Crash


Miami Dice
By Bug Byte
Spectrum 48K

 
Published in Crash #34

Miami Dice

Well, it's down to the old casino with the local low life: the game is craps, the stakes are high! Choose one of eight gamblers, take your money and make every roll count.

The game is all about rolling dice and betting on the outcome. However, being an American game, it naturally has a highly involved set of rules. In essence, it's rather like roulette without the wheel. The player who is 'shooter', throws the dice. A total of seven or eleven is a win, rolling two, three or twelve loses and any other total else means the shooter keeps rolling. If the first roll wasn't a winning or losing throw shooter has try to roll the same number again before rolling a seven. The shooter keeps rolling until a seven or the winning number comes up.

Players can bet either on the outcome of the shooter's efforts, or on a particular number coming up. Four punters and the croupier appear on the screen the craps rollers are chosen from a list of eight including such dubious characters as Sexy Sarah, Big Dick and Ahmed Arab. Each character takes it in turn to be the shooter. There is a short pause, and during a turn, any of the four players can hit their 'bet' button and then bet on the roll. A small window appears, and using the joystick controls, the amount staked can be set. Then the bet is laid. The window changes to show a portion of the table and the player can scroll around the table and decide where to place the bet.

Miami Dice

Then the shooter shakes the dice with a bit of on screen animation, they roll around the table, and the total is shown on the screen. Players are then free to place bets again on the next roll. If a player has a successful session, when they decide to quit the game, they take a 'cheque' away with them a code comes up which can be typed in at the beginning of another session to increase the kitty.

Comments

Control keys: I, Z, M, O place bets; O left; P right; Q up; A down
Joystick: Kempston. Cursor
Keyboard play: a bit wobbly
Use of colour: vivid and useful
Graphics: some animation, helpful windows - a bit tacky
Sound: unintelligible speech
Skill levels: one
Screens: one

Comment 1

'There probably will never be a good gambling game, somehow staking tiny little sprites doesn't get the adrenalin pumping the way putting your shirt on the line does. I suppose if a bunch of four people were in a fairly 'happy' mood, loading this up could provide a few moments diversion, but that's about it. The animation is a bit crass, and the speech even crasser, which manages to break just about all bounds of good taste. I must admit, it never raised even a chuckle once. What a load of old craps.'

Comment 2

'Yes, the packaging is very nice, and the idea is a good one, as Craps has potential for a computer game, but the implementation is lacking a great deal. I started playing this, quite ready to give it a rave, after having read all about the speech and so on mentioned on the inlay, but now, I don't really think I want to look at Miami Dice again. The graphics, while being big, colourful and all that, aren't properly animated, and the speech is only just recognisable my general feeling of the game is that it works, but just doesn't seem to be worth loading.'

Comment 3

'Crikey! What the heck have Bug Byte done here? After wading through the apalling instructions and finding out all the quirks of the game, I came to the conclusion that all the hassle was just not worth it. Goodness only knows what Miami has got to do with craps playing - surely it would have been more sensible to call it Las Vegas Dice? I found Miami Dice was very boring to play - even if you're playing a four player game. A disappointing game.'

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