Poker showed up in video games before most players knew what a flop was. Nintendo put a modified version of 5-card draw into Mario 64 DS and New Super Mario Bros, calling it Picture Poker instead of using the standard name. The rules were identical to the classic format, and the choice made sense because 5-card draw was the dominant poker variant at the time. Texas Hold’em had not yet taken over.
That changed in the early 2000s when televised poker tournaments and online card rooms pushed Hold’em into the mainstream. Game developers followed. The poker minigames that appeared in major titles after 2005 almost universally adopted Texas Hold’em as their base format, and the implementations grew more ambitious with each console generation.
Early Implementations and Genre Roots
Nintendo’s Picture Poker in Super Mario 64DS kept things basic. You played against the house, made your hands, and collected coins. The game functioned as a diversion, a way to break up platforming sessions with something slower. There was no opponent behavior to read, no betting strategy to consider.
Ubisoft approached poker differently in Far Cry 3. The Texas Hold’em minigame became available after players conquered the Valsa Docks outpost. The stakes were fictional currency, but the hand rankings and betting rounds followed real poker rules. Players unfamiliar with Hold’em needed to learn what beat what before sitting down. The minigame served as a reward for progress in the main story while offering a complete rule set for those who wanted to engage with it seriously.
From Console Tables to Browser Tabs
The card mechanics found in Yakuza 3 or Red Dead Redemption 2 share DNA with formats that exist outside gaming hardware. Texas Hold’em tables in Far Cry 3 function on the same rule sets that govern playing online poker or sitting at a physical casino. Developers at Rockstar and Sega built their minigames by studying how real players bet, fold, and bluff in competitive settings.
This crossover runs both ways. Balatro borrows hand rankings from traditional poker but reshapes them into something else entirely. The 150 Joker cards and point multipliers create a system that feels familiar to anyone who has touched a deck yet plays nothing like a standard game.
Sega’s Yakuza Series and Variant Expansion
Sega introduced poker to the Like a Dragon franchise in Yakuza 3, using Texas Hold’em as the standard format. Later entries expanded the options. Yakuza 5, Yakuza 0, and Yakuza Kiwami added Pineapple Hold’em, which deals three cards to each player and forces a discard before betting begins. These same titles included Omaha Hold’em, where players receive four hole cards instead of two.
The series deviated from real poker with the Royal Joker Card. This item guarantees a strong hand on your next deal. Purists might object, but the inclusion fits the Yakuza style. These games blend grounded crime drama with arcade minigames and absurd side content. A magic card that improves your poker hand sits comfortably alongside karaoke competitions and toy car racing.
Rockstar’s Casino and Frontier Tables
Players spent years staring at “Opening Soon” signs on the casino building in Grand Theft Auto V. The Diamond Casino and Resort finally opened in July 2019, bringing Blackjack, Three Card Poker, Roulette, slots, and a betting game called Inside Track. The poker variant was Three Card rather than Texas Hold’em, and all gambling used chips with no player-versus-player competition. The casino functioned as a content update rather than a core feature, but it satisfied players who had waited since the game launched in 2013.
Red Dead Redemption 2 took a different path. The poker tables scattered across the map operate as part of the game world rather than separate minigames. A $5 buy-in at Valentine attracts different players than the $25 tables at Blackwater. The ranch hands bet conservatively. The characters you face remember how you played in previous sessions.
AI That Learns
The poker AI in Red Dead Redemption 2 tracks aggression levels and bluff frequency for each opponent. A character who folded to your last three raises will remember that when you sit down again. The system assigns personality traits based on each NPC’s role in the world. This creates opponents who feel distinct without relying on scripted patterns.
Gwent and the Minigame Breakout
CD Projekt Red embedded Gwent into The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt as a collectible card game with its own rules. The format borrowed nothing from poker, using army-building mechanics instead of hand rankings. Players collected cards throughout the game world and built decks to compete against NPCs.
Gwent succeeded well enough to spin off into a standalone free-to-play title. The Witcher 3 has sold more than 50 million copies, and a portion of that audience arrived specifically to play cards. The minigame became a selling point rather than a footnote.
Balatro and the Solo Development Phenomenon
LocalThunk, a single developer working alone, released Balatro in February 2024 after two and a half years of production. The game uses poker hand rankings as its scoring foundation but adds over 150 Joker cards that modify multipliers and introduce special abilities. You build hands to reach point thresholds rather than to beat opponents.
The commercial performance exceeded anything comparable in the poker-adjacent gaming space. Balatro made over $1 million within eight hours of launch, according to publisher Playstack. The game sold more than 1 million copies in its first month. By the end of 2024, total sales crossed 5 million units.
Award Recognition
The Game Awards 2024 gave Balatro wins for Best Independent Game, Best Debut Indie Game, and Best Mobile Game. The game also received a nomination for Game of the Year, marking the first time a solo project appeared in that category. The Golden Joystick Awards handed it both Best Indie Game and Breakthrough honors. In 2025, the BAFTA Games Award for Best Debut Game went to Balatro as well.
No Microtransactions
LocalThunk built Balatro as a premium product with no additional purchases. The mobile version, which launched on September 26, 2024, generated nearly $4.4 million in its first two months while maintaining the same no-microtransaction model. A free update planned for 2025 will add new strategies to the game.
Crossover Collaborations
Balatro’s success attracted attention from other studios. The first Friends of Jimbo pack arrived in August 2024 with cards based on The Witcher 3, Dave the Diver, Vampire Survivors, and Among Us. A second pack followed with characters from Cyberpunk 2077, Slay the Spire, The Binding of Isaac, and Stardew Valley.
CD Projekt Red went further than most partners. Update 2.2 for Cyberpunk 2077 added graffiti featuring Jimbo, Balatro’s mascot, along with a dedicated quest line based on the card game. The collaboration placed Balatro’s imagery inside a AAA open-world title, a level of recognition that poker minigames had never achieved before.
What Comes Next
The distance between Picture Poker and Balatro covers three decades of hardware improvements, design philosophy changes, and audience expectations. Early implementations offered basic card mechanics as a break from primary gameplay. Current implementations build persistent systems, track player behavior across sessions, and generate enough engagement to support standalone releases. The poker minigame started as a curiosity. It has become a feature that studios plan around rather than tack on.
