Balatro for the Nintendo E-Reader

Summary

I friggin' love Balatro. I've put an embarrassing number of hours into it. I also like to make games for the Nintendo E-Reader. The E-Reader was a peripheral for the Game Boy Advance that let you load mini games and "DLC" by scanning cards into it.The E-Reader attached to a Game Boy Advance (image by Nintendo)Oh and Balatro is a single player solitaire/poker hybrid game that is super fun. If you enjoy poker, solitaire, or especially trading card games like Magic the Gathering or Pokemon, you should definitely check it out if you haven't already.A while back, I made this mock up screenshot of what Balatro might look like on the E-Reader.A mock up of Balatro on the E-ReaderThis mock up was really fun to make. So I decided to take it one step further and make a working prototype of the game. This was also a blast to make!VIDEOThis prototype is almost entirely real. It's a real E-Reader game, and it really plays Balatro. I only implemented just what you see in the video, so it's a very long way away from being a full port of the game.I said it's almost entirely real because it does fake a few things. The blind selection screen is entirely a mock. You just press A and go into the round.The blind selection screen is completely mockedAnd when you win the round, the win screen is mocked too. You have to win with two remaining hands for it to be believable :)The blind selection screen is completely mockedBut playing the game within the round is 99% real. I hard coded Fibonacci and Splash jokers, and when it calculates what type of hand was played, it only knows about "duplicative" style hands (ie two pair, full house, three of a kind, etc). My wife was sad to find her straight only got scored as a high card. Doh. Many other things are missing too, but this was mostly due to not wanting to spend too much time on this project more than anything.Could it be done?Would it be possible to make Balatro for the E-Reader? I think so.It would be a challenging project and a good number...