Dr Wong's Jacks & Video Poker

If anyone thought computer card games started with the internet, they should give this a try. Dr Wong's Jacks & Video Poker is exactly the genre it appears to be — a collection of card games in one package that wandered through the nineties on boot disks and pirate copies. Simple, straightforward, no frills.

It contains classic video poker and Jacks, a game surely known to anyone who's ever seen a card title designed specifically for pokering in DOS-box. The mechanics are trivial — you have cards, hold them or swap them, you try to reach some combination. The goal is to earn credits, or maybe watch your opponent play around with their stake. Nothing sneaks up on you here.

The graphics match the era — monochrome interface, cards drawn in minimalist style, textures that could be sketched on paper in five minutes. Sound? More like a quiet computer hum than any musical underground. Controls are intuitive — you select which cards you want with the mouse, and the game moves on. No dramatic action, no animations to speak of. Playing is boring even for someone who enjoys card games — no atmosphere, no betting real money, just metronomic clicking.

In the nineties it was a way to pass time waiting in the doctor's office — something that fills the gap until something better comes along. Today it doesn't go beyond the edge of a curiosity. It's not bad, it's just nothing. The cards didn't get better, the rules didn't change, the animations didn't break a single monitor.

Playing it today makes sense only if you want to experience how long DOS was and how poorly computers entertained themselves. It doesn't protect you from the feeling — on the contrary, you're just aware that something was missing. It's not a bad port of some better game. It's exactly what it looks like — a digital simulation that played when there was nothing else to watch.