Don’t worry, this isn’t a retrospective of ALL Nintendo handheld game systems. That would take too long! (and require research, eww) This past week I got my Club Nintendo exclusive Game & Watch Collection on the DS, and I also attended a sneak preview of the DSi (also through Club Nintendo). So in honor of that, I thought I’d share my personal experiences with the Game & Watch games, do a quick review of the G&W Collection I got, and finish up with my impressions of the upcoming Nintendo DSi at the preview event I went to (in part two below this first blog).

Me & Game & Watch
Actually I don’t have much to share about the original Game & Watch. Back in the early 80’s when the G&W handhelds were in their heyday; I really never played with them or heard about them much. I don’t know if my parents thought I was too young for them, or if the G&W handhelds were too expensive, but I never owned one or played one for a long time. Back then, my gaming was centered more around arcades and playing games on our first PC: the Apple ][+. The arcades and Apple computer provided much better gaming experiences anyway, which is also one of the reasons why I never had an Atari 2600 as a kid either. So I never really knew much about the G&W games.

Know what my first home console was? It was actually the Atari 5200, and I was totally surprised when I got it for Christmas because I didn’t even ask for one! And I didn’t get a NES right away either because I was perfectly happy playing Pengo on my 5200. It was Zelda that sold me on the NES anyway, not Super Mario Bros. Really the closest thing I had to a Game & Watch was the little Pac-Man game by Coleco that was made to look like a stand up arcade machine, but in mini form. Surely some of you know what I’m talking about.

A lot of Nintendo Game & Watch games were based on arcade titles like Donkey Kong and Mario, but there were a few that they had that Nintendo probably won’t talk too much about now, because they were based on licensed characters like Mickey Mouse, Popeye, or Snoopy. In fact, the very first Game & Watch handheld I played was a Mickey Mouse game. Back when the NES came out, I played it at a cousin’s house when we would visit family in Alabama. This cousin got all the video game consoles as a kid, I remember us playing Frog Bog on the Intellivision for hours and hours!

Anyway, one year for Christmas, my cousin got this Mickey Mouse game. Nintendo was a recognizable name by then because the NES had already come out, so when I first saw the Nintendo logo on it, I thought to myself, “they made this, too?” You fold up the screen and view it through a mirror. And I remember the game being in color, unlike the other black and white LCD screens. The game had a circus motif. Mickey was dressed as a clown and balanced on a ball and juggled what looked like dumbbells. Or bones. It reminded me of another G&W title called Chef. You would move left and right to keep the objects in the air, and if you missed, Donald would appear and jump up and down and point and laugh at you. And that’s about all I remember.

The other time I actually physically played a G&W handheld when I was a kid was in Middle School. One kid in class would sometimes bring a G&W game called Mario Bros., but it wasn’t like the arcade game. It had two screens side by side and you moved up objects back and forth up a conveyor belt, making sure they don’t fall, and try to reach the top where a truck would load them off and give you points.

Later, when NES games Super Mario Bros. and Zelda were legendarily popular, I would see lots of contests and store displays of Game & Watch versions of Super Mario Bros. and wristwatch games of Zelda. More recently, in the past few years, you can buy keychain versions of G&W classics. I’ve seen ‘em in stores even in the past couple of weeks. I have a few myself. I’ve got a DK Jr, a Mario’s Cement Factory (my favorite of the keychain ones), and Super Mario Bros. Anything else I know about the Game & Watch games have been in more recent years, thanks to retro references in Nintendo games and classic game collections.

Game & Watch Collection (DS)
Late last year, Nintendo brought their Japan only Club Nintendo to the US (and other places, too, I think). By registering your Nintendo first party games on their Web site and filling out surveys, you could earn coins to exchange for prizes. Most of these prizes are playing cards (ironic since Nintendo first started out as a playing card company). But the biggest prize, which costs 800 coins, is a Club Nintendo exclusive DS game that has 3 Game & Watch games on it. It took me a little while, but I finally saved enough ‘coins’ to get that game. It’s not very good, but I only got it for obsessive collector’s purposes. Kind of like why I got the rare Electroplankton game. Yeah, I know, I’m insane.

