Game & Watch is a series of handheld electronic games developed by Nintendo. Designed by Gunpei Yokoi, the first game, Ball was released in 1980 and the original production run of the devices continued until 1991. The name Game & Watch reflects their dual functionality: a single game paired with a digital clock on a segmented liquid-crystal display (LCD) screen. The Game & Watch series proved a monumental success, selling a total of 43.4 million units globally, marking Nintendo's first major worldwide success with electronic games.
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History
The Game & Watch was the brainchild of designer Gunpei Yokoi, the head of Nintendo Research & Development 1 (R&D1), who was inspired during a trip on a Shinkansen high-speed train, where he noticed a bored businessman idly pressing buttons on a credit-card-sized pocket calculator. This sparked the idea of a compact, discreet toy for adults to pass the time on public transport. At the time, Nintendo was struggling financially, and R&D1 consisted of just Yokoi and his assistant, Satoru Okada. The two looked at other handheld electronic games, including Mattel Auto Race, the Microvision, and Simon, but found these too large and reliant on low-resolution vacuum fluorescent or LED displays that rendered abstract graphics. This led to the idea of using a segmented liquid-crystal display (LCD), like those in calculators, to create a smaller device with sharper, clearer graphics, though limited to a single game.
This experience would inspire Yokoi's design philosophy of "lateral thinking with withered technology", which emphasized creative uses of mature, cost-effective technology. This principle would continue to be embraced by Nintendo in the following decades. At the time, fierce competition in the calculator market between Sharp and Casio had created a surplus of LCDs and semiconductors, creating an opportunity to repurpose these components for gaming.
Yokoi pitched the idea to Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi while driving him to a business meeting after the company chauffeur called in sick. Yamauchi's meeting happened to be with Sharp's CEO, and the two leaders discussed the concept. Within a week, Yokoi was invited to a meeting between Nintendo and Sharp, where approval was given to develop a calculator-sized gaming device.
Yamauchi, however, assigned the project to Nintendo Research & Development 2 (R&D2), which was established in 1978 to focus on electronic projects like the Color TV-Game, while R&D1 was to continue to focus on creating physical toys and games. R&D2 rejected the idea, claiming it was too difficult to implement. Undeterred, Yokoi and Okada continued developing the concept on their own. Yokoi created a mock-up of the first game, Ball, and demonstrated it to Okada by shining light through cut-out paper shapes. Okada then built a working prototype, buying a TK-80 computer, teaching himself to program for the Intel 8080, and designing the necessary electronics.
When they presented the prototype to employees at Sharp, they also dismissed the project, saying it wasn't feasible to scale it down to calculator size. Yokoi and Okada left the prototype with Sharp, asking them to play with it for a while, which convinced Sharp employees of the game's potential and led them to develop a compatible display. The final device was powered by a 4-bit CPU from Sharp's SM5xx family, paired with 1,792 bytes of ROM, 65 bytes of RAM across four banks for data storage, and an LCD screen driver circuit.
The Game & Watch name reflected its dual functionality: it combined a single game with a digital clock. The first game, Ball, had modest initial sales but enough success for Yamauchi to greenlight three more games: Flagman, Vermin, and Fire. This eventually led to dozens of titles over the next decade.
In North America, the games were initially launched through Mego Corporation as the Time-Out series. The series included Ball (renamed Toss-Up), Flagman, Vermin (renamed Exterminator), and Fire (retitled Fireman Fireman). This partnership ended within a year, and Nintendo of America began distributing the series under their original titles.
Starting in 1981, Game & Watch devices incorporated an alarm function, enhancing their practicality as a watch. By mid-1982, limitations of single-screen LCDs led to the creation of the Multi Screen Series, which effectively doubled the gameplay area. Oil Panic launched the series. Shortly thereafter, Nintendo's highly successful Donkey Kong arcade game was adapted for the Multi Screen format, requiring an alternative to the traditional joystick, which was impractical for handheld gaming. This challenge led to the invention of the now-iconic D-pad, a flat, four-way directional control that allowed for precise movement with minimal space requirements. The D-pad design was later honored with a Technology & Engineering Emmy Award in 2008. The clamshell design of the Multi Screen Series would later inspire the Game Boy Advance SP, Nintendo DS, and Nintendo 3DS.
The Game & Watch series was a monumental success. Yokoi had initially aimed to sell 100,000 units, but Nintendo ultimately sold 43.4 million units worldwide—12.87 million in Japan and 30.53 million overseas. The device also significantly improved Nintendo's financial standing. Before its release in 1980, the company reportedly had debts of 7 to 8 billion yen. By 1981, however, largely due to the Game & Watch's success, Nintendo had paid off its debts and put about 4 billion yen in the bank. It marked the company's first major worldwide success with a Nintendo video game product.
