I’ve showed a few screenshots here from my playthrough of this game. I found playing through it kind of a chore, because my motivations were mainly to see the content for an article/feature I’m working on. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy it, but I didn’t pick it up to have fun.

The point of this series is high-score chasing, which I’ve never been engaged by very much. I got through as quick as I could, with copious use of savestates and looking up strategies in case there were particular scoring quirks (for example, in some Classic modes you can get double points for a time by getting to 300 points with no misses).

I did find value to myself in the content though, whether it was unlocking little summaries of titles in the Game & Watch library, or seeing the Mario elements they chose to use in the Modern versions of games. I love seeing my favourite characters represented in different styles, and get excited when I see a sprite I haven’t seen before. For example, Toads can be very cute in this game, because their head is so small.

In the end, I found what I was looking for (the DK Jrs in the different games), and got a few surprises too, such as the different animations in Oil Panic. Classic mode is a bit of a slog, but I’ll admit it felt good to get into the rhythm of the beeps and static frames… on some of the games, anyway. Definitely play it in a Super Game Boy, though. It’s got good palettes that really enhance the game, and a cool Yoshi’s Island-inspired border.