Game & Watch Gallery 2


There were a series of LCD games called the Game & Watch series, made by Nintendo. We could call them their first handhelds but they were really more games than consoles. The games were simple black and white arcade games. You only needed 2 buttons to play, Ignoring the "Start Game" buttons, most of these games only required you to move your player left and right. The arcade classics were almost forgotten about with the release of the NES so the games were put together on a cartridge for the original Gameboy to remind gamers of those LCD gems. Today I am not looking at a straightforward port of the Game & Watch like the previously mentioned Game & Watch Gallery for the Gameboy but I am looking at it's sequel, Game & Watch Gallery 2 for the Gameboy Color because that game is more than just a port... It is a colored remake!


Graphics

I tried putting a lot of emphasis on the fact that this is a remake of the Game & Watch series but to be honest it does not sound like anything special. Back on the games release, remakes of games was uncommon. This was mainly because the gaming industry was still in relatively early days. I can only name a few NES remakes that were released before this title, such as the Super Mario All Stars + Super Mario World which was a graphic and sound reboot of the NES mario trio and Super Mario World. 
The five games featured in the gallery have been changed to some diversity to the original series. Visually the whole game collection has changed in the modern settings. For instance all of the solid black LCD characters have been replaced by those of the Mario series. Most of the new sprite look really nice and some are actually comparable to some early Gameboy Advance games. The sprites I am talking about are the ones in the actual mini games themselves. The menus in the game just look typical for the Gameboy Color but take a peek at the chef game and you will certainly be impressed. Yoshi just seems to be really detailed in this game mode it is amazing. I actual thought I was playing a GBA rom when I saw Yoshi and that is not even the games visual peak. When I played the Parachute game mode, I was stunned. It looks as though the giant cheap cheap was ripped straight out of Super Mario World, and yes I am comparing a GBC game with a SNES game!


Sound

I usually talk a decent amount about sound and music in my reviews but unfortunately there is not much to say here. Well there is really no music at all apart from in the menus but even so the music is not very spectacular any way. The games are just bleeps in bloops in the classic modes and in the modern modes, they bleeps and bloops were substituted to some genuine sound effects. As for the music in the Menus I would not expect there to be any killer tracks that I could relate to the Wily stages in Mega Man 2 but I would expect something decent. Some how this music feels kinda cliche. You can straight away tell that this game is on the GBC straight away just from listening in. It could be a case of good music fading away because the GBC had the same audio quality of the NES yet the only games with decent music were the Pokemon games, Gold, Silver and Crystal. I dont think I can blame the game for this but I guess the growing culture of music. 


Gameplay

There was more to this remake than just graphics, in the majority of the game modes the whole gameplay has almost evolved. The games structure is quite similar with the left and right business and some of the games still only use that such as the parachute game but games like the chef game have change quite a bit. In the chef game the objective is slightly different. Instead of just flipping the food and keeping it off the ground you would now have to cook it and then feed it to Yoshi. This adds a little more difficulty to the game because one a piece of food changes color you must change the way you are facing on the spot by pressing A or B, making the cooked food drop into yoshi's mouth. This can get really irritating once you get into the score range of 100+, even in the easy mode.
Speaking of the score range of 100+, the chef game, in modern mode, is the only game I can manage to get into 3 digits on. The whole game in general consists of some hardcore arcade difficult, I am glad they are not charging me 50p a play because I will run out of money very quickly. Not because I am poor or anything but because I am always seeing the game over screen. 
Depth wise, this game does not have that much of it. There are only 5 games of the full collection and since they are small basic games i really think that a GBC cartridge can handle more. Just take a look at how much there is in the Pokemon Trio, Johto is humongous and that must take up a lot of the games memory. That was a GBC game. I feel the developers at Nintendo could of crammed more into the piece of plastic, there was no need to have a Game and Watch gallery 3 or 4. 
Luckily the depth was overruled by the game addictiveness. The game and watch series were made in the style of arcade games so they were sure to be addictive. I have mentioned in other reviews and in various other placed around Vizzed that I love a good arcade game. Mainly fighting games but hey, I enjoyed Pac-Man and of course I enjoyed this one too. I think there is only one game in the gallery that I did not enjoy, that being the one involving the yoshi eggs. Luckily this game is a collection so it is not required to play that game in particular. I spent quite a while playing the chef and helmet game, I probably spent a lot longer trying to beat my high score on the Parachute level, that is my favourite. 




So that was my opinion on the Game & Watch Collection. I hope you enjoyed reading it. Feel free to give me opinions on this review.You can talk about what I did well, what I did not and ways I can improve my reviews.
Thank you for reading....
Have a Nice Day