Video games have always been rather good at making us take ridiculous risks. We will spend three hours collecting valuable equipment in an RPG, only to charge into a boss fight completely unprepared because we fancy our chances. We will attempt the same impossible jump fifteen times rather than take the sensible route, and happily risk losing an entire race for the possibility of overtaking somebody on the final corner.
It’s part of what makes gaming entertaining. The best games give players a mixture of skill, uncertainty and reward, leaving just enough room for something unexpected to happen. Interestingly, many of the mechanics responsible for those memorable moments have a surprising amount in common with traditional casino games. From spinning reels and card games to randomised rewards and roulette wheels, developers have been borrowing ideas from gambling for decades, often with wonderfully creative results.
The relationship goes back much further than modern online gaming. Anyone who grew up with a Sega Mega Drive will probably remember Casino Night Zone from Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Released in 1992, it transformed a traditional platforming level into a dazzling collection of flashing lights, pinball bumpers, slot machines and enormous springs. Sonic could bounce around like a blue pinball, collecting rings and occasionally losing them when the slot machines produced an unfortunate result.
What made Casino Night Zone special wasn’t simply its appearance. The level demonstrated how gambling-inspired mechanics could become part of the actual gameplay. Slot machines weren’t merely background decorations, while the pinball tables made movement itself unpredictable. More than three decades later, it remains one of the most recognisable examples of casino-inspired design in gaming.
Sega clearly understood the attraction because casino-themed environments continued appearing throughout the franchise. Sonic Adventure introduced Casinoopolis, where players could collect rings through elaborate pinball games, while Sonic Heroes featured Casino Park and BINGO Highway. The formula worked because it complemented Sonic’s personality. Speed, bright colours, bouncing between obstacles and occasionally having absolutely no idea where you would land were already part of the experience.
Nintendo approached the idea rather differently. Early Pokémon games contained Game Corners where players could spend virtual coins on slot machines and exchange winnings for prizes. The Celadon Game Corner became particularly memorable because it offered valuable rewards, including Pokémon and technical machines, giving players an entirely different activity between collecting gym badges and battling Team Rocket.
The Game Corner also demonstrates how attitudes towards gambling imagery in games have evolved. European versions of Pokémon Platinum replaced playable slot machines with simplified machines, while Western versions of HeartGoldand SoulSilver introduced Voltorb Flip instead. That puzzle combined numerical clues with the danger of uncovering a hidden Voltorb, creating something closer to Minesweeper than a conventional slot machine. It retained an element of risk while placing considerably more emphasis on logical deduction.
Other Japanese developers were considerably less interested in removing casino activities. The Dragon Quest series has a long history of including gambling-themed minigames, and Dragon Quest XI continued that tradition with dedicated casinos featuring roulette, poker and slot machines. The particularly amusing thing about Dragon Quest is how completely these distractions can take over a player’s evening. You might be travelling across Erdrea attempting to defeat an ancient evil, but the moment somebody offers you a seat at a roulette table, saving the world suddenly becomes tomorrow’s problem.
Final Fantasy VII offers another excellent example. Its Gold Saucer amusement park gave the original 1997 game a memorable destination filled with attractions, games and distractions. Square Enix brought the location back on a much grander scale in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, dividing the park into themed areas and filling it with additional activities. The Gold Saucer works because it makes the world feel bigger than the main storyline. Players aren’t constantly being told what to do; sometimes they’re simply allowed to enjoy themselves.
That freedom highlights something the best game designers understand uncertainty doesn’t always need to involve combat. A random reward, unexpected encounter or lucky result can create a memorable experience without a single sword being drawn. Casino games have relied on anticipation for generations, and video games have adapted the same psychological ingredients into countless different formats.
Roulette is perhaps the clearest example of how a relatively simple mechanic can create suspense. There is a wheel, a ball and a set of possible outcomes. Everything is visually understandable, but nobody knows exactly where the ball will finish. In video games, that same principle appears in prize wheels, random item selections and bonus rounds that reveal their results after a short animation.
There is also a crossover between traditional gaming audiences and adults who enjoy digital casino entertainment. Someone familiar with casino-inspired levels in mainstream games can play online roulette on Fruity King, where classic European roulette, live-dealer tables and other variations retain the recognisable spinning-wheel format. The important distinction is that real-money roulette involves financial stakes and a house advantage, whereas most mainstream video game minigames use fictional currency or rewards. The visual suspense may be similar, but the consequences are not.
That difference hasn’t prevented developers from borrowing the underlying ideas. One of the most successful recent examples is Balatro, which takes familiar poker hands and turns them into a wonderfully unpredictable roguelike. Developed by the solo creator known as LocalThunk and published by British company Playstack, the game asks players to build combinations of cards, collect Jokers and manipulate scoring systems in increasingly absurd ways.
Unlike actual poker, Balatro isn’t about beating somebody across a table or gambling real money. It uses the recognisable structure of poker as the foundation for a strategic puzzle game. Players can modify their decks, experiment with different combinations and develop strategies that would make absolutely no sense in a traditional casino. A perfectly ordinary pair can become an enormous scoring opportunity if the right modifiers are involved.
