Original Release: Magic Bytes, Amiga, 1992
Other Releases: PC (1993)
Part of a Europe-only series of games for the Penthouse magazine brand, Hot Numbers is a variant of a decent forgotten PC puzzle game that’s actually not too bad to play
Penthouse: Hot Numbers (PC, Magic Bytes, 1993)
Where to Buy: eBay
How to Emulate: MS-DOS Emulation Guide
Review by: Master-B
This is something that is becoming lost cultural knowledge, but in the pre-internet porn days you had your three fundamental tiers of magazine. First you had Playboy, with its upper-class trappings and tasteful nudes. Then there was Penthouse, which copied the more tasteful aesthetic but went a little farther with softcore and ladies sometimes spreading their bum holes for you and such. Then rounding out the trio was Hustler, which was just the wild Walmart free-for-all of hardcore smut.
For its video game license, Penthouse steps down to the Playboy level of not-too-explicit nudity. It’s really a lot like arcade peepshow games, in that you play a sequence of levels to uncover a static pic and if you win you get to move on to the next pic. However, Hot Numbers adapts an obscure old board game called Maxit (which had some prior PC versions dating back to the early 80s) for this undertaking.
You start with a randomly generated grid of numbers, half representing positive values (in bright red), half negative numbers (with more faded colors). Player 1 can only move horizontally across the grid from the last selected number, Player 2 only vertically. The idea is to strategically pick the best number available to pump your score and tank the opponent, which isn’t always about just grabbing the highest number available; you want to go for the best disparity of outcome on each exchange, and also maybe with an eye to maneuvering them into unfavorable positions in the next few turns.
It is a pretty strategic game, though on a few casual plays I do feel like it depends heavily on the random number distribution, one player or the other can just wind up with an unfairly poor sequence of choices right from the beginning. It also gets pretty repetitive pretty fast, as there’s nothing to do but play the same base game every time, the only new elements being new pics to uncover (big whoop in the internet age) or increasing the computer difficulty. Does have a two-player hot seat option though.
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