Super Blackjack Battle 2 Turbo Edition (Nintendo Switch)

When I picked this up in the Nintendo Switch sale for the grand total of one whole British pound, I didn’t even know how to play blackjack. Well actually, I thought I did, but it turned out it was the British version of blackjack called ‘pontoon’ I was thinking of.

So a couple of YouTube videos later, and obviously I’m now an expert. In blackjack, everyone at the table is playing against the dealer. Each player is dealt two cards with the goal of the game to get as close to 21 as you can without going over. If you’re close, you can stick with what you have, or ‘hit’ to take another card. Get closer to 21 than the dealer and you win. If the dealer get closer or you go over 21, you lose.

In “Super Black Jack Battle II Turbo, The Card Warriors” (best video game name every by the way), you play standard poker rules with the goal to finish with more money after 10 rounds than your opponent.

Obviously the appeal of the game for me is the Street Fighter parody, and it’s very well done! The pixel art looks amazing, each character is full of personality and everything from the player map to the continue screen is packed with attention to detail paying homage to the games unlikely inspiration.

After a few rounds I was doing OK. But I felt there had to be some kind of system to the game of blackjack that would yield more reliable results. A couple more YouTube videos later and it turns out there is a thing in Blackjack called “perfect strategy”, a chart that shows every possible hand you could get and whether you should stick or hit with each combination. But even this system still favours the house over the player.

I then ended up down a YouTube rabbit hole about ‘counting cards’ which actually wasn’t as complicated as I thought, but still required more effort than I was prepared to put in, so I went back to the game and devised my own method of cheating… and surprisingly this actually works 100% of the time!!!!

You start each battle with $1000. Bet it all on your first hand. If you lose its game over, but don’t worry you have unlimited continues so keep doing this until you win the first round and you will start the second round with $2000.

Now continue for the next 9 rounds to bet the minimum amount of $50 every hand. Even if you lose every round for the rest of the battle you’ll still finished with $1550, which will be more than enough to defeat your opponent 99 times out of 100. And on the off chance they do win, simply continue and follow the system again. Most times your opponent with be broke by the 6th or 7th round anyway.

With my newly devised system I was able to complete the game with every character, unlocking everything along the way whilst also replacing any fun from actually playing game with a sense of smug satisfaction.

I know some people will moan thats not in the spirit of the game and how I’ve only cheated myself out of the enjoyment of the game, but isn’t this absolutely in the spirit of Blackjack? People don’t play it for fun, they try to find ways to cheat the rules and tip the odds in their favour! And thats exactly what I did.

But all joking aside I did really enjoy my time with the game. As I said at the start I have no interested in any card games, but the aesthetic was enough to keep me engaged, and the game in general feels very polished, high quality and lovingly put together.

If you like Blackjack, and don’t want to lose all your actual money on real gambling websites, this is the game to get for sure, and if like me you just think it looks cool, you’ll get your value from it too, especially if you can pick it up in a sale.