Series
Over the initial eleven-year life span of the Game & Watch line, 60 different games were produced for sale. These games came in eleven different series, each with a different form-factor:
Silver (1980) – the first version of the Game & Watch
Gold (1981) – added alarm clock function, static color backgrounds, and a built-in wire loop stand
Wide Screen (1981–1982) – introduced a 30% larger LCD panel in a slightly wider form factor
Vertical Multi Screen (1982–1989) – two LCD panels in a vertical folding clamshell unit
Horizontal Multi Screen (1983) – two LCD panels in a right-to-left opening clamshell unit
New Wide Screen (1982–1991) – an updated version of the Wide Screen series; used colorful metal faceplates for each game
Tabletop (1983) – made to compete with Coleco; these actually do not use VFD (Vacuum Fluorescent Display) screens but regular LCD screens like all other Game & Watch games. Ambient light transmitted through the translucent top illuminates an integrated mirror which bounces the light onto the back of the display. The polarizer film is flipped front to back, creating a full blackened LCD screen in power-off mode, when LCD segments are turned on these will become transparent holes, allowing light passing through them from the mirror on the back. The colors come from a colored overlay which make the holes appear colored.
Panorama (1983–1984) - similar design to the Tabletop units, but folded into a compact size via an articulated hinge
Super Color (1984) – used a long portrait-oriented LCD panel with color overlays to color the display elements
Game A and Game B
Most of the titles have a "GAME A" and a "GAME B" button. Game B is generally a faster, more difficult version of Game A, although exceptions do exist:
In Squish, Game B is radically different from Game A—the player must touch aliens to eliminate them as opposed to avoiding moving walls.
In Flagman, Game B is a mode where the player has to press the right button within a certain amount of time, not memorize patterns.
In Judge, Boxing, Donkey Kong 3, and Donkey Kong Hockey, Game B is a two-player version of Game A.
In Climber, Balloon Fight, and Super Mario Bros., there is no Game B button.
In most cases, both Game A and Game B would increase in speed and/or difficulty as the player progressed, with Game B starting at the level that Game A would reach at 200 points.
Legacy, ports and remakes
The Game & Watch series helped to popularize handheld video games, inspiring imitators like Tiger Electronics, Micro Games of America, Konami and Elektronika, which released the IM-02 series in the Soviet Union.
Nintendo also used the core technology from the Game & Watch line for the Bassmate Computer, a handheld databank intended for bass fishing. The Bassmate was released in 1984 by Telko under various brand names, with Nintendo acting as the original design manufacturer.
After this initial model, Telko and its partners expanded the concept into several related fishing computers—including the Bassmate II, WalleyeMate, and Troutmate—all of which were produced without Nintendo's involvement. These later units reused the same basic hardware and software platform created for the original Bassmate but were engineered and manufactured entirely by third‑party companies. Each model targeted a different fishing niche—bass, walleye, or trout—and, like the first Bassmate, was sold under multiple brand names such as Telko, KMV, and Probe 2000.
Nintendo revived the series between 1995 and 2002 with the Game & Watch Gallery series for Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance featuring original ports and modernized Mario-themed versions. Starting in 1998, smaller LCD versions of ten Game & Watch titles were re-released as the Nintendo Mini Classics. In 2001, Nintendo bundled Manhole-e with the Nintendo e-Reader, though a planned line of e-Reader Game & Watch cards never materialized.
From 2006 to 2010, Nintendo produced the Game & Watch Collection series for the Nintendo DS, initially exclusive to Club Nintendo. Between 2009 and 2010, nine Game & Watch titles were released on DSiWare. In the DS game, Cooking Guide: Can't Decide What to Eat?, the player can unlock the game Chef.
To celebrate Game & Watch's 30th anniversary in 2010, Nintendo re-released Ball as a Club Nintendo reward, adding a mute switch. It was available to members in Japan, North America, and Europe. The Game & Watch legacy was also acknowledged in the 2012 game Nintendo Land for Wii U, with a mini-game called Octopus Dance based on the classic Octopus title.
Mr. Game & Watch
Mr. Game & Watch represents the brand in Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. series, debuting in Melee (2001) as a two-dimensional and stick-figure-styled fighter with moves based on classic Game & Watch games. He also appears in Game & Watch Gallery 4 and makes cameos in Donkey Kong Country Returns and Rhythm Heaven Fever. In 2015, Nintendo released a Mr. Game & Watch Amiibo, which unlocks a personal CPU fighter in Super Smash Bros. and a cosmetic option in Super Mario Maker. His moveset in the Super Smash Bros. series utilizes techniques taken from various Game & Watch games. He was featured as one of the greatest video game icons by Retro Gamer staff, describing him as an early mascot in gaming while additionally someone who never earned the level of celebrity that Nintendo's biggest characters did. They felt that his simple design made him work well on the LCD format, and allowed him to slot into different roles. The character makes a cameo appearance in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (2026), where Luigi paints him into existence after taking Bowser Jr.'s paintbrush.