Liquid crystal thrills

If the inventor of Game And Watch didn’t retire a multi-millionaire at the end of the ’80s to a luxury mansion in the Bahamas then there is no justice in the world. For what was this toy but a perfectly weighted and targeted marketing triumph? A small, portable game that could masquerade when required as a digital watch, meaning kids could persuade parents and teachers alike that it was a legitimate scholastic tool (“But Dad, don’t you want me to know what the time is?”), Game And Watch was the logical next step for a company that had exhausted the potential of the 50m water-resistant chronograph. It was time to take the watch off the wrist and lay it on the table.

Seriously, though, who did Nintendo think they were fooling? 99% game and 1% watch, these credit-card sized consoles could be customised to appeal to almost any demographic (ersatz Donkey Kong for hardened arcadaholics, Snoopy Tennis for girly girls), with such simple-to-grasp gameplay that even the class Joey could be a highscore king. Plus, the in-built LCD screens were so easily cracked that replacements had to be shipped in almost weekly. The boredom-novelty churn was carefully managed by Casio, which released an ever-increasing number of variations into the market (double-screen games, widescreen games, colour displays). The bubble finally burst with the arrival of home entertainment systems and the fully controllable “characters” which populated the games thereon.

Ironically, of course, we’ve since produced a generation of kids who can download infinitely superior Java games onto their mobile phones in a matter of seconds, but who can’t actually tell the time.