A Not Terrible Hit of Nostalgia
The Game & Watch series was a collection of handheld LCD titles released by Nintendo in the early to mid-1980s. Predating the Game Boy, each game was its own handheld, complete with a built in alarm clock, thus earning the moniker "Game & Watch." The Game & Watch Collection for the Nintendo DS recreates three games from the line; Oil Panic, Donkey Kong, and Greenhouse. What's more notable about the title however is that it is only available through Club Nintendo, the rewards program in which those that register Nintendo products will receive points redeemable toward various small rewards. At 800 points, the Game & Watch Collection is currently one of the priciest items in the reward catalogue.
The games in the collection can all be described rather simply. In Oil Panic, you need to move your character left and right to fill a bucket with oil dripping from the ceiling and dump it out the correct window into the oil drum below. Donkey Kong is a simple recreation of the first stage of the original arcade classic. Greenhouse tasks you with spraying worms and spiders with bug spray to prevent them from doing damage to plants. All three games use both DS screens.
As this game is meant specifically as a reward for frequent purchasers of Nintendo products and not an actual retail product, dollar signs can't really be attributed to its worth. All three games in the collection are short, simple affairs; perfect recreations of the original handheld titles, right down to the inclusion of an alarm clock. Your enjoyment of the game is most likely to be based on how fondly you remember playing Game & Watch titles over two decades ago, but with only three games in the collection, the limited content likely won't last most people very long.
That being said, it's hard to really knock this game for being what it is. As long as you have the points to spend in your Club Nintendo account, meaning you'll have to buy and register enough games and devices to cover the cost, the game itself is free of charge. Also, as stated before, all three games in the collection are perfect recreations of the original games, so while they are short and simple, you'll be playing them just as they were designed all those years ago.
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