Clubhouse Games Express: Card Classics

Genre: Compilation / Card Game

Players: 1-8 Competitive (Local Wireless), Download Play Supported

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Review:

Clubhouse Games was originally released on the Nintendo DS in 2006, and was a Compilation containing 42 simple Card Games, Board Games, and Arcade Games. The game would go on to be such a critical and commercial success that Nintendo would produce a sequel on the Nintendo Switch, Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics (I liked that game quite a bit – I gave it a B+ grade in my review!). However, in the time between those two releases, in 2009 we got three games on the Nintendo DSi via the DSiWare service in the Clubhouse Games Express line. These are not new games, but rather small portions of the original Clubhouse Games release on DS that have been cut apart from the rest of the game, had features removed (no more online play!), and sold on the Nintendo DSiWare shop and the Nintendo 3DS eShop for $5 each.

Out of curiosity, I took a trip over to ebay.com and looked to see what it would cost to get a copy of the original Nintendo DS release of Clubhouse Games in used but playable condition, including shipping costs. The result? $6. That’s right, you can pay $5 each for three DSiWare releases which, together, constitute one-third of the contents of this game, or you can pay $6 to get the entire game on a cartridge that plays perfectly fine on your Nintendo 3DS via backwards-compatibility.

You’re seriously still reading after that? You still want an actual review of this rip-off of an eShop game?

~sigh~ Fine…

Clubhouse Games Express: Card Classics contains five Card Games that can be played against AI opponents of varying difficulty or human opponents, with download play supported. Those five games are: Blackjack, Last Card, Last Card Plus, President, and Five Card Draw.

These games are presented using decent but simple 2D pixel art visuals, and with a few selections of energetic background music that can get a bit annoying over time. Overall, this is nothing special, but it works well enough for the presentation of the game.

As for the games themselves, you’ll be playing these games using touchscreen controls, and the versions of the games here range from decent to miserable.

Blackjack doesn’t support splitting doubles. I mean, come on, this card game is already simple enough, and they had to take away one of the few minor nuances it had? Also, in this version of the game, you’re not trying to build up your winnings or beat the dealer, you’re trying to have a higher number of credits than the other players after five rounds of play, which seems like an interesting way to play the game, but sadly there’s no option to just keep playing if you want to.

Last Card has one player declaring a suit and everyone else offering up one card of that suit into the discard pile or drawing until they get a card of that suit, with the winner being the player who discards their hand first. I have no idea what the strategy is here, and this game failed to really grab me.

Last Card Plus is basically royalty-free generic Uno. It’s okay, albeit somewhat chaotic.

President is a card game where you’re trying to offer up the highest-value card at the end of a round of putting cards down. I can’t say I really get this game, but I know it has its fans.

Five Card Draw is Five Card Draw Poker, and this version is hobbled by the limitation that you can only bet 1-20 credits. Also, much as with Blackjack, you can only play five rounds at a time, with no option to change this.

The changes to well-established games like Blackjack and Five Card Draw are pretty egregious here, and while the five-turn limit may make for an interesting variant, being restricted to only play that way is extremely frustrating. Despite this, Five Card Draw is probably the best game in this Compilation, if only because the others are pretty bad.

However, even if you still want to play this version of these games after that… glowing description… then you’re still better off just getting a copy of the Nintendo DS version of Clubhouse Games. Simply put, there is absolutely no reason you should buy Clubhouse Games Express: Card Classics, unless you’re an idiot like me who’s writing a bunch of reviews before the Nintendo 3DS eShop shuts down. Don’t do that. Don’t be like me.

tl;dr – Clubhouse Games Express: Card Classics contains somewhat dubious versions of Blackjack, Last Card, Last Card Plus (Uno), President, and Five Card Draw (Poker). Even if you wanted to play these games, this release is a total rip-off, because you can get the entire game these titles were ripped from for almost the exact same price. If you want to play these games on Nintendo 3DS, don’t buy Clubhouse Games Express, just get the original Nintendo DS version of Clubhouse Games instead.

Grade: F

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