortcomings, we're still waiting for the great hardcore poker game for the GBA.

Fun to pass the time, but not for a serious player

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: December 28, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Overall, I call this game mediocre. It's sort of fun, but there are several really annoying things about it.

The music is repeative, and the sound effects from your opponents (yells, coughs, screams, etc) are really, really dumb. I haven't found a way to turn them off yet, either, and am not sure that there is one other than the volume slider.

Second, the opponents are truly morons. They bet and bet heavily, rarely folding even with obviously losing hands. It's nearly impossible to bluff, as they almost always call. You can still lose quickly to them, but only because they make the stakes high and you may be dealt bad cards. If you fold when your cards stink, and wait for a good hand, in no time you will wipe them out.

I am a poor poker player, and just got this game 2 days ago, and have already won the World Championship and am up about 3.5 million dollars. Just to put things in perspective. It's high stakes against idiots. If you can get over that, the game is entertaining, unless you're good.

Third, while Hold'em is pretty well done, there are some oversights that make some of the other games unplayable. For example, draw poker and seven card stud are absolutely worthless. You have opponents that continue raising and betting, but you do not see how many cards they draw, and in the stud game there are no visible cards of your opponent. Maybe there's a trick into getting them shown, but I have left those tables and not been back, it is just not fun. It's playing in the dark, and just bad.

Another minor nit I have to pick is when you leave a table, the "map" of the casino always jumps back to the beginning, rather than remaining at the table you are at. So if you lose a round and want to return for another game, you have to navigate to the table again and again. It grows tiring for me to do repeative things, even when it's just 5 seconds or so.

Overall, the betting is unrealistic, the opponents are morons, the sound effects are tiring, but in a cartoonish sort of way it is still fun enough to play, at least as a kill-time until a better poker game comes out.

Tons of fun, especially multiplayer

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 7
Date: November 13, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This is a great game that not only lets you play Texas Holdem, Omaha Holdem, Five draw and Seven stud, but also includes Slots, Blackjack and Video Poker. You can also link up to other GBA owners and play poker with a link cable. (Your friend DOESN'T have to own the game, despite what it says on the box.) Great for airplanes, long commutes and, of course, TRIPS TO VEGAS!

Portable Fun

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: May 06, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This is a good game if you want to kill 30 minutes.

You must play the Texas Hold'em tables until you are eligible for World Championship poker. Then save the code. Once you have the code you can play with the "advanced" level of AI and have a more realistic version of poker.

The game is not perfect, but the ability to see the other players make it the most realistic version of poker out there.

It's "OK"

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: October 31, 2005
Author: Amazon User

It's hard to complain about this game considering that it was probably put out in somewhat of a hurry to capitalize on the poker craze that seems to have started in about 2002 (or whenever it was that Moneymaker won't the WSP). I read these reviews and chose this cart over the other "Texas Holdem" game that's available for gameboy because this one got better reviews (though most people say they both suck). Every criticism I read on here is true from my experience with the game. It's VERY rare that players fold (though it does happen). The number of players at a table is four so it's hard to think of it as practice since you're never up against a full table. The gameplay is not great, but decent. If you fold, you don't see the rest of the hand play out, but you see all the players best hands (even if you fold to only one player which is odd). There is no indication of which cards were hole cards and which cards were community when they show the final hands either which is a little annoying. I've had it crash on me once or twice, which I thought was strange. The way it works is that you go into one of four casinos that are all basically identical except for the graphics and play your choice of several games (Texas Holdem, Omaha Holdem, 7card stud, 5 card draw, video poker, slots) and you can save your money amount and casino (you have to work your way up to each successive casino - there are four of them) using a passcode that you can enter next time you turn the GBA on. They did put some work into the graphics and the way you can go to different casinos, but overall the way they did it is pretty flat. There is no real goal, no direction, so you feel kind of lost (hey maybe it is like real gambling). Finally, it's pretty easy to beat. I've had it for less than a week and I've already won all the highest value tournaments and can win as much money as I want at any of the other tables (I wish it was like that in real life). SO... if you like playing cards against calling stations, this might be for you, otherwise it's a time killer that's not terrible, but you need to have more than 5 minutes at a time to really do anything with it so it's not something to just save for "can time".

WCP Review: (AI, link features, comparisons vs. Texas Hold'em Poker by Majesco)

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: July 16, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I mainly purchased World Championship Poker (WCP) for the GBA (Gameboy Advance) to play a lot of Texas Hold'em hands, and overall it serves its purpose.

The computer AI (Artificial Intelligence) is okay but nothing to write home about. Short stacked computer opponents usually fold a lot more common. In general though, the computer opponent usually calls every raise no matter what hand they have.

If you're looking for a Texas Hold'em game with more realistic computer AI, I found that the Texas Hold'em game by Majesco is far better in this regard even though the presentation on that game has rather bland graphics. World Championship Poker for the GBA wins the eye-candy department if you compare the two. I'd rather settle for the better computer AI though. If you're looking for a Texas Hold'em Game with really good AI to match your wits, buy World Championship Poker for either the XBOX or the PS2 and set the computer level to "professional" in the options setting. The AI on the XBOX and PS2 versions of this game are about 100 times better than on the GBA version.

There is one thing that WCP has that the Texas Hold'em game by Majesco does not have: link capability with another Gameboy Advance system. To make this work, you need a link cable (these cost about $9.99 the store), one WCP game (you don't need 2), and a second Gameboy Advance system. Actually, you can have up to four players linked up on this game which still only requires one WCP game (the GBA with the game acts as the server), three GBA systems, and three link cables. I've never linked four players together, but three works fine. In the end, this is what sets this game apart from any of the other Texas Hold'em games out there for the GBA. This link system isn't without its quirks, namely two main ones:

1. Every now and then, a glitch will occur where a person's turn to check/bet/fold comes up. If I check on a hand, the person opposite of me will be skipped, and the hand is back in my court to act on. This also tends to happen after two players fold their cards successively. This is a major problem if you wanted to bet on a hand or simply fold it. Imagine having to throw away a junk hand because somebody just bet $25,000 to you, only to find out that the game glitched and made the decision for you already!

2. Blinds are not adjusted according to how much money you are playing with. For instance, if you are linked up against a human opponent and you've set each person to start off with $250,000 in chips, then the blinds still say low at $100 and $200. They do not change and they cannot be adjusted on any setting. To counteract that problem, I usually set the chip count at $15,000 per person so that the blinds have more of a reasonable bearing on the actual game.

WCP is more than just being about the Texas Hold'em game though. It has variations of Poker such as Omaha Hold'em (a much tougher game to master than Texas Hold'em), Video Poker, Blackjack, and slot machines. The Blackjack game is also one of my favorites basically because it attracts a crowd when I have it at the bar. Overall, at $19.99 this game is well worth the price for the variety it offers.

As a stand alone Texas Hold'em game (without linking up with somebody else), I rate this game at 3 1/2 stars. If you're linked up with other opponents, then I'll give this game 4 1/2 stars, even with the minor issues listed above. 4 stars for all the other games packed into WCP sounds about right. So I'll average the three to get an overall rating of 4 stars. I hope this review was helpful.

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