"Nintendo have done it again. Original, enjoyable and all around great. Get out and buy one of these now!"

Introduction
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Nintendo are masters of innovation, revolutionisation and re-invention of games, and consoles. But no one saw this one coming.

It took the likes of Nintendo to come up with the crazy idea of making a camera, that works as a game pak through your GameBoy. And it took the brilliance of Nintendo to actually make it work.

Gameplay
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Hmmm, I suppose that gameplay would be where I describe how everything works, and how well it works with the GB Camera. So, it’s off to work I get.

This will seem a bit list like, and that’s because, well it is. See there are so many different elements to the GB Camera that I just have to describe them individually.

The main idea of the GB Camera is to take pictures. You can store 30 full sized pictures on the GB Camera itself, which is fairly decent to say the least.

When taking pictures you can adjust both brightness and contrast, to get the exact shot you desire.
You can take pretty detailed close-up pictures of things, as well as getting reasonable quality long-distance shots.

There is a huge range of options you can use while taking pictures as well. There is a neat time lapse mode, where you can set the camera to take, one or up to thirty images with a set time interval inbetween them. This is good for making animations, getting yourself in the shot from a long ditance and more.

As well as the time lapse mode, there are a great number of lenses and effects you can use. Zoomed, distorted, multi shots in the one image (horizontally slip, vertically split, split in four, reversed, mirrored and heaps more. Playing around with all of these is good fun. There are also montages that you can put together, and panoramas.

When you save a picture you can go back and edit the **** out of it. You can draw all over it (with different coloured pens) as well as adjust the width of the pens you are drawing with, you can also paint the picture. As well as that you can go into stamp mode, here you can flick through a range of things you can “stamp” onto the image, there are heaps of different eyes, ears, teeth, lips, eyebrows and noses. Plus there are things like bow ties, fangs, sweat droplets, what looks like a giant ZIT, frankenstien bolts, parts of animal faces and well as musical notes to stick around the place. On top of all that there is also top parts of animal heads (fox ears, mickey mouse ears etc), plus flowers, figures, stars, pictures (cars, motorbikes, rockets, fish and more). On top of al those there are pokémon you can smack on the picture, famous Nintendo characters (like mario, luigi, dk and toad), plus a mario nose and moustache.
Apart from the imagery stamps you can put test in as well, it comes in standard, bold, italic, wonky, japanese and symbol.

What else can you do with your pictures? Why create an animation of course. Yep, you can use up to 30 pictures in an animation you create. You can loop and snip here and there, the end result can be really awesome I must say.

There are loads of other things you can do to images you have taken as well, but I won’t bother explaining every last little detail.

Another kewel aspect of the GB Camera is the fast that you can hook your GB up to a GB Printer and print off your photos! As well as that you can trade them with friends and plenty more.

Apart from photos, and manipulating them the GameBoy Camera has a crap load more to offer.
These come in the form of the games, and the ability to also unlock hidden photos and stuff.
Now, I explain the games.
In all of the mini games there is an animated face, that you can make, or use one of the two pre-made faces. Each face is made up of 4 shots, which animate together. The idea id to have a changing expression in each shot.

(_) Space Fever II – This is in the style of a 2d, overhead shooting game. You can fly left and right, and are armed with a basic weapon. You’ll come across hordes of enemies, and every now and then a boss. This game can be fun for a few hours at a time, if you like it.

(_) Ball – In this, you pretty much are a juggler, your juggle three balls at the one time. To juggle a ball, you have to catch it (by moving to the left or right depending on which way it is heading down). To catch it you simply have to let it land in your hand. Once it touches your hand it is launched back up into the air, and arches over to your other hand. Each ball you “catch” counts as one point towards your score. The more balls you get in your hands….. (no pun intended) the faster they come down. So the further you get along, the harder it will get. This is pretty fun, and a good break from taking photos.

(_) Run! Run! Run! – This game is the definition of button bashing. This is a 2d side scrolling race against two other competitors. The faster you hit the A button, the faster you run. There are obstacles along the way that you’ll have to jump over, and if need be you can flap your arms to get some more air time. Don’t play this too much or you’ll end up with really sore fingers.

(_) DJ – This, in my opinion is by far the coolest game within this cartridge. You can compose your own music. The concept is simple, but the possibilities are almost endless. It’s kinda hard to explain how this works, so I’ll give you just the basic ideas. You can have three fully customisable tracks running at once (on top of each other) you can choose the EXACT sounds you want every beat to be like, you can adjust the tempo of your beats.
Ok, so that was a horrible explanation…… put simply, you can compose infinitely customisable beats in just about any way you can imagine, and play with them, fade tracks in and out and more. And wait ‘till you see the kewel DJ animation.