The results have been extraordinary. In January 2025, Playstack announced that Balatro had surpassed five million copies sold less than a year after release. Speaking at Pocket Gamer Connects London, Harvey Elliott, chief executive of Playstack, described the achievement as “an incredible milestone worthy of celebration”, adding that reaching it with a game created by a solo developer made it particularly special.
Elliott later explained the appeal in an interview with PocketGamer.biz, saying that the game had “that ‘one more run’ appeal that makes games stick”. It is a revealing observation because it describes one of gaming’s most powerful attractions. Players don’t always know what the next attempt will produce, but the possibility of discovering something new encourages them to keep experimenting.
What makes Balatro interesting is the balance between chance and control. Players cannot determine exactly which cards will appear next, but they can influence the possibilities through deck construction and carefully chosen upgrades. That creates a compelling relationship between making intelligent decisions and adapting when things don’t go according to plan. Winning feels satisfying because the player has contributed something meaningful, even when luck has played a role.
The same principle appears throughout the roguelike genre. In The Binding of Isaac, a run can change dramatically depending on which items appear. Hades uses randomised rewards to encourage experimentation with different abilities, while Slay the Spire combines strategic deckbuilding with an unpredictable sequence of encounters and card draws. These aren’t casino games, but they share a familiar ingredient: players make decisions before discovering exactly how those decisions will work out.
The important difference is that good roguelikes usually provide ways to influence the odds. Players learn enemy patterns, improve their understanding of possible rewards and discover combinations that make future runs more manageable. Randomness keeps the experience fresh, while knowledge and skill provide the satisfaction of getting better. Without that balance, a game can quickly become frustrating rather than entertaining.
Another memorable example of gambling imagery in mainstream gaming is Cuphead. Studio MDHR’s spectacularly difficult platformer begins with Cuphead and Mugman losing their souls after making a disastrous wager at the Devil’s casino. The entire adventure grows from that mistake, with the brothers forced to collect soul contracts from increasingly ridiculous bosses. King Dice, the Devil’s casino manager, eventually becomes one of the game’s most memorable opponents, combining playing-card imagery and dice-based progression with the game’s distinctive 1930s cartoon style.
The casino setting works brilliantly because it gives the adventure an instantly recognisable identity. Playing cards, dice, chips and extravagant showmanship all fit the world perfectly. The game also demonstrates how casino aesthetics can become part of a much broader creative identity without requiring traditional gambling mechanics to dominate the experience.
Modern gaming has become big enough to support almost every imaginable variation of these ideas. According to Ukie, the trade body representing the British video games industry, UK consumers spent a record £8.76 billion on video games and related products in 2025, an increase of 7.4% on the previous year. Spending on mobile games alone reached £2.07 billion, growing by 7.9%, while software spending across the industry totalled £6.03 billion.
Nick Poole OBE, chief executive of Ukie, described the figures as a “remarkable vote of confidence in the medium”. He noted that British consumers had spent more on gaming despite rising costs and pressure on household budgets. Ukie’s research also showed that the wider British gaming industry supports more than 73,000 jobs and contributes approximately £6 billion in gross value added to the UK economy each year.
Those figures demonstrate how far gaming has moved beyond its traditional audience. The industry now encompasses enormous cinematic adventures, competitive multiplayer experiences, intricate strategy games and casual mobile titles that can be enjoyed for a few minutes at a time. It also reflects the growing influence of gaming on wider entertainment, with Ukie reporting that spending on gaming-related culture, including merchandise and screen adaptations, increased by 42% to £566 million in 2025.
The most successful developers recognise that players don’t always want the same experience. Sometimes they want an intricate challenge that rewards hours of practice. On another occasion, they might prefer a simple game built around anticipation and a satisfying reveal. There is room for both approaches, and the influence of traditional casino mechanics is particularly noticeable in games designed around short, repeatable moments of excitement.
Looking back, it is remarkable how many gaming memories involve an element of chance. There is the rare item that appeared when you least expected it, the impossible card combination that somehow worked, the treasure chest containing exactly what you needed and the prize wheel that stopped one space away from the reward you desperately wanted.
Those moments stick because their outcomes aren’t guaranteed. Developers can design the rules, calculate the probabilities and create the animations, but players still experience the uncertainty themselves. It gives even familiar games the possibility of producing something unexpected.
Perhaps that explains why gambling-inspired mechanics have remained part of gaming culture for so long. The technology has moved from 16-bit Mega Drive cartridges to enormous modern gaming worlds, but the appeal of taking a chance and discovering what happens next has barely changed.
Sonic might be bouncing around a neon casino, a Dragon Quest hero might be ignoring another urgent mission to play roulette, or a Balatro player might be calculating whether one more hand can produce a ridiculous score.
Different games, different generations, but a remarkably familiar feeling. Sometimes the most entertaining part of a video game is simply not knowing what’s coming next.
