R.O.B. and Game Boy

The Game & Watch line of electronic handheld games were produced by Nintendo and released on April 28th, 1981, nearly 38 years ago, starting with the game simply called “Ball.” Game & Watch games were the brainchild of Gunpei Yokoi, Nintendo’s most prolific hardware designer and engineer who’s concepts and inventions became the hot toys that brought Nintendo back from the brink of financial insolvency back in 1965. The inspiration came from observing a business man on one of Japan’s famous “bullet trains” playing with a handheld calculator to pass the time.

By the late 1970s, Nintendo began to note that the prices for capacitors and microchips were now becoming more and more affordable for the company to start experimenting with. With calculators the size of credit cards now being released, Gunpei Yokoi envisioned a tiny game played on an LCD display and powered by batteries that people could take anywhere. The end product being the Game & Watch. To appeal to business-minded people and to dispel the notion that the product was no mere child’s toy, every unit came with a functional digital clock to tell time. Later models included an alarm feature. The model seen here with R.O.B. and GB is a first-run model of “Ball” released in 1981. Game & Watch units are typically expensive and very difficult to collect for, with some models fetching regularly for over USD$500. Game & Watch titles were famously represented by a character known as Mr. Game & Watch, who is modeled after the typical character seen in nearly all Game & Watch titles. starting in Super Smash Bros. Melee for the Nintendo GameCube in 2001.

I’ve decided that, in order to try and find creative inspiration after nearly two years of barely any creative output, I need to take a nice and steady re-evaluation of the past. The best way of going about this, I feel, is probably introducing myself and give a brief-yet-detailed explanation of how things have come to be. I’m rememberedoldbuddy, though this isn’t my real name. What is real about me is that I’m a 30 year old male residing in the United States. My greatest personal passion that has brought me joy for nearly all my life is Nintendo and everything involved with it. I have a massive and extensive collection of Nintendo hardware, software, and memorabilia that dates all the way back to the very founding of the company, and my collection has been featured on an international blog as part of a collector’s spot light, which has been the greatest amount of recognition I’ve received for my collection habits.  In the past, between 2012 and 2017, I performed an “internet puppet show” of sorts on different image board websites that centered around a sentient R.O.B. unit and a Game Boy unit that went on wholesome and funny adventures that centered around them playing video games. It’s purpose, aside from entertaining, was to rekindle the feelings and emotions they felt in actually enjoying video games before they became jaded by modern-day aspects about video games. With all the buzz about excessive DLC content nickel and diming players, the invasive and unwanted political themes and accusations of censorship, I felt that people needed to be reminded why we liked video games in the first place, and I did so from my perspective, using an accessory that was like my own personal mascot that represented why I personally liked video games. They enjoyed a fair sense of notoriety and popularity However, image boards were not a perfect medium for these stories, and although my run between the image boards lasted for years, I became more and more disenfranchised over these sites and the people who primarily frequented them. As my personal life experiences grew, I found myself more and more at odds with the demographic I was performing fore that it wasn’t an enjoyable task Unfortunately, though, I had grown so accustomed to how I used image boards to tell these stories that I couldn’t imagine telling them any other way. As a result, my greatest creative project since becoming an adult suddenly stopped. Since then, I’ve longed to find another way to creatively express my passion for Nintendo and video games in general, but I don’t know how. In the coming days, I hope to experiment with several different ways on how to do that. I want to start simple, then move on with something more elaborate when I’m confident. I welcome your feedback, questions, or just any comment whatsoever. I’ve always believed that people are at their very best when they talk about what they’re passionate about, and I’d love to have a conversation about Nintendo and video games in general.  Thanks for your time reading this. It is very much appreciated. I hope you have a good week and I hope you get to play lots of video games. Take care.

Maybe GB came on just a little bit too strongly?

Perhaps now Game Boy can see what needs to be done.

R.O.B. wasn't looking for a distraction.