How Game & Watch proves that anything can be gamified

Game & Watch (1980)

Game & Watch (1980)

You know, when you think about it, you can pretty well make a game out of anything. Many was the time, before ubiquitous internet, when we would have raindrop races, betting on which raindrop would reach the bottom of the window first. Would you call that a misspent youth?

Well, if you wanna talk youth, here’s a game you can try with your kids if you need some peace and quiet: have them stand against a wall, and put a fiver between their noses and the wall, telling ‘em that whoever breaks first gets nothing, and the other kid keeps the two fivers.

That one was a classic, and it probably still works if you can find some physical cash, as well as a child deprived of that most basic of human rights, the iPad. Your games don't all have to be as weaksauce as this though - there are plenty of more dangerous pursuits to make a game out of.

For example, you take certain places in Ireland, like Donegal, or some other place where electricity is a luxury. To keep themselves busy, the locals like to spend all day and night playing chicken with each other, using cars as their horses. Is that survival of the fittest or what?

Speaking of fatal, ridiculously impractical pastimes, you sometimes hear about a few cases of Russian Roulette death every year as well. But we'll forgive the victims of that one, because that's a badass game to play - and an even more badass way to die.

Even if you were to tech up a bit and go electronic, you wouldn't believe the things they base video games around, especially the simulators - as a non-exhaustive list, we’ve got European Truck Simulator, Surgeon Simulator, Car Mechanic Simulator and Christmas Shopper Simulator. It’s a shame none of them are even slightly realistic, or we could all become experts in those fields.

They'll make games out of anything these days, and just look at the state the gaming industry is in now as a result. If you ask me, this all came from the most humble beginnings: meet the Game and Watch, born in 1980, making it old enough to be your father.

I’ve always felt that the Game & Watch was some flagrant false advertisement though. True, these little monochrome LCD devices do tell you the time, if you were really that desperate to know. But don’t we take the term 'watch' to mean something more ornate, more wearable? Ideally it should be found on the wrist, rather than in both hands. You’re probably more accurate calling it a timepiece, in that regard.

As for the bit you’re really there for, the ‘game’ - well, in reality it’s just a calculator come half-to-life, with each Game & Watch unit having excitingly titled names such as Fire, Chef and Ball. You can literally play any of the games for 5 seconds and see everything worth seeing. And with an investment of just 10 more seconds, you’ll have it entirely committed to muscle memory, and most of your brain will have licence to fall asleep. Hence you could describe the gameplay as narcoleptic.

I think I’ve sorted out the false advertising, but Sedative and Timepiece doesn’t sound very appealing to buy, does it? At least Game and Watch was a snappy enough name to move numbers. And move numbers they did, with Nintendo releasing 60 Game & Watch titles with over 40 million sales combined.

Famously, the idea for Game & Watch came from Gunpei Yokoi, the madman who would later invent the Game Boy and the D-Pad, before defecating out the ill-fated Virtual Boy and losing his life a few months later, although I'm sure the two events weren't related. Anyway, he got the idea for G&W by observing a fellow lemming on the commuter train playing with a calculator. It makes sense, because G&W units amount to what are basically calculator games with their LCD graphics, and they're about as fun as your standard calculator too.

Emphasis on standard calculator there, because if you whip out a modern Texas Instrument jobby, you can play Doom or Pokémon Emerald on it. And that means you'll be having nine million times more fun on that calculator than on Game & Watch. Above all, what I don't understand is how public transport could inspire anyone to create anything, apart from some homemade fashioned bomb or flamethrowing weapon powerful enough to take out everyone on board.

Playing Game & Watch for yourself these days might be tricky. Generally your best bet is to pick up some of the nifty Game and Watch Gallery games on Game Boy Color, which offer modern spins of the old games with colour, Mario characters, that classic 8-bit music, and that even more classic Nintendo fin-du-siècle gamefeel. How pretentious is that? We're in the area of the hipster now.

Those collection games also bring various unlockables to the party, as well as fairly faithful renditions of the old Game & Watch versions. The actual G&W units can actually be emulated, in a sense. However, this actually requires you using the MAME emulator, which arcade enthusiasts out there will know requires more effort and technical knowhow than sending a man into space - even a man of Mr. Game and Watch's light, 2D build.

Of course, you can track down the original units and play Game & Watch that way, though you'd better know how to replace the batteries or better yet, be some sort of calculator technician. I should think the prices of the original units will only be going up as well, effectively making them a pretty safe investment.

I'll let you down now by saying that I don't have any original G&W units to my name, although I do own a fancy little keychain clamshell version of Zelda Game & Watch, which might sell for a few quid if I could figure out how to get a new watch battery into it. Actually, the old battery has probably exploded into a million pieces of solid goo at this point, but oh well.

Feeling all full of myself, I once took this Zelda game to school, whereupon an older boy clocked it. He immediately and repeatedly described it as 'gank'. I was raging, of course, but only because he was right - it was gank, even if Link was able to wield a tomahawk.

And it wasn't even Link, was it. Let's face it, he looked more like an equal-to sign than the Hero of Time. And if a Zelda version of Game and Watch couldn't stand up to scrutiny in 2002, when it was dubbed ‘gank’, then twenty more years won't have been much kinder to the whole realm of Nintendo LCD games.

Even as historical articles, the games are not all that fascinating. Take a look at the old Game & Watch Gallery collection games if you like, and see what you fancy. My pick of those games is Game & Watch Gallery 2 - you'll get a decent rendition of classic Donkey Kong, you'll unlock the very first G&W title, Ball, and it's got my favourite game on there, called Helmet.

And I do love seeing the representative of the G&W, Mr. Game & Watch himself bop around in Smash Bros. Unlocking him for the first time in Smash Bros. Melee was equal parts weird and unforgettable. He's still the oldest fighter in it, older than Pac-Man, Mario and Donkey Kong. So he, and the Game and Watch system as a whole, get credit for that. But not much else.

I don't know, maybe the mistake Nintendo made was not taking the old reliable Raindrop Race and turning that one into a fully-fledged video game - I'd still be playing that one to this day. Honestly, what else are you gonna do when it’s raining heavily outside? Play GTA? Ah, don't answer that.

29 December 2023