Nintendo adds three Game Boy games to Nintendo Classics

Mole Mania turns digging into a way around surface hazards, and Nintendo will add the 1996 Game Boy puzzler alongside Pinball: 66 Crocodiles and Phantasm to Game Boy Nintendo Classics. According to Nintendo's announcement, the trio lands on October 27, with original release years running from 1989 to 1996.

Nintendo published Mole Mania itself, and the idea is simple. Obstacles block the path on the surface, so the mole tunnels below them toward each stage's exit. Reaching the exit clears a stage, but so does breaking every wall. That second route is the clever part: the maze stops being only something in the way and becomes part of the answer.

There is a two-player VS mode as well. Players take turns, one playing the mole on offense and the other Jinbee on defense, and the round comes down to how many cabbages get dropped.

Crocodiles and a ghost

Pinball: 66 Crocodiles is the oldest of the three, a 1989 release from HAL Laboratory. It plays as a straight score chase: hit targets and run the ball up lanes to pile on points. Sink the ball into certain holes, or into a crocodile's mouth, and the table opens a bonus stage.

Phantasm, published by City Connection in 1992, is the action game of the set. After being shot, its protagonist becomes a ghost and gains the power to possess enemies and use their abilities. With that, the protagonist enters the headquarters of a secret criminal organization to rescue a woman held there.

Playing any of them takes a paid subscription. That same membership also covers Family Computer Nintendo Classics and Super Nintendo Entertainment System Nintendo Classics, so the Game Boy additions sit alongside libraries members may already use.