The three games on the collection are Oil Panic, Donkey Kong, and Greenhouse. These were originally dual screen G&W games, too, which is probably why they chose them for this collection. It makes you wonder if these old G&W games were kind of the inspiration for the DS.

In Oil Panic, move a guy with a bucket to collect dripping oil on the top screen. On the bottom screen is a guy walking back and forth with another bucket. When he gets to the edge, you need to dump the upper guy’s bucket into the lower one’s bucket. The game kind of has a gas station motif, and you lose if you have too much oil in your bucket or miss catching the dripping oil.

Donkey Kong is similar to the arcade game, as you run up and down girders and ladders jumping over barrels. The only thing different is on the top screen, where you must flip a switch to activate a swinging crane. You must catch this crane to get to Donkey Kong. I never liked the crane part because the timing on it was hard.

Greenhouse is my favorite of the three games on this collection. It’s about the closest thing you can get to a ‘twitch shooter’ for a Game & Watch. In the game, you have to protect four flowers, two on the top and two on the bottom screen, from approaching insects. You control a guy with a spray gun and must travel from the bottom and top screen and shoot the bugs before they get your flowers. It’s kind of like Donkey Kong 3 without DK. And a lot more fun, too. I also like this game because I’m pretty good at it, and I really like the updated version on Game & Watch Gallery 3 (more on that later).

The collection saves your high scores for each game, and you can even set it up as an alarm clock, too. The graphics and sounds make you feel like you’re playing an old G&W, right down to the annoying bleeps and buzzers. Like I said, it’s not a very good collection, and you should only get it if you’re a Nintendo nut like me. If you want to play another Game & Watch game on your DS, get Personal Trainer: Cooking and use the timer function in a recipe. You’ll unlock the G&W game Chef! Anyway, if you want a GOOD collection of Game &Watch games, I recommend picking up one of the old Game & Watch Gallery games on the Game Boy and GBA.

Game & Watch Galleries
These are much better games than the Game & Watch Collection on DS, and most of my knowledge about G&W games comes from these titles in the series. Each game had about 4 to 8 Game & Watch games on them in two forms. The original LCD one and new updated versions with better graphics, catchy music, Mario characters and settings. Plus little gameplay tweaks and shark elements to help boost your score and such. Like the Namco Museums, there were also little galleries that you could peruse to learn more about other Game & Watch titles. I recommend picking any of these up if you can find them.

Game & Watch Gallery
The very first one was playable on the original black and white Game Boy, and was also Super Game Boy compatible. The Super Game Boy let you play games on the SNES with limited color and other enhancements. G&W Gallery 1 had four games on it: Fire, Manhole, Octopus, and Oil Panic. In Fire, you moved Mario and Luigi from left to right on the bottom of the screen, holding a trampoline. You bounced Toads, Yoshis, and DK Jr. to safety after they jumped out of a burning building. Kind of like the Peter Puppy mini-game from Earthworm Jim 2. In Manhole, help Yoshi hold up four manholes so Toads, DK. Jr, and Mario can run across. After they step on a manhole you have to pick it up again so the next one doesn’t fall through. In Octopus, Mario goes deep sea diving to get treasure for Princess Peach, waiting on the boat above. All you have to do is just avoid the octopus arms. Oil Panic is also on here, I’ve already described it in the G&W Collection review above. Now Mario and Yoshi are collecting oil droplets from Bowser’s hose.

