Hours and Hours of Fun and Games (42 All Time Classics (DS))

Member Name: DavyMichelle

Product:	42 All Time Classics (DS)
Date:	16/10/09 (64 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Loads of Great Games to Play, Well Designed, Easy to Play

Disadvantages: I Can't See the Dominoes Properly!

The 42 All Time Classics I have for the DS has a different box cover to the one that's pictured here, but it is the same game inside. I got it for £16.99 from Amazon, but you can get it slightly cheaper from a few different retailers at the moment, it's well worth checking places like Asda and Argos for lower prices.

This game is just brilliant in a word! I don't think I ever thought it was possible to have so much fun with a gameboy!! On the cartridge, there are 42 simple, classic games like ludo, chess, solitaire, rummy and poker. What I really love about these games is that they are just so amazingly easy to play on the DS. There's no faffing around with controllers, I can just drag and drop my cards using the DS stylus, or drag and tap to move my playing pieces for the board games.

The games are all quick to load which I like, and they've all got rules which are easy to access at any time during the game by tapping on a little 'rules' tab which stays tucked neatly at the bottom of the game screen. The DS puts all the useful information for each game on the viewing screen, and then you can just use the touch screen for the interactive bits. Spreading the games out across the two screens makes them all easy to see, with the exception of Dominoes which gets almost impossible to clearly see when you get too many bones on the board!

The graphics are excellent quality, and much better than I've seen even from Windows Vista (which did a good job with the built-in games even if it is a rubbish operating system overall). I'm not a big fan of music on games like this so I don't think it would be fair of me to comment on that. At the end of the day, if you don't like the music - you can just turn the sound off like I always do.

As well as being able to play the games as you want to, you can also do a little tornament where you go around getting your card stamped on completing each of the 42 games on the cartridge. You have to do this to unlock a couple of the games which might annoy some people, but I found this really fun. I liked having an excuse to sit and give everything a try!

It doesn't matter if you can't win at any of the games on the tornament leg which I think is very fair. You get one stamp on your card for losing at most games, and three for winning. Once you have three stamps, you graduate to the next game. I found this very useful for checkers, which for the life of me I can just never win at!

This really is a great little game that offers hours and hours of entertainment. What's great about games like this is that you can just dip in and out for as long or as little time as you like, and every time you play a game - it's going to be that little bit different depending on which cards you get dealt or which moves your AI opponent makes. It probably seems a bit expensive to some people at almost £20, but I do think it's worth it.

Summary: Highly Recommended