Game & Watch - Scott The Woz By Scott The Woz

- Hey, y'all Scott here. I've rediscovered. One of my core talents, owning a Sharpie Should have patented this when I had the chance. Poortable video games allowing you to play games and inappropriate situations. They make loitering a whole lot less obvious and give you something to do a funerals Take God for their existence what would I do on the bus without them human (beep)? No, they didn't make Warioland 4 for me to talk to people. I have to play it.

Portable gaming seems like it was only a possibility long after gaming in general started to gain traction. But in reality while video games started to become a consumer product in the late sixties, early seventies and portable electronic game devices started appearing by the mid seventies with stuff like Mattel auto race. Every timeline starts with Mattel auto race. Ever since the idea of playing video games on the go has been just as prevalent as playing video games in general portability definitely forces graphical capabilities to take a hit but that doesn't make handheld gaming any less amazing these devices. Let me not talk to people and a company most known for portable gaming is without a doubt Nintendo did you think I was going to say Folgers? the Game Boy, Game Boy Color Game Boy Advance Nintendo DS, Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo Switch all have been leaders of the dedicated handheld market and have cemented Nintendo as the portable game company for the past three decades whenever a new company enters the ring all they say is that's cute.

They strike a balance between affordability and horsepower they deem as good enough they may not put out the most technologically advanced systems but they more than make up for it with their library of games and asking price alone It's weird to think Nintendo's best successes come from their portable business and whenever they dangled nostalgia in front of our faces it's mostly for their home console stuff you don't see them talk about super Mario Land 2, as much as Super Mario Brothers 2 even when Land 2 was actually more successful I assume it's because home console games aged better than handheld ones I just find it odd because when you look at their history Nintendo's bread and butter has always been portable games evidenced by the fact that their first big success in the video game market was just that the Game & Watch wasn't Nintendo's first foray into video games but it was the first major success in video games And it all started back in 1980 humanity must have been really (beep) bored before that. Game & Watch was a series of handheld games produced by Nintendo, but you already know that what was my last paragraph about Prior to the mid sixties Nintendo was primarily into (Whirring) Playing cards it is starting out as a playing card company Then moving on to taxis justifiably Nintendo dipped their toes into various markets until settling on toys due to the ingenious of one of their employees Gunpei Yokoi he designed the Ultra Hand toy where the fun lies with what you can grab with it. This toy success led Nintendo to focusing mostly on fun and games from 1966 onward and with the inception of video games being a thing that they obviously had to take a whack at it in 1975, they released EVR Race into arcades I've spit games more iconic than that. While EVR Race might not have lit the world on fire but that's okay Nintendo followed it up with Shooting Trainer we're overdue at this point. That's where Skyhawk comes into the picture I would tell you the impact it left but I got a letter from everybody the best way to put it in Nintendo's video game ventures in the 1970s weren't all failures some of them did pretty well for example, the color TV game systems were released fundamentally dedicated pong machine selling a couple million units combined some arcade games did pretty well, but at the end of the day, and none them were really runaway successes and nothing left much of an impact But Gunpei Yokoi struck again as one day, he noticed a businessman fiddling around with a calculator on the train out of sheer boredom.

Surely more could be done than just spelling words on a display like this because of this very moment Yokoi devised a pocket sized device that could play a game while also being useful in other ways like acting as a clock And with that, he would design the next video game product of Nintendo's it's name? Well I know one Nintendo would named bread now. First Game & Watch unit hit store shelves on April 28th, 1980 titled Ball in Japan, but here in north America, it was labeled as Toss-Up in fact the initial north American release wasn't called Game & Watch at all This was before Nintendo had much of a presence outside of Japan so they worked with a distributor who labeled the units as Timeout Games see, I give this name (beep) but at least it's upfront about what you're getting What kid wants to play a timeout? Ball is a pretty basic game and set the standard for what you could expect out of a typical Game & Watch release but first off, the build quality is phenomenal this thing that feels like a fine piece of jewelry like an antique pocket watch there's this feeling of elegance with them and I'm not really hyperbolizing here. They never felt cheap or just like little games to keep the kids busy you can tell they design these with that businessman on the train in mind and these don't look at a place in a grown man's hand comparative to a child's. Game & Watch games were truly made for everybody a couple of watch batteries later and we're in business we have game A and game B to choose from game A is all about juggling two balls at once this is lame hell Game B is much faster with one ball thrown in the picture This is neat hell it was pretty obvious Game B is way more fun now, fun enough to never turn off That's tricky these games don't have an on and off switch and they last quite a long time you could go anywhere from six months to a year on just one set of batteries from light to heavy use this is obviously because of the watch portion of the unit you don't really turn off clocks, but just because I can see this game in standby mode all the time I feel like I'm doing something wrong by not turning it off. It's just puzzling they went "the battery life is great and it has a clock we don't need an off switch" We can set the time there it is I'm done surprisingly, there's not much to a video game made out of a calculator screen pretty much all Game & Watch games were simple high score based romps these were games of endurance see how long you can go for I, for one, find it interesting how much they can get out of such simple technology there's only so much you can do with these LCD screens in terms of making interactive video game experiences they truly thought outside the box with these games and made very enjoyable time killers.