Game & Watch Gallery 2
By the time this came out, the Game Boy Color was just being released. So it worked with that in full color. Chef had huge gameplay enhancements as you helped Peach flip food with a frying pan, and when it was fully cooked, you would let Yoshi eat it. Donkey Kong, already described in the G&W Collection review, played similar to the arcade game. In Helmet, help Mario (or Wario) dodge falling debris as they make it from one side of the screen to another. In Parachute, Mario mans a rowboat, catching falling Toads, Yoshis, and DK Jr. And Vermin is just Whack-A-Mole with Yoshi. One unlockable game was Ball, which was the very first G&W game. The updated version has Mario, Yoshi, or Wario moving paddles left and right to juggle object in the air.

Game & Watch Gallery 3
G&W Gallery 3 was also on the GBC. Donkey Kong Jr. played pretty close to the arcade game. In Egg, help Yoshi catch rolling Yoshi Cookies from four corners of the screen. I’ve already talked about Greenhouse in the G&W Collection review, the updated version had Yoshi spitting watermelon seeds at Shy Guys and such. Again, it’s one of my favorites, along with Turtle Bridge. Turtle Bridge starred Toad as he hopped across birds while delivering presents from Mario to Peach. Like Greenhouse, I was really good at Turtle Bridge, too. And in Mario Bros., help Mario & Luigi move objects up a conveyor belt without letting them fall off, and make it to the top where they can load them on Wario’s truck. You could also unlock a handful of original G&W games without the Mario enhancements, like Judge, Lion, and Spitball Sparky. Spitball Sparky in particular was pretty good for a G&W game, as it played like a cross between a Break Out clone and a Space Invaders-like shooter. In G&W 2 and 3, you could use a link cable to unlock even more things in the gallery.

Game & Watch Gallery 4
Game & Watch Gallery 4 came out on the Game Boy Advance. It had a few of the enhanced G&W games from the previous galleries, like Chef, Donkey Kong, DK Jr., Egg, Mario Bros., Octopus, and Parachute. New enhanced games included Boxing, where Luigi had to block and punch adversaries like Waluigi. Mario’s Cement Factory was actually a pretty fun ‘run around the maze keeping track of stuff’ kind of game, except instead of cement you had to fill buckets with Yoshi Cookie dough. I was really good at it, too. In Donkey Kong 3, you used a bubble gun to move a fireball or Boo near Donkey Kong, all the while DK was doing the same to you! This game and Boxing could be played with two players. In Fire Attack, help Wario defend his fort from Bullet Bills and Bob-Ombs. It was kind of like Greenhouse so I was good at it. The original Fire Attack had a Western motif as you defended a fort from Indian flaming arrows. In Rain Shower, help Mario move clotheslines that had other characters hanging from them in swings, and protect them from Bowser’s falling water balloons. The original version of Rain Shower had you moving clothes from clotheslines so they didn’t get hit by raindrops. This was a hard game due to the multitasking involved. You could also unlock a few more original non-enhanced G&W games, including the Zelda one, though it was hard to unlock.

G&W Conclusions
And that’s pretty much all the G&W Gallery games. I wish they would make more of them, but they were kind of ‘replaced’ by the Wario Ware series, which I like to consider Game & Watch Gallery On Crack (sorry for the hackneyed term). There are other places where you can find Game & Watch fun, though. On the old Game Boy Camera, it came with a mini-game where you could play the G&W Ball with your head on the character. Game & Watch is also featured heavily in the Super Smash Bros. games. There’s a couple of stages set inside a Game & Watch, and one of the playable characters is Mr. Game & Watch, and all of his attacks are references to other G&W games.

Finally, I couldn’t finish this part of the blog without giving credit to Gunpei Yokoi, who designed the Game & Watch games as well as the original Game Boy. If it wasn’t for him, Nintendo wouldn’t be the same company today! He deserves just as much credit, if not more than, Shigeru Miyamoto. It’s a shame that Gunpei Yokoi died tragically in a car accident.

In the comments section of this blog, I’d love to hear about any personal experiences that you’ve had playing Game & Watch in the past.  And don’t forget to read part two of my blog, where I do a hands-on preview of the new Nintendo DSi.  –Cary

Tags: Game Reviews