286. Ball (Nintendo, Game & Watch, 2020)

Ball is a port of the very first Game & Watch game included in the 2020 Super Mario Bros. Game & Watch, which per the rules of this blog, I did not purchase, but received as an Xmas present from my beautiful, sexy, generous wife. I had already played the other 2 Mario games featured on the Game and Watch, but figured I might as well check out Ball, which features 2 game modes: 

- Game A has Mario juggling 2 balls: one on th outer track and one on the middle track. This mode is waiting for 2 turn signals to line up: the game. Th only challenge is in the brief moments where the oscillation of the 2 balls line up for one catch, then it's just going through the motions for 4 or so times until they line up again. Game A is a little too slow where the first time I played it, I lost because I get bored and distracted.  After my first try of a measly 68, I got 857 on my second try, and have no real desire to try and beat that score, as the difficulty (speed increase) plateaued around 300 or 400 points and reset every 100. I love a game where 1 point is meaningful.

- Game B has a much more interesting 3 balls, and each catch is worth 10 points instead of 1. I can't understate how much exponentially, astronomically more interesting 3 balls is versus 2. Ball would be an easy 1/5 if there was only Game A. Game B is the true Ball. Like Game A, the speed continues to increase but drops the speed back down every 1000 points. I managed to get to around 3500 points by my second try.

3/5, an extremely simple, yet mesmerizing game that's all about timing