Now Nintendo kept releasing new Game & Watch units consistently for the next few years and would regularly release them in new waves and series. The first series was the Silver Series the games inside were all different but the shell containing them looked pretty similar across all of them. Some may have had different control layouts but they were all pretty much the same shtick as the game Ball. The series to follow was the Gold Series guess what the difference was? after the gold series was the Wide Screen Series again, take a shot in the dark. All of the games produced under the first three series had nearly identical builds though they were all rectangles with rectangles in the rectangles and that wasn't until the next series, the Multi-Screen series all right, first one to answer wins what does this remind you of? a clam! This is pretty obvious the multi-screen Game & Watch units were the inspiration for what would become the Nintendo DS and not only because of the dual screens but the clamshell design on top of that, these units were the first time Nintendo utilized their traditional D pad to move a character in one of eight directions and if we want to extend these plagiarism allegations even further, various DS games utilize the system on its side, like a book and what do we have here? You son of a bitch plagiarists what if they notice? A revised widescreen lineup was released later and Tabletop Game & Watches where the hot new thing in 1983 these are obviously responses to Calico's table top line of mini arcades and to me, they sort of missed the point of the original Game & Watch units they're so bulky and not nearly as classy as the other ones you whip this out at a funeral you're going to be the life of the party By this point Nintendo was trying to innovate with the Game & Watch brand.

And with each new series, they were trying to one up the last evident by the Panorama series it uses a mirror to project color overlays onto the LCD graphics so you get more detailed visuals. The Super Color Series followed and had just straight up color visuals the Micro Vs Series were multiplayer Game & Watch units with two detachable controllers the Crystal Screen Series had a see through transparent screen if the Game & Watch kept going after this I'm sure we would've seen one that told us we were pretty and there were a lot more types of Game & Watch than I initially thought but the older series would still get new releases even when new series were announced I mean the final, original Game & Watch release in 1991, Mario, the juggler was a part of the new widescreen series, which got it started in 1982 watching these games being played doesn't do them justice because this looks really (beeping) lame you really have to get these in your hands to fully appreciate them I have a couple of them in my collection and they're great I of course have Ball the first one ever released though this was the 2011 reissue club Nintendo offered to its members. It's very close to the original, but has some altered info on the back and the option to turn the sound off that same businessman on the train would be blaring this for everyone to hear. Mario's Cement Factory with the original box. Yeah, this looks like the last owner had more fun stepping on the box than playing the game.

Once Nintendo actually started releasing character based video games that were hits they were sure to release Game & Watch units starring those same characters. Of course, we got some Donkey Kong ones here I have Donkey Kong II What? This is the only game called Donkey Kong II Of course, the sequel to the original Donkey Kong was Donkey Kong, Jr and then they moved right on over to Donkey Kong III the Game & Watch game decided to cut the (beep) because this is by all accounts heavily inspired by Donkey Kong Jr in the arcades this is pretty much just a renamed version of Donkey Kong Jr. But they already made a Donkey Kong Jr Game & Watch before this, what the hell is this thing? You know, I had to own, at least one multi-screen unit and yeah, the resemblance is uncanny. It has a soft lock lid to it that stops the screen from flopping out at random, I guess, which does remind me of the official Game Boy cartridge cases I never knew there were so many different ways to rip yourself off and finally Boxing one of the Micro Vs units this is cool it comes in a chunky box and you play by yourself or another player by extracting the control pads. Come on.