Taking photos has never been so fun. Neither has manipulating them. Apart from the photos, the ability to print them off, trade with other people, plus the mini games makes this an all out awesome package, that will deliver hours of fun.

9.6/10

Graphics
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I was quite surprised when I saw the quality of the photos taken on the GB Camera. They look really nice, and considering the low resolution of the GameBoy’s screen and the quality of the images, Nintendo really must be congratulated.

Just sitting here now, I can take a snap of about 20 keys on my keyboard, I can read what the letters and numbers are on the quite easily. Sure, you won’t see each freckle, bump and hair everything you take pictures of, but the quality, considering the graphical limitations of the GameBoy is great.

The menus are also very nicely animated and put together. As are the graphics used in the mini games.

Want to talk about cool? With the GameBoy Camera, you can, get this SEE INFA RED LIGHT!!!. I just thought I’d mention that kewel little feature…

9.4/10

Sound
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Since when do cameras come with music and sound effects?
Nintendo seem to think it is the thing to do, and obviously have put quite a bit of effort into the music and sound effects in this “device”.
The menu music is decent, but nothing you will want to find a midi for :P The sound effects are well used, and although just bleeps and blops, the way they have been used is very wisely. When you take a photo, at the instant the camera snaps the pic you will hear a bleep. This is all good and well, but the real example of how well the sound is used is in the time lapse mode. Because you aren’t there actually taking the pictures, you can’t know when they are being taken…. Well, that would be the case, but the smart GB Camera designers have made sure the GB Camera beeps when it takes a picture by itself too. Just so you can hear the exact second each picture is taken.

The best thing in the sound area of the GB Camera however is the DJ game. You can compose your own music. The options are almost endless, and the possibilities are. There is just such a huge range of fully customisable options for you to fiddle around with. If it hadn’t been for this DJ game, I probably would have given the sound more like about 7/10…. But the DJ game is just so kewel I had to include it in the sound scoring.

9.1/10

Multiplayer
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Technically, the GB Camera has no multiplayer as such, but the ability to trade photos with other people’s GB Cameras has got to count as something. Giving this a score, rather than just N/A is better right….?

3/10

Originality
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Grief! This is possibly the most original thing I’ve ever used. I mean, who would have ever thought of turning a game cart into a camera, thus making your GameBoy a Photo taking, and editing station?
It had to be Nintendo.
Apart from taking photos, editing them and all there are also a bunch of funky mini games, the best of which allows you to create your own music. How damn good is that?

11/10

Controls
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Hmmm, this game is mostly menu navigating, which is hardly “control”, but that’s all I’ve got to work with here folks.
When you push up in a menu, “it” goes up, when you push down, “it” goes down, and so on. The controls, or what little of them there are, are fine.
8/10

Replayability
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Again, this is more of a game category, than a peripheral rating category, but I’ll go with what I have to work with and see what I can come up with.
Taking photos doesn’t get old for a loooooooooong time. But in this cartridge is plenty more to keep you using it. You can edit and manipulate the crap out of your photos, as well as try your luck at the mini games, plus compose your own music as a DJ. You’ll be using this for a long time, and years down the track you’ll still use it on occasions.

?/10

Difficulty
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Er…. Now this, I will have problems with. I suppose this could be difficult if you have very shaky hands or something… but taking half decent photos is pretty basic.

Load Times
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This is a cartridge, cartridges don’t have load times (unless your name is Perfect Dark, Shadowman or Resident Evil 2). There are absolutely no load times to speak of whatsoever. Which is good… but the game doesn’t have much more to load other than the menus.

Pros
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(_) You can take photos of stuff. How cool is that? I laugh at people who buy “reeeal” cameras.
(_) You can make your own music! This is supposed to be a camera, not a music making device! What are Nintendo doing giving us more than we expected? Typical. Pfft!
(_) You can use the camera do see infa red light.
(_) The GB Camera is an extremely innovative, and original device.
(_) You can manipulate and edit images ‘till your heart’s content.
(_) I picked this up for the equivalent of about $10Us brand new. And it’s still selling that cheap as of today.

Cons
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(_) There isn’t a GameBoy Advance camera………….yet…

Buy/rent
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Buy. This is one of the best purchases around. I picked mine up cheap as all crap, but even if it were twice the price of an ordinary game I’d still recommend buying it. You will be using it for many enjoyable hours.

Overall
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The GameBoy Camera is one of the most original, and all best “games” you can get for your GameBoy. This is up there as an equally as essential purchase as some of the best GB games that exist. Get out and buy one NOW! I know you will enjoy the hell out of it for years to come.

Overall
9.6/10 (Rounded to 10/10 for GameFAQs)

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 08/29/01, Updated 08/29/01