A look at the 35th Anniversary Super Mario Bros. Game & Watch

The Game & Watch: Super Mario Bros. limited edition hardware arrived in mailboxes today. We say that and not stores because aside from a small number out there – it was mostly all snapped up already. 

There’s no real point in reviewing such an item, but we’ll run through what you get in the package as it is. 

There’s no doubt this a collector’s piece, the plastic outer liner protects a classic cardboard box. In it contains your Game & Watch, a USB-A to C cable to charge it, and the usual paperwork. Upon booting the Game & Watch you’re asked to set the time and from there you can watch Mario tell the time with a ever changing scene from Super Mario Bros. He’ll run across the stage and interact with whatever is thrown at him. There’s also the option to change the theme to different worlds from the game. 

Pressing “Game” lets you pick from Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 2 and a Game & Watch Ball game with Mario’s head over the character instead. Both the NES games run fine as you would expect NES emulation is pretty solid these days. There doesn’t seem to be any resolution scaling or squished picture – but we’re far from experts and does it really matter? The screen resolution is fairly low but good enough for what this aims to be. 

Nintendo says there are 35 secrets within the Game & Watch, we know about one of them because of a bug, but we’re yet to find any others. They could be time-dependent or also dependent on scores within the games. The good news on that front is as long as you keep it charged, it’ll actually keep your game state saved. 

The Game & Watch: Super Mario Bros. is a neat little way to celebrate Mario’s 35th anniversary, we just hope more people are given the chance to pick one up before March.