This is amazing. Now this was re-released as Punch Out in North America after the NES title experienced tons of success, but boxing and punch out Game & Watches are the exact same outside of the title being changed. Nintendo released roughly 60 unique Game & Watch games from 1980 to 1991 and while they vary in terms of themes and gameplay they all have that Game & Watch feel to them. There were a ton of LCD games throughout the years from companies like Mattel and Tiger and on the surface, there's not much difference between a Game & Watch game and any other LCD game, but it's the re playability and weirdly enough, the graphical style these things that make them stand out. I know some might be asking "what graphical style?" There's something oddly charming about the graphics here they have such a distinct style to them you barely see any detail on these characters but their expressions, the way they move and how they would convey so much in such little graphics it honestly impresses me how much character Nintendo was able to inject into single screen games that have more in common with a calculator than anything else.

Nintendo create a lot of Game & Watch games with generic names and setups and the themes in style reminds me a lot of animation from the 1920s and 30's Fire bounced the people from the burning building to safety Manhole cover up the holes for people to walk over Greenhouse, exterminate the bugs before they get to your plants. Many of these games have the same shtick you have to juggle multiple things at once until you screw up but they're still kind of addictive once you start playing a Game & Watch game yeah, you're not going to play it for hours on end but I guarantee you you'll keep playing until you lose. Nintendo repurpose many of their IP's that were successful throughout the 80's as Game & Watch units Donkey Kong, Mario, Zelda got the license to do games based on Disney properties Snoopy, Popeye pretty much did everything they could with this brand back then. Over 43 million combined were sold it's obvious to say the Game & Watch did pretty well. But of course, when was the last Game & Watch released? That's right not yesterday So why did they stop making them? I always (beep) hated that thing it didn't have Snoopy Tennis whilst these did well they obviously had their limitations there's only so much you can do with this type of screen pretty much all the graphics that could possibly be displayed needed to fit on this one screen you couldn't make different types of games outside of endurance routes.

Nintendo released the Game Boy in 1989 that use different game cartridges and weren't limited to this they were full video game experiences the screen could scroll the Game & Watch didn't serve much of a purpose with the Game Boy taking off that is you're buying one was cheaper than a Game Boy it was obvious the Game Boy was the better investment. Now other companies specifically Tiger Electronics carried on the LCD game legacy throughout the 90's these were (beep) terrible Nintendo knew what LCD games were capable of and for sure what they weren't they never really tried to make Game & Watch games, something they weren't they tailor made them to be fun Even with the limitations of this screen Tiger just kind of barfed out whatever they could there wasn't as much love or attention put into these things most of their games consisted of defeat this enemy until you get bored Game & Watch games were made with so much more care and so much more love and you can tell that with how much Nintendo cares about its legacy in 1997 Nintendo released Game & Watch gallery on the Game Boy starting a series of four titles each one contained multiple remakes of Game & Watch games both in their original forms just remade on a Game Boy screen and in modern forms this time utilizing Mario characters and some new mechanics here and there these modern versions do a great job contextualizing what the originals were trying to convey even if most were fairly understandable some games you just said alright whenever you say Nintendo the Gallery Games are great and I recommend them to anybody who wants to try these things out I think the modern remakes make it easier to appreciate how they were able to do these exact games with such garbage hardware Some Game & Watch games were later re-released as mini key chain games in 1998 the Nintendo mini classics now these are Game & Watch games Mr Game & Watch has been a staple of the Super Smash Brothers series ever since Melee in 2001 and each of his moves references an old school Game & Watch title. The game Manhole was released as a card for the Game Boy Advances' E-reader just swipe the card to play Manhole two volumes of Game & Watch collection for the Nintendo DS were released through the club Nintendo loyalty program and included some of the multi-screen games. Not remade like in the Gallery titles just the originals it's kinda lame but whatever various standard games were made available on the Nintendo DSI shop and let's not even get into all the references Nintendo crams into their games So much of Nintendo's core modern T & A is derived from the Game & Watch the D-pad dual screens the kickstand instant two player multiplayer and weirdly enough, when you sit down and play these old Game & Watch games you can get a whiff of that Nintendo charm in taking a simple concept and turning into a fun and charming experience. Of course, with that being said, I don't think anybody nowadays would answer the question of "Hey do you want to play a Nintendo game?" with "(beep) yeah Donkey Kong II!".

Source : Scott The Woz