The sort of thing you definitely didn't want your dad finding
Before the internet made everything available to everyone almost instantly, we had to find other ways to entertain ourselves, and if one were looking for something a bit saucy, then your options were limited to your dodgy uncle's video collection or Page 3 of The Sun.
Page 3 was a long-standing tradition of featuring women who were, shall we say, devoid of upper clothing items. By today's standards, it’s actually quite tame, but at the time it was considered quite risqué.
Sam Fox was one of those models. I can’t actually tell you why she became so famous; it was before my time. Interestingly, she apparently dated Paul Stanley of KISS at some point. I don’t know why I found that fact so interesting, but there you go.
My friend's brother had got a copy of this game from someone (your friend's older brother could find anything in the 80s). He was very careful to ensure his dad never found out. Truth be told, I doubt his dad would have cared, but hey, at the time it only added to the excitement.
For the purpose of this review, I am running the CPC 464 version of the game. But there were also other versions. The Commodore 64, BBC Micro, MSX, and ZX Spectrum. None of these machines are well known for their photo-perfect image creation, so I am sure you can imagine there isn’t much difference between them.
Back to the game
You are presented with a green table (I assume, it could be grass or maybe moss) on which some cards are shown. From here on in, you have to play poker. Oddly, you play for money and Sam Fox’s clothes. Does anyone else have to question why this poker game is clearly one-sided in the stakes department?
Right, apparently we are playing poker now
The version of poker is 5-card stud, Aces are wild, Kings are married and straight flush is a pair.
You might have noticed from that last paragraph that I have no idea how to play poker, and here, my friends, is the first big issue with Sam Fox Strip Poker: it requires knowledge of poker. I am shocked as you are to discover this.
The problem is I don’t understand poker, and neither did my 10-year-old self. In fact, no one in our little group knew how to play poker. Strip Snap, easy, strip Risk, no problems, hell, I could have probably managed strip Chess, but poker, nope.
So we do what anyone does and randomly just play. We lose the first 100 games and so we get treated to Ms Fox teasing us. Or we assume it’s Sam Fox, it could be anyone. In fact, I am starting to think it is the lady from the French Resistance in Allo Allo.
I will say this only once...
Eventually, you might randomly win a game and you get treated to slightly less clothing on Sam Fox. All the images are as pixelated as Japanese porn, and all of them are presented in monochrome because who doesn’t love a monochrome picture of a scantily clad woman.
Somewhere in here is supposed to be Sam Fox
Honestly, looking at it, you really do have to wonder how desperate we must have been. It didn’t matter back then, of course; if you could convince yourself that a purple blob was a horse, then you could get excited about the 20 pixels that made up Sam Fox.
I have looked at some reviews from the time, and they all said the same thing, which is the actual poker element of the game is way too easy (if you understand poker, sure!) and the tacked-on Sam Fox element was considered sexist even in the 80s.
What's really funny looking back is the fact that she was literally on Page 3 every week and there were no age restrictions in place around buying a newspaper, and The Sun cost about 20p, so I could have saved a lot of effort and money and just bought the newspaper. Although that wouldn’t have been nearly as exciting, of course.
Sam Fox Strip Poker
A remarkably simple poker game wrapped around some remarkably questionable monochrome pixels.
You'd probably have had more fun learning poker.