"Smile! Your On GameBoy Camera!"

Smile! Your on GameBoy Camera! The latest from Nintendo's brain. They have brought you everything from voice-recognition to printers. Now they have brought you the GameBoy Camera. Its a digital camera. Don't run out and buy it and expect one of those fancy ones that come from Sony or Panasonic. It is in black and white and it does not hook up to a PC. But do not let that change your mind, it still is a great little toy. The basic idea of the GameBoy Camera is to snap photos of your friends and families. That is only 10% of the whole thing though. You can edit your photos in many ways. Their is the paint shop which gives you a pen (that comes in a few sizes and colors)and you get to mess around with the photo. Draw a beard on your sister or give your brother a big nose. Its up to you. If your not the best artist, there is always the stamp shop. The GameBoy Camera comes with lots of stamps that you can add on the photo. They have eyes, noses, mouths, eyebrows, and many other touches. You can also give your photo Mickey Mouse-like ears or Pokémon to sit next to them. The options are endless. Besides editing photos, there are tons of ways to take your photos. You can time your photos apart or you can fuse two photos together. There are so many options. The next type of area is called Game. You have the option to play one of four games. The first game is a shooter game. It's like a simple version of R-Type. The next game is Ball. You juggle a bunch a balls. Its easy at first, but it gets faster and you find yourself all over the place trying to catch the balls. The next game is DJ. This is actually a brilliant thing. You can compose your own music. They give you a full keyboard and a bunch of options to make a cool tune. Then you can watch a DJ play it. You can pick up the tempo or scratch a record. Its really fun. The next game is hidden. Its called Run! Run! Run! You press the A button to run and press Up to jump over hurdles. If you get to the end first, you press B to raise the flag. You have to race against a bird and a mole. They can be some hard opponents, and you may find yourself coming in second a lot. The best thing about the games is that you can be apart of it all. You take four pictures of someone's face and the GameBoy Camera sticks them in the game. In the shooter game, your face is the third (and final) boss. In Ball, you can choose to have your face as the juggler. In DJ, you can choose to have your face be the DJ. In Run! Run! Run!, you can be the runner. Its funny to see you in the game! The next section of GameBoy Camera is a View section. You can take a look at your pictures. You can also look at the GameBoy Camera's selection of pictures (called the B Album). You can also do view your Animation. The Animation mode is really cool. You place a bunch of your pictures together to form a little movie. Its best to use the timer when taking photos to make the animation. The next thing you can do is Hot-Spot. This is a game that you make for your friends to try. They give you five buttons. You place the buttons somewhere on the picture. After that, you can set the pictures to do something. You can change your picture into another picture, and you can add sound effects. Then you enter Hot-Spot through view. This time around, the buttons will be hidden. Now you can give it to someone to find the buttons. Its can be fun to hide the buttons in their nose or mouth. The next major thing you can do is Print. Of course you need the GameBoy Printer. After you have one, you can pick a frame (such as a TV set or even some Zelda and Yoshi borders) and print it out! The printer does not come with the GameBoy Camera so you better save up your money. You also need to fish out some more money for a Universal Cable. You can also buy extra paper at $10. They give you three rolls. Sounds like the paper runs out quickly, huh? Your wrong. I have printed out many pictures and banners and still have paper left. You can print around 150 pictures with one roll. This also factors in that you cut it correctly and did not feed it too much. The printer is not a bad buy though. It works with other games like Zelda DX and Mario DX. It actually adds a lot to the GameBoy Camera. Another option in the camera is to trade pictures. But do not go trading just yet! You only have a capacity of 30 pictures. I wish there was more, but everything is saved right onto the cart so it works out well. The GameBoy Camera has a bright future. It will work with many games. Perfect Dark will use it (with the 64GB pack) to place your face onto a character for multi-player mode. Also, Mario Artist and Camera will use it too! Not much detail was given on this yet, but I bet it will be really cool. The graphics of the GameBoy Camera are top-notch. The pictures may not be in color, but they look really good. All the stamps are well-designed, and the games look good. The sounds are pretty good. They have some good backround music and plenty of sound effects. The gameplay of the GameBoy Camera is good. It is easy to use. The animation options and DJ options can be hard to use, but you will probably end up figuring it out. I cannot even begin to explain the amount of replay value this thing has. Not only is it fun itself, but it will be used for many more things in the future. The GameBoy Camera is probably the most interesting thing ever to grace video games. If you have a GameBoy, you will not be disappointed making this purchase.

Graphics - 10 (The pictures are clear. Its in black and white, but this is understandable due to the power of the Gameboy)
Sound - 10 (Good backround music and lots of sound effects)
Gameplay - 9 (Easy to use. The DJ and Animation options may get confusing the first time through)
Replay Value - 10 (The most replay value I've ever seen in a game!)
Buy or Rent - (Buy it!)

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 11/01/99, Updated 11/01/99