Game & Watch (April 28th, 1981)
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.

















