Original Release: Capstone, 1988, PC / C64
Other Releases: Amiga / Atari ST (1989)
The first Trump game consists of basic, very straightforward gambling featuring six standard casino games
Trump Castle (PC, Capstone, 1988)
Where to Buy: eBay
How to Emulate: MS-DOS Emulation Guide
Review by: C. M0use
In what turns out to be a very non-luxurious title for the Il Donaldo brand, this workmanlike casino game collection dumps you directly to a simple menu of each of its six games. You do have an overall bankroll that carries between games, but seems to serve no purpose other than as a personal score of sorts. No music to speak of either, though that was not unusual for the period as “sound cards” were only just beginning to become a thing.
Don’t worry if you’re triggered by the Orange Man, he makes no personal appearances here. Just the logo of his now-defunct Atlantic City casino (which, despite the jokes about his business acumen actually had a very solid run for casinos without an ownership change/major rebrand at 26 years, and is still standing as the Golden Nugget).
Similar to real life casino floor slots, you’re presented with a big haphazard mess of them (nine in this case) and have to go just fiddle with them to see how each one works. This comes from the pre-video-slot era so it’s a three coin maximum bet, and with an annoying coin-in sound to boot. “Poker” is just video poker, and as in real life it also gets short shrift as compared to the slots. Just one type with a five coin max bet, and for some reason an annoying skittery sound every time the cards are dealt.
As far as the table games go, craps is basic but functional, but with a long dice roll animation that could get frustrating. The roulette table animation is weird, looks and sounds more like some Manhunter UFO taking off. Keno and blackjack are also options which are both just whatever.
The interface doesn’t have a button to exit each game protruding and is very disrespectful, I couldn’t figure it out in the end and had to just ALT-TAB out of each game (in DOSBox) and restart the program. I dunno what you’d do on an actual computer, hard reset every time you’re done with a game?
All-in-all Trump Castle is a simple package with a collection of little annoyances, and seems kinda pointless now. But in ’88/’89 it was actually probably up there among the better end of simulations of these games, you didn’t really have in-depth casino titles at that point. This one apparently came packaged with coupons for actual Trump Castle in AC too, I wonder if any of those are still floating around or they all got used on the bigly buffet.
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