Location 22: The Strip - Ultra Luxe

Puttin' on my white gloves

I stayed in the Mirage last year, which seems to be the inspiration for the most luxurious hotel on the New Vegas Strip, the Ultra Luxe. Admittedly, there's probably a lot of the Bellagio's dancing fountains mixed in, but remember, the game universe isn't ours, and the New Vegas casinos were principally inspired by what Vegas looked like a few decades ago.

(The restaurants in real life presumably serve less interesting steak than the Ultra Luxe, too, although - this is Vegas...)

You want a piece of me?

The clue for me was the hinged architecture, which is somewhat more flowing in the game than the Mirage's angular blocks. But the foilage out front - including water features - seem to chime, and of course the Mirage is famous for its indoor rainforest. Score 3.

I can't delay this any longer: it's time to visit Mr House at the Lucky 38.

Location 21: The Strip - Tops

The Tops takes a bit more sleuthing. I could be wrong here, but its closest parallel (in both nuance and geography) in Las Vegas seems to be Circus Circus, a showing-its-age resort where I last stayed ten years ago. (Big Top, geddit?)

The most obvious relationship is with the swirly front overhang, although it's a bit tenuous. If anyone has a better idea, comment below.

Time for something a bit easier to classify. Let's put on some white gloves and visit The Ultra Luxe.

Location 20: The Strip - Gomorrah

The sands of time

And so to The Strip! The casino photos were surprisingly hard - while each in-game casino has a real-world equivalent, it's also where the game designers took the most artistic license; they're not the same places. (Of course, the game's not quite our future, but the way people in the 50s imagined the future would be.)

Anyway, first up's the Gomorrah. The scruffiest and dodgiest joint in New Vegas (and that's saying something), it's based on the oldest and most faded casino in the real world: the Sahara.

Meet the family

The Sahara's been in business 52 years, and is shutting down next month. Sad, but that's Vegas for you: constant renewal. I went inside, and the pool area (which looks surprisingly like the game) was closed off; otherwise there's little relationship between the interiors apart from the odd bit of North African inspired decor.

Nearby is the enigmatic Tops Casino.

Location 19: Nellis

Abandon hope all ye who enter here

Unfortunately, this is as close as I could get to Nellis Air Force Base; no prizes for guessing why. (For the same reason, places like the Nevada Test Site don't appear in this blog.) But I think I've got the location right: notice the huts either side of the vehicle entrance, and the low wall in front of the right one?

"Meet new people, understand
them, and drop high-explosive
ordnance on their heads."

Nellis AFB is HUGE, covering thousands of acres of Nevada. In fact, a sizeable percentage of Nevada as a whole is government-owned and much of this is fenced off; you only notice it when you're a long way offroad. But let's face it, you don't want to go sniffing around a nuclear test site anyway, even if half-life's shorter than time since test.

It's time for some R&R at the Gomorrah Casino.