I have loved The Game of Life since I was a kiddie. There was something magical about spinning that super-cool wheel and driving your car full of pink and blue pegs across the 3-D landscape that made it fun. However, the lanes are too narrow for Hotwheels cars. Basically, even for young players, that’s an easy game to learn. You don’t need to know everything about stocks and insurance, but it’s a great way to learn, anyway. In addition to “Life”, Destination Software has also bundled Yahtzee and Payday on this cartridge — for a three-in-one home run. These are good, family-oriented games that have been around for decades. In theme, The Game of Life and Payday are similar, while Yahtzee is more like a game of poker — with dice. Complete descriptions and instructions can be found on their site.

I have had Life for the PC, and got a lot of play out of it. I did not care for playing one-on-one against the computer, as I never once beat it. However, if I played with more virtual players, I was able to triumph. Of the three titles on this collection, it is the more complex, though still not hard to figure out. A drawback to it is the absence of being able to see more than a tiny bit of the board at a time. Does that hurt the way you play? Not at all. As with Payday, you just have to stick with the small segment you’re in. If you want to see where the other player is positioned, you have to scroll. Since your destiny is decided by dice or a wheel, there isn’t much strategy to it. You just move your pieces according to your “roll”. Therefore, no advantage is given by being able to see the whole board — it’s just something odd after years of playing the real deal. Also, for you long-time fans of the board version of Life — they did away with the cars a few years ago. Now, you drive a mini-van around the board.

Yahtzee was a family favorite for us as well. It’s very portable, so being able to play it on a GBA is somewhat familiar. If you have a place to toss some dice, you can play. As previously mentioned, your objective is to score by rolling sequences of dice similar to hands of poker. Get all of one kind, and you get to scream Yahtzee!!! It’s just good, clean fun. That’s one of the games I really liked to play — but one that’s impossible to play alone. Now, you can enjoy it wherever you take the GBA.

All three of the games transfer well to the portable format. There are some drawbacks, but given that they are large board games, the troubles are minimal and to be expected. We never had Payday in our board-game arsenal at home, so that one was the most unfamiliar. It’s straight-forward and easy to pick up. Life takes a while to play, and you must exercise a certain amount of strategy to do well. Making decisions on whether or not to go through college and buying stocks will cost you money, but hopefully pays you back more in the long run. Actually playing the game on the GBA, I did find things moved very slowly. It is not like that with the old PC version of Life. I found myself getting frustrated at the (lack of) speed my digital opponent spun the wheel and moved. Before long, I was impatiently telling the game to “HURRY!!” It’s just that Life, like its namesake, takes some time to play and you want things to move quicker — sometimes.

Graphically, the games look pretty good. Life and Payday boards are comical in their appearance, and that theme follows into the portable versions. There’s animation and other fun things to look at instead of staring at a boring single-dimension board. The text narrations and other key graphics were easy to view on all three of the games. Since Life depends on a lot of factors that require investments and planning, that was critical. I’d hate to lose because I misread something on the tiny screen.

The music on the games was tolerable, but since audio was not required for playing the game, I quickly opted to turn that down and listen to something else while I played. With headphones, it was decent but repetitive and did nothing for the gameplay.

This is a fun bundle with a lot of replay value. It will be a staple of my traveling collection of games to keep me sane while flying, at the DMV and other such fun experiences. I enjoyed being introduced to a new (for me) game like Payday, and found it to be an appropriate addition to the other two. Given the chance, however, I would rather play these games against real people using the real boards and dice. There’s nothing to compare to that kind of human interaction. But, if you need a fun way to spend some solo time, you won’t go wrong with this group of family-room classics.

Gameplay: 8.0
The board game reproductions are among the best Hasbro has to offer. The games are easy to pick up and learn, yet challenging and fun enough to entice you back time and time again. Though Payday was new to me, I found it not too bad to get the hang of thanks to the friendly interface.   

Graphics: 7.0 
It’s not Final Fantasy, but the graphics are faithful enough to carry on the whimsical intentions from their board-game inspirations. The home versions are light and comical in appearance (versus something daunting and stoic like Monopoly), and that attitude is translated well here.    

Sound: 6.0
Easily the weakest aspect of the game(s), but easily remedied by a volume adjustment. If you want the tedious, repetitive tunes in your head, keep it on, but I found more joy in taking the volume down — a LOT.      

Difficulty: Easy
If you pick up this title, it’s likely you have played some, or all, of these games before. They play the same on the GBA as they do “at home.” Though Life has a lot of decision making and cards involved, its not too daunting to learn. The others are easier to learn and the AI is not too brutal for one-on-one playing.   

Concept: 6.0 
The games have existed for a very long time. I still have a very old GoL (with cars — not vans!) at home that I only crack open for special occasions. These games have also been put on digital mediums before, so putting them on a small platform like the GBA is only natural.    

Overall: 7.0
I like all three games in this collection. They are easy to pick up and play, and fun enough to warrant repeat play. That’s the definition of good gaming. I don’t think this translates as much fun for more than solo playing. If you’re going to do that, and you have the space (airplane seats can be limiting!!), why not break out the real-life versions? But if you want to play alone and on the go — grab this set of classics. I’d like to see more than these few on a bundle, but it’s worth what you get. Hasbro has quite a catalog, as do other staples of gaming history. I hope the trend of bringing these to the GBA continues — without ruining them by trying to update the original way they play. No one needs to play “Extreme Yahtzee: Only the Good Die Young.”