written sometime in 2001, updated Oct 2004

Ah, the overused, often abused strip poker game. I remember my introduction to the genre years ago on my family's Commodore 64. I was 12. One day when my parents were somewhere else my friend snuck over the prized floppy disk containing my first taste of cybersex. It was like we were smuggling sensitive government documents into foreign terrain. He slipped the disk into the drive and we waited for the damn thing to load, and the intro screen to come up. And finally, she was there, smiling at me in all her pixelated, 16-color glory. And when my friend left, the poker game began. We played for hours, just the two of us, just her and I. I learned how to play poker for the sole reason to see her naked. It was a religious experience. And very educational.

Many years and strip poker games later, I am a hardened veteran, corrupted by the onslaught of mostly bad strip poker games. Is there a strip poker game that will revive the innocence of my youth? Is Mick's Strip Poker that game? Do you even give two shits ya bastard?

Well I'm thrilled to report that Mick has included the best features of strip poker games, and threw in male and lesbian opponents in addition to the usual crop of hot women. Swell idea! Some other innovations include the option to play against several opponents at once (up to four) in any combination. And the interface is great, resulting in smooth poker playing. And with the recent [recent to this review] update, you may now easily switch to different opponents by clicking on their thumbnail to the left.

click for more screenshots!

Once the game itself is downloaded, there are several packs of opponents to choose from on Mick's web site, each containing 5 or 6 different opponents, all reasonably priced. Liked I mentioned before there are lesbians and guys as well as two sets of traditional female players to choose from. Custom opponents are available upon request (you supply the pics). The women models are all great-looking, no complaints there.

While there are enough pictures to advance through during a poker session, there is still something missing. Video interludes of the models removing (or replacing) garments would be key.

The underlying fact is that strip poker is strip poker, no matter how you look at it. It's the type of computer game that isn't played so much to look at pictures; you can find hundreds of images on the internet just like the ones that came with the game in a matter of minutes. Strip poker is played for the voyeurism; the rush from seeing the model get naked because you had a killer poker hand. And this is why there have been strip poker games for the computer since the beginning of time. Well, at least since the first home computer was manufactured.