POKERA – Retro Card Game in ASCII

Please support me: Ko-fi.com/eraldocorti22889

A faithful C# resurrection of a 30-year-old Turbo Pascal poker game. 16 colors, 100% ASCII, and zero Ray Tracing.

⚠️ WARNING: Contains high levels of nostalgia and simulated gambling.

In the ancient year of 1995, Windows 95 was brand new, the internet screamed when you used the phone, and I wrote a Poker game in Turbo Pascal 7.0.

Fast forward 30 years. I found the source code. It was full of Italian comments, spaghetti logic, and GOTO statements. Naturally, instead of leaving it in peace, I decided to do a "Dirty Port" to C#.

What is POKERA?

It’s classic 5-Card Draw Poker, exactly as it looked on a CRT monitor in a high school computer lab. I haven't "modernized" it. I haven't "fixed" the UI. I simply dragged it kicking and screaming into the modern .NET Console.

State-of-the-Art Features:

4K Graphics? No. We have ASCII Art. Marvel at the Queen of Hearts rendered entirely in block characters.

Immersive Audio: Experience the "beep" and the "boop" converted from the internal PC Speaker to your modern sound card.

Authentic 1995 Logic: The shuffling algorithm is questionable. The AI is non-existent. The Italian variable names are still haunting the codebase.

The "Flush" Feature: If you get a Flush (Colore), the text flashes in random colors. That was the height of special effects in the 90s.

No Microtransactions: You cannot buy chips with real money. You can only lose your dignity.

Please support me: Ko-fi.com/eraldocorti22889

How to Play:

Launch the .exe.

Pretend you are in a DOS environment.

Bet virtual money.

Press 1-5 to hold cards.

Realize you should have folded.

Why play this?

Because you miss the blue background of the Turbo Pascal IDE. Because you want to see what happens when you translate writeln('Ciao') to Console.WriteLine("Hello"). Or maybe you just really like jagged edges.

Includes a fake retro boot sequence to really sell the illusion.

(C) 1995 Eraldo Corti -> (C) 2025 The Dirty C# Port

Genre

Simulation, Retro, Card Game

Tags

retro, ascii, poker, dos, c-sharp, 1995, terminal, spaghetti-code

Run Pokera.exe.

If your antivirus asks if this is a virus, tell it: "No, it's just really old code."

Maximize the console window for the full "I'm hacking the mainframe" experience.

Please support me: Ko-fi.com/eraldocorti22889