Nintendo Nintendo Game & Watch: Super Mario Bros

I’m a huge Mario fan, and even though I have all these games on multiple other platforms, I love this little handheld. It feels nice in my hands, and it’s very easy to play.

How does Game & Watch: Super Mario Bros. get five stars without an alarm? Because, everything else about it is awesome, is why.

The Game & Watch celebrates its 40th year with the original Ball, complete with LCD element drop-shadows, just like in real life. It wouldn’t be throwback without them. The watch, aside from not having an alarm, is a well-designed tribute Super Mario Bros., and hides 35 various easter eggs, or little surprises.

Super Mario Bros. celebrates its 35th anniversary with micro-sized presentations of both the original version, and the more difficult second version of the game, as originally presented.

Sure, you can play Switch’s versions of Super Mario Bros. with Switch Online, but those have updated sound, and graphics, which is awesome, and perfect for my modern television setup. However, the modern Game & Watch offers quite a fitting place for these classic versions, displayed on its beautiful color screen, with adjustable brightness, and an impressive mono speaker, with adjustable volume.

You will regret missing out on one of these wonderful units if you wait until its sold out. I was going to leave it in the package, but there are hundreds of people who will still have new-in-box SW35s laying around, yet will have no memories of playing them. It is too awesome to not play.

I love trying to break my record in Ball. It gets pretty wild as the game goes on, then as the odometer ticks over, you breathe a sign of relief, which messes with your timing. It’s awesome. If you don’t Ball, you ain’t down!

Consider that nostalgia may drive some interest in these games, consisting of two side-scrollers, and a stand-still. Children may not find “lives-based” games as interesting as newer games, because playing the same early levels over and over can feel repetitious.

The Game & Watch is mandatory for anyone who already likes the classic Super Mario Bros. Games., or who loved Game & Watch. I’m in the U.S.A., so aside from playing a couple levels on Switch, Super Mario Bros. 2 is new to me, and I never had Ball, although I remember when it came out. I had my football-shaped football game, and my Coleco Pac Man, Galaxian, and Donkey Kong plastic arcade cabinets with the plastic joysticks. I absolutely love this SM35 limited edition handheld game.

If you didn’t grow up in the 1980s with the old school Game & Watch devices and/or Super Mario Brothers, I’d find it hard to believe that you’d enjoy this device. In fact, even if you’re a Super Mario Brothers fan, but didn’t own one of the original Game & Watches, you might have a hard time enjoying this device. However, I personally did own a Game & Watch (Parachute) and played it to death when I was 7 years old (the buttons stopped working because I played it so much). I also spent countless hours on Super Mario Brothers starting at age 9. Because of these two experiences in my past, I knew I had to buy this Game & Watch when I first heard they were going to release it.

Now that I’ve had it for about a week, I can say, for a fan like myself, it was worth the $50. Holding the Game & Watch in my hands when I first opened it brought a HUGE RUSH of memories of me playing Parachute as well as the memories of my grandparents searching all over the place to buy and gift it to me almost 40 years ago. Not gonna lie, I cried. This alone confirmed it was worth the purchase. And while I haven’t been playing SMB1 too much, I’ve been addicted to the SMB2 as I never had a chance to play it when I was younger. The physics of Mario moving are exactly as I remember, which is something that can’t be said for the versions of SMB1 and SMB2 included with Super Mario All Stars for the SNES/Wii, you know the brick breaking “bug”.

Ok enough of the nostalgia, let’s quickly go over the device itself and the games. First of all, the LCD isn’t bad. It’s not great, but not bad. It is clearly a TN panel as the vertical viewing angles are pretty horrible. Luckily, it’s so small that you probably will never be viewing it off angle in the vertical axis. Horizontally, it fares much better off angle. It is small, but not too small at 2.36″. I haven’t noticed any ghosting, but if I look closely, I definitely can see the pixels, so the DPI isn’t the best either. However, it’s perfectly reasonable for games that weren’t high resolution to begin with. The display does seem to be stretched horizontally just a little bit, the screen probably isn’t the exact aspect ratio of the original game as the blocks on the screen aren’t perfectly square and the mushrooms look a little fat to me; this is a little annoying but does not affect game play at all. My 40+ year old eyes aren’t what they used to be, but the display is big enough for me to play without any hindrance. The only thing I can complain about are the parts of SMB2 where there are leaves blowing on the screen to suggest there is wind; the leaves are very hard for me to see. But the audio gives cues that there is wind as well so it wasn’t a huge drawback. Besides that, I have nothing to complain about with the display.

The controls are great. While the DPAD isn’t as big as the original NES controllers, it’s plenty big for me and feels solid and responsive. The B and A buttons, in addition to the game/time/pause/set buttons, feel just like how I remember from my Parachute G&W. The unit was a little light on weight, but that feeling could be because I’m not 7 years old anymore. The biggest complaint I have is that the unit does not come with a kickstand like Parachute did so it cannot sit upright on my nightstand while in watch mode.

The games, as mentioned before, seem to be exactly like the originals except for a couple really welcome additions.
1) While you can’t save the state, you can pause a game and come back to it at anytime. This is on a per game basis, so you can have a paused SMB1, SMB2, and Ball all at the same time and switch between them to play any of them.
2) SMB1 and SMB2 has an option to have infinite lives. This feature was absolutely necessary for me to play and beat SMB2 as it is exponentially harder than SMB1

The watch is a fun addition, you can cycle through different backgrounds of the clock by repeatedly pressing the time button. There are also some other easter eggs for the watch with various button presses I’ll let you figure out.

And finally Ball, while it’s not as exciting as SMB1 and SMB2, I love hearing the “tick tick tick” sounds each time an “LCD” animation moves, just like the original G&W games.

The battery lasts FOREVER. Their estimated 8 hours of gameplay is not exaggerated. I charged it full, played for 2 – 3 hours and the battery meter still showed over half. Keep in mind, I kept the volume and brightness low. Speaking of volume, if you’re alone in a quiet room, the lowest volume setting is already plenty loud IMO. And at the highest volume, it’s still very clear. The inclusion of a high quality USB-A to USB-C cable was a nice touch, and it chargers pretty quickly.

Overall, I can’t recommend this little device enough, even at $50, BUT, with the big caveat that the Game & Watch plus Super Mario Brothers must hold a very dear place in your childhood.

A very simple looking, very light weight, literally the size of a 8 Bit TV Video Game Casette, this packs so much fun.

Three different Mario games and one of them is a 1980s nostalgia. The Time is a masterpiece too with interactive Mario and Gumbha running around.

No WiFi, Bluetooth, no complexity, just charge it with the cable given in the box, don’t expect a charger head 😅, start and enjoy!

Yes, on the costlier side especially for Indian market where Nintendo is not even selling officially, all of these are imported. That adds to the cost too.

But for gadget lovers, game lovers, Mario and Nintendo lovers, who want to own one of these very few collectibles that are going to be sold by Nintendo, this is your chance.