DS Review: Game and Watch Collection

The definition of classic.



Whoever said great graphics don’t make a great game must have played the Game and Watch collection for the DS. It’s simple design, and addictive gameplay make it one of the most fun titles that I have ever played for this system. The only problem is that you need a Club Nintendo account, and register enough Wii and DS titles to get 800 coins just to have the chance to play this great game. The real question here is is it worth all of the time and effort spent entering all of those codes for a game like this? My answer is absolutely yes!

Developer/Publisher: Nintendo
Genre:Action, Compilation
# of players: 1
ESRB: E for Everyone
Price: 800 Club Nintendo Coins

Let’s get one thing straight right off the bat, there is no story to speak of, and the music and sound effects on offer here are primitive, but it’s from 1982, so you can’t expect perfection. You are given three direct ports of Game and Watch games from 1982. The games included in this collection are Donkey Kong, Oil Panic, and Green House, as well as an alarm clock, which is nice to have, but adds nothing to the game as a whole. All of these titles are simple in their design(literally outlines of character movements are on the screen), as well as in their control scheme, but all of them are extremely fun to play. Let’s go over each one real quick, and talk about some of the good and bad things about them.



Donkey Kong:

If you are familiar with the NES game, then you will be quite familiar with this one. The idea here is the same, jump over barrels, and climb up ladders until you reach the top, then rescue the princess. The only difference with this version is that you have to hit a switch to activate a crane, then jump on the crane to release one of the four hooks that is holding the bridge together, rinse and repeat until the bridge falls apart, Donkey Kong falls, and you earn points. You use the d-pad to move left and right, and to also activate the crane switch, press up on the d-pad to climb up ladders, and press the a button to jump over barrels, simple, easy, and effective. The idea here is to get as high of a score as you can before you lose all of your lives, and you can do this by jumping over barrels, releasing the hooks, etc.

The Good: Controls are simple, Gameplay is challenging and addictive, A and B version are different in difficulty, which adds some replay value to the game, watching DK fall of the bridge never gets old.

The Bad: Crane is hard to reach at times, that’s about it.



Oil Panic:

The concept of this one is to fill your bucket with three oil drops that fall from leaky pipes in the ceiling, then follow the person who has the drum on the bottom of the screen, and dump the oil out of the window that they are under, and you earn points. The controls are simple, you move left and right with the d-pad, and press either y or a to dump the oil out of the left or right side of the screen. I think you know by now that the idea here is to get a high score, so I won’t say anymore about that. Keep in mind that if you miss one of the oil drops, or dump oil onto a pedestrian instead of the oil drum carrier, you will lose a turn, do it three time, and then you have to start over, that’s about it.

The Good: Same as Donkey Kong, with the exception of missing the drum, and hitting the pedestrian in the head with the oil, only to watch them scold you, is fun to watch every single time.

The Bad: Sometimes the controls can get a little clunky, especially when you are under alot of pressure, you will tend to miss your target more than you would like to.



Green House:

Quite possibly the most fun of the bunch(probably because I had a higher score in this than the rest of them), Green House is all about keeping worms and spiders away from flowers by spraying them with your bug spray. The idea here is to try and protect all of your flowers the best you can by keeping these insects away as long as possible. You use the d-pad to move up and down a ladder in the middle of the screen, and press the a button to spray the worms and spiders away in one of the four corners of the green house. Keep doing this to earn as many points as you possibly can, and that’s it.

The Good: Same as the other two, protecting four flowers is challenging and fun, and adds a unique sense of strategy to the game.

The Bad: As challenging as the gameplay is, it can get overwhelming at times, especially when there are enemies in all four corners of the house.



To sum it all up, the game and watch collection is a fun game to play despite it’s flaws. Granted there could have been more games, or a versus mode included, but as a free gift from being a Club Nintendo member, there is really not much you can complain about. Fun in small doses, and nostalgic as ever, it is well worth the coins I spent on it.

(B+)

- Matthew H

One quick tip, if you earn 300 points or more in each of these games, you will regain either all of your lives or turns that you lost during gameplay.