Game And Watch Salute!

Online Clock Salutes the Nintendo Game & Watch

Recently on the Alarm Clock Blog, we’ve been talking about clocks combined with things. Specifically, we’ve been talking about clocks mixed with automata. Everyone knows the sounds of a cuckoo clock. A bell rings. Doors open. Little figurines dance and a bird chirps. Clocks have been merged with a lot more than tweeting birds or twirling dancers and we’re not talking about the latest iPhone application (sorry, we’re not fans – probably because there’s no Flash support).

Back in 1980, commuters in Japan had nothing to fiddle with during their commute other than their calculator watches. Yes, children, in our day, all we had to play with was a tiny electronic calculator with impossibly minuscule buttons and we liked it. We liked it uphill, downhill, in the snow, and with green eggs and ham. Gunpei Yokoi didn’t like it. He was the exception. Luckily, he was not only the exception, but he was in a position to do something about it. One time during a busy commute to work, he stood up and shouted, “The people want to fiddle and fiddle they shall!”

Actually, he didn’t say that. We just made that up because it sounded good and we can’t type in Japanese. Gumpei Yokoi probably went to work at Nintendo, called a meeting, and very calmly and purposefully discussed his idea for a hand-held gaming device that would also serve as a watch.

Today on the blog we’ll be talking about a special hand-held gaming system.

Hey! Don’t you click off this page! No one is going to mention the Apple Pippin or the Gakken TV Boy. I promise. Those aren’t old enough. Drop your mouse! Stay. This will be cool. I swear it. We’re talking Nintendo. When people get together to talk old school gaming there are two platforms that will get a gamer’s heart pounding: Atari and Nintendo.

Before the Nintendo DS and before the Game Boy, Nintendo gave the world the Nintendo Game and Watch. Some of my friends remember this thing as an actual watch. It had a wristband and you could wear it on your wrist and play the game. That’s something else. That’s something even more obscure. That’s a mini version of this. The real Nintendo Game and Watch looked remarkably like the Nintendo DS. There was no stylus or anything like that, but it was awesome for the day.

The Nintendo Game and Watch was a hand-held device that allowed players to dive into a world of pixilated joy. Some games were monochrome and some offered around six colors. You could move your character in maybe four directions. The sound consisted of about ten tones that would make you crave a midi file, but it rocked around 50 titles. There were eight Donkey Kong titles, five Mario titles, and five super Mario titles. Those guys have been hunting that princess for a long time. By the time they reach the right castle, she’s probably gone all Stockholm on them.

The Nintendo Game and Watch came in a variety of styles. There was a table top version that looked a lot like an arcade machine. The hand-held versions came with LCD screens or crystal screens. There was a regular format and a wide-screen format. (You thought wide-screen didn’t become popular until DVDs, didn’t you? You don’t know how cool clocks can be. ) One version had two screens. All of the different versions came with a clock function and the ability to sound an alarm. These were the coolest clocks in the early 80s. Calculator watches were cool, but these combo game and clocks were even more cool.

The rarest Nintendo Game and Watch is the yellow Super Mario Brothers version. Only 10,000 were made and they were originally given out as prizes for winning the F-1 Grand Prix Tournament in Japan. Who says you can’t gain anything from gaming?

The Nintendo Game and Watch eventually gave way to the Game Boy. Some people think the Nintendo Game and Watch was the predecessor of the Game Boy. Other people say the Epoch Game Pocket Computer in 1984 is the “spiritual” predecessor of the Game Boy. I can see both arguments. There seems to be a similar zeitgeist in all of them. Personally, I think no one can deny the similarities in the dual-screen Nintendo Game and Watch and the Nintendo DS. All those so-called experts who dismissed the Nintendo DS for having a surplus screen never spent much time on a Japanese bullet train in the 1980s. Gamers knew the DS would become a hit and it has been a huge hit just like the Nintendo Game and Watch was a huge hit.

The very first game for the Nintendo Game and Watch was “Ball”. The player threw three balls up in the air and tried to catch them and throw them back up in the air. Sure, it sounds like a cheap version of “Pong” with one paddle and worse sound effects, but in the 1980s we didn’t care. We loved it because we knew Mario was right around the corner. We could simply feel it.

The Game & Watch received a bit of a second life in 2009, when the Game & Watch Collection was released by Nintendo. Apparently this actual port of the old, unchanged games for the Nintendo DS was made available not to the general public but instead just for members of “Club Nintendo“. What’s cool is that this collection also has a working alarm function, just like the one in the old devices. What’s not so cool is that the collection only comes with three games – that’s very, very few. There have been several other compilations of Game & Watch games released for various versions of the Game Boy over the years, too, but most of them have altered the games in some way, instead of staying 100% true to the original.

I don’t know if there’s a list of the world’s coolest clocks by some type of official “cool clock” committee (hey, maybe that’s us!), but I’m certain the Nintendo Game and Watch must at least make it into the top five. No other clock in the world lets you save a princess, defeat an overgrown gorilla, rescue people from a burning building, race cars, and catch a ball.

For those of you about to Game & Watch, we salute you!

Tags: Alarm Clock History, atari, calculator, club nintendo, electronic calculator, epoch game pocket computer, game & watch collection, game and watch, game boy, gaming, gunpei yokoi, hand-held gaming device, nintendo, nintendo game and watch, pong, super mario brothers, yellow super mario brothers