Game & Watch Collection 2

In Europe, as in Japan, Nintendo operates a Club Nintendo scheme with local prizes for local people who register their DS/Wii game purchases online. But, occasionally, the rewards for Japanese gamers' patronage stretch to exclusive Club Nintendo-branded releases. The most recent of such titles is Game & Watch Collection 2, a sequel to a similar golden freebie that was put out via the Club a couple of years ago.

G&W Collection 2 contains updated versions of two 1981-vintage handheld Nintendo games - Parachute and Octopus - both of which predate Donkey Kong and Nintendo's biggest early success with its 8-bit Family Computer (the NES). It also brings a third, original game to the retro theme party in the shape of the excellently-named Parachute X Octopus, which is a mash-up of the two games in which they segue into and riff against each other.

Aside from some carefully applied use of colour (possibly not so much of a novelty 25 years after the Game & Watch heyday), the only other significant introduction to the DS versions of Parachute and Octopus is a top screen full of lovely blue sky. If you play well, fireworks detonate and you get to pretend - with a little imagination - that you're playing at a Game & Watch festival on a beach somewhere, before a cheering crowd.

In terms of its gameplay, Parachute is so old skool that it effectively moves at just one or two frames per second, with Game & Watch Man characters f-a-l-l-i-n-g from a helicopter. The player controls a manned lifeboat in shark-infested waters, tapping the D-pad left or right to change position and catch the parachutists lest they be snacked on by the prowling carcharias.

Three 'misses' here = GAME OVER, so it's crucial that the D-pad-to-action response time is no more than a nanosecond or two; and, happily, that's about the size of it. Parachute is still hilariously primitive, but the sharpness of the controls at least ensures it's quite satisfying and will never frustrate you with clunky calculations or botched executions.

Octopus is another game of try-not-to-be-devoured-by-a-dangerous-sea-creature, only this one is motivated by the foolish attempts of a team of divers to retrieve gold from a treasure chest that lies on the seabed - directly beneath an octopus that fills about a third of the screen with its ominous, gangly presence. Again, the controls are sharp like fish bones. No complaints there.

You'll end up playing these games over and again to better your high scores, but it's fair to say there really isn't anything in the way of other incentives. Mind you, Parachute X Octopus, which emulates Parachute on the upper screen and Octopus on the lower, is a neat bit of work.

Once you've rescued a certain number of parachuting daredevils, the screen flashes to signal that you've been permitted to start dispatching divers. Retrieve a predetermined amount of gold (preferably without dying a horrible octopus death) and the screen will flash once more, pinging play back up to the top screen. It's a Game & Watch relay of sorts, and is G&W Collection 2's most challenging feature.

Of course, it might have made more sense (or been a bit more interesting) if Nintendo had elected to fill this collection with replicas of its multi-screen Game & Watch games which - with hindsight - look a lot like the precursors of the whole DS concept. But hey, you can't be picky when receiving a present, and the first Game & Watch Collection did contain some multi-screeners. Besides, this is a charming gift in spite of (or because of, depending on how you look at it) the overall primitiveness. Heck, there isn't even any in-game music here: just blips for sound effects.

So Game & Watch Collection 2 wouldn't stand as a pay-for release, but as a giveaway, it's a skip down memory lane that Nintendo fans can enjoy when they're feeling nostalgic.