Customer Reviews: Read 93 more reviews...
 Disappointment January 5, 2009
I gave this game to my husband, who is an avid player of Wordjong and The New York Times Crossword on the DS. I'm a Brain Age sudoku addict. But Clubhouse Games engaged neither of us. The graphics on the games that interested us (solitaire, chess) were crude by today's DS standards. The games that had better graphics (bowling, darts) seemed sort of silly to him. Plus, I expected more than one solitaire card game. If you're looking for basics, this game will probably do it. But if you're used to more sophisticated DS fare, you might want to look elsewhere.
 A rainy afternoon in your pocket January 4, 2009
Some people have said that Go, the Japanese board game, is included here. I haven't seen it, if it is. The Japanese kids game, Go Moku ("Connect Five"), is played on a Go board with Go stones (well-implemented by Club House Games, I might add!) but the rules are humongously different. Go is vastly more complex than chess, and some would say deeper. Is there a way to unlock Go on the Go Moku game, maybe in WiFi mode? A nice addition that would require no AI (other than score counting, maybe), or maybe they can cram GNU Go in there somehow. A feature request for the next version! Whatever, I have to say, I've never seen a real game of Go Moku peddled to gaijin before; this one is very well done!
I was pleased to see backgammon. In multi-game mode, this game does support both doubling and the Crawford rule, but the AI is not very tough even in hard mode. The stylus can easily slide a stone past it's target, which can make the controls seem a bit touchy. Every time you play and win 5 games, you unlock another of the three extra board styles - the "Paper" style (could be renamed "Sketch") is my favorite! Board styles are a feature of other games, too, not just backgammon.
You need to play Stamp Mode through to Level 5 at least once in order to unlock all the games. This can be tedious on unfamiliar or boring games, but you can always get another stamp (you only need 3) by playing the game and losing. After all 42 games are available, Stamp Mode lets you replay them all again in Easy, Normal or Hard variants. I don't know what that unlocks, if anything.
A word about difficulty: At first, these games are heavily skewed toward "Easy". Kids can play AND WIN chess or checkers, for example, which is not a bad way to learn a new game. Even "Escape" is a dead-easy version of a nifty Japanese sliding block puzzle game called Hakoiri Musume ("The daughter in a box puzzle"). However, that is still the most difficult game in the Club House Games, and should be a stumper for most people at the end of the Stamp Mode march. Persist, the puzzle eventually yields to a determined attack. After you've unlocked it, you get to chose your own poison - there are twenty different starting positions! If even that is too easy for you, you can buy or build a wooden version at eBay (probably), but Club House Games is for fun, not for pumping mental iron.
 Great Game January 4, 2009
Got this game for Christmas and I love it. It has lots of common games, but doesn't call them by the names probably because of trademark issues. My two favorites are battleship and sorry.
Great game! December 29, 2008
Bought this for mom as a Christmas present and she loves it! Lots of great games and lots of fun to play
Chess Game is Poor! December 27, 2008
I know this isn't only a chess game, so I didn't expect too much. I did hope that the game would be challenging, but no such luck. On the hardest level, I made a mistake. Any novice would have been able to beat me -- mate in two. Instead of finishing me with the queen, the cpu traded that queen for a knight on the other side of the board. I won 10 moves later. Do NOT buy this expecting the AI to give you a decent game.
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