Nintendo Approach to Casino Games

Nintendo is the legend of the games industry. Almost every child in the world knows its brand, well-known Nintendo game characters like Mario or Link. There is no need to say that this company really stands firm in their place under the sun of the games industry and thus it’s no wonder why they also start trying to get share in another field – online gambling.

The first thing you should know is that Nintendo is not a total amateur in casino games developing. In fact, it’s not only about online casino/netti kasino gambling. Their products have long been used in many casinos all over the world as gambler tracking systems and this is a real guarantee of standards’ fulfillment and high quality.

So, the first Nintendo casino game was already released back in the 80s. It’s called “Virtual Casino” and it was an arcade slot machine, which was never distributed in the gaming consoles’ line. To be honest, Nintendo gained its popularity on the casino games. Their most popular productions from their early years are among others casino games titles like “Touch Panel Roulette”, “Touch Panel Blackjack”, “Virtual Casino” and “Super Blackjack”.

These games were often distributed in the arcade rooms and they were never released on gaming consoles. Further development in casino games by Nintendo, as well as in the other gaming industry branches wasn’t possible without a change of the company’s policy for gambling games. Nintendo’s marketing strategy was full of controversy and their attitude towards casino games has changed through time.

First of all, it should be noted that Nintendo`s attitude towards gambling games was strict and non-permissive since the very beginning. The company’s policy was directed primarily against casino games with a high level of interaction between players and some game machines. One of the first major controversies was related to the highly controversial game machine called “Panasonic: Rabbit-Proof Fence” which was officially released in Japan. The purpose of that game is to build a fence on the map of Australia and then catch as many rabbits as possible. If you try to prevent them from entering your territory, they keep multiplying by two each time until there are more than the fence can hold. The game was so popular that it got an unofficial localized version for the North American market and issued under a different name – “OutRunners”. 

This game made gamers furious. A number of groups protesting gambling in any form appeared among the video gaming community. Most of them were indignant about how this casino-like game implemented in a video game format could ruin the children’s younger generation. 

Their actions had one good effect – MegaTech, an Australian branch of worldwide software publisher Virgin Interactive Entertainment (now known as Sega) received a lot of letters asking them to stop selling/producing OutRunners because it was “stealing children away from their parents”. 

Generally, Nintendo changed their strict approach to casino games in the mid 90s. In 1995, they started to accept the idea of casino games made by third parties and even produce their own set of officially licensed casino games (such as Super BlackJack series). Their change of attitude may be caused by a number of reasons:

In 1996-1998, Nintendo signed contracts with 3rd party developers such as US Gold, Epyx and Microids who made casino games for N64 and GameBoy. The main reason why Nintendo signed contracts with 3rd party developers in the late 90s was to increase sales of ageing hardware.

Many of these games had primitive graphics, but offered players a few improvements over the previous generation of video poker machines:

In 1999, Nintendo released Kirby’s Dreamland 2 on their handheld system Gameboy. The game included the same casino games as the Super BlackJack series and even featured a new version of Video Poker. In fact, with 1024×1024 pixels screen resolution and advanced graphics, the game is considered to be the best looking GameBoy casino game.

Only a year later the Japanese company signed a contract with Sigma Enterprises who would produce several casino 3rd party games for Nintendo Gameboy Color. The titles included Baccarat, Keno and Video Poker in addition to BlackJack and Asian Games which were already available on this device.

And now we are (almost) at present… After 2000, Nintendo had signed contracts with three online casino development companies: Microgaming, Realtime Gaming and Novomatic. These companies are responsible for creating the games that we see on Wii Ware, Virtual Console or DSi/3DS eShops. This is a significant change as Nintendo didn’t allow casinos in any of their consoles before this point.

However, they are still hesitant to allow casinos on their own consoles. In 2006-2007, Nintendo had stopped supporting 3rd party casino games on the Wii due to pressure from groups such as Stop Predatory Gambling . However, in 2011 they reversed this policy and now allows casinos back onto its console. And now it will even allow some of the developers of their previous fighting games to bring casinos onto the 3DS.

But why didn’t Nintendo allow casinos before 2011? What changed? While one could speculate that it was pressure from Stop Predatory Gambling and other anti-gambling groups, there has to be more than meets the eye.

In 2021, we have a completely different Nintendo. They announced a new console, listed to release at the end of 2020. It will have much more powerful hardware that can compete with the PS4 and XBox One. They have been taking this kind of approach for nearly every generation of their consoles and it has paid off for them… at least until now.