Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Club Nintendo Game and Watch Collection Review

Club Nintendo is Nintendo's system to promote registration of video games. You get points for each game you register and additional points for filling out surveys related to each game. For collecting 800 points, you can get a copy of a Game & Watch Collection for the Nintendo DS. Those who follow me on Twitter know that I recently did that.

For those of you who don't know, Game & Watch were a series of individually packaged games that Nintendo made in handheld format. Each game was its own unit. This included such classics as Mario Bros and Donkey Kong. This DS collection includes three of those classic games - Oil Panic, Donkey Kong, and Green House.

Yesterday, the game arrived. What followed was about an hour of me sitting while watching TV playing games much older than most of my siblings. The gameplay has withstood the test of time - very simple gamplay for each game composed of using the directional pad and, at most, the A button. It is this simple gameplay that makes it so magical. It provides all manner of fun with just a few buttons.

Now, many people are familiar with Donkey Kong. I personally have played Donkey Kong many a time on many a console. But, before getting this collection I had never played Oil Panic or Green House. Let me tell you a little about each game.

Oil Panic is comprised of a main character on the top screen trying to collect dripping oil which falls at a set time period from random locations. Once his container is filled - he then dumps it out to a person below who must be directly below him to catch it. If you let the oil spill above - a small fire starts and you lose one chance. If you spill oil below, it falls on your gas station customers. The controls are simple to learn, but difficult to master. It is frantic fun trying to collect the oil and drop it so that your gas station patrons are kept content filling their vehicles.

Green House is a game where you protect your flowers from bugs. You have a can of bug spray and need to kill the bugs as they approach your flowers. If your flowers get attacked three times, the game is over and you have lost. It seems simple, but jumping between screens on the DS to catch insects before they take out your flowers can become fastly challenging.

All in all, for the price of free because I had registered my games - this was well worth the price. I would suggest registering products with Club Nintendo - because you never know what promotion they will come up with next.

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