"A camera to the Gameboy? Sounds cool!"

When I first heard about the Game Boy Camera several years ago I thought; Wow, this sounds really cool!
Now I've had some years on me to test it, and this is what I have to say about it...

The Game Boy Camera is a cool device. It's near perfect, but it has got some drawbacks.
First; it's only four-color shots, understandable due to the power of the Game Boy, that shouldn't have been able to create better graphics. Another drawback is the small memory, 30 pictures isn't very much. And with that little memory it's especially annoying that Nintendo have sent with 30 extra pictures that is undeleteable...
The third drawback is that once you've got your Game Boy Camera; you'll need a Game Boy Printer. The printer isn't necessary, but it's very good to have one, so that you can save your pictures on paper when the memory is filled up.

But there's a lot of things that's cool with the Game Boy Camera too, for an example the many special effects that you can give a photo. You can both magnify, split, fat and mirror a picture. You can also paint a picture, and use ''stamps'' to insert for an example Pokémons in the picture.

There's also some fun to do in the minigames.
There are 4 minigames; Ball, DJ, Space Fever II and Run Run Run.
Ball is the G&W classic juggling game where you are a juggler and moves your arms to left or right to juggle some balls.
DJ is a strange DJ game where you tries to play some music, really bad...
Space Fever II is cool! You controls a spaceship at the lower side of the screen and can steer it left, right or shoot to avoid/shoot down enemy spaceships that comes from the opposite way.
Run run run is a running game, you have to press A as fast as possible to run, boring...
Now you may wonder what these minigames is doing in a camera. Well, this is the absolute coolest feature of the camera; you can put your own face on the characters in the game!! In DJ, Run run run and Ball you plays as yourself, but in Space Fever II you are the level three boss. Cool.

The Game Boy Camera also has got a Slide Show option to watch your pictures. And you can do an up to 30 pictures long animation with the animation tool. The Hot-spot feature is an interesting tool. It lets you choose certain areas of the picture to ''Hot-Spot''. A Hot Spot can do many things. When you play the Hot Spot game, you clicks around the picture, and when you clicks on a place where you've placed a Hot Spot, the Hot Spot will make the picture sound, do a picture effect or take you to another picture.
Well, let's do a summary...

Graphics: 7 - Even that it's not good, it pushes the GB to the limit, and the camera effects is so cool!

Sounds: 4 - This is awful... The GB games just can't sound good.

Replay value: 8 - Well, it's infinite fun if you can stand the graphics! But it wont take long before you've completed it all the first time.

TOTAL: 7 - This is a cool device, not a doubt about it. But it starts to feel old now when the Game Boy Advance is out... But it is original, and a real cool thing to have, even if the graphics are boring!

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 07/21/02, Updated 07/21/02