Nintendo Game & Watch handhelds...

dave4shmups · Post by **dave4shmups** » Mon Jan 02, 2006 12:11 am

I taped an "Icons" show on the history of the NES last week, and they mentioned these LCD handhelds called Nintendo Game & Watch.

I'd heard of these before, but I did a search on Ebay tonight, and some of these things look pretty fun! I even found one called "Mario's Cement Factory"; a Mario game I'd never heard of before!

Obviously these handhelds only have one game per system, but are they pretty fun to play, and how durable are they?

neorichieb1971 · Post by **neorichieb1971** » Mon Jan 02, 2006 12:17 am

Ive played cement factory and bombs away. Very cool games.

G+W come in 3 varieties. Single screen, double screen and panorama screen.

Single screen is just like GBA, double screen is like DS except it opens like a book or like DK where it opens like a DS and panorama is like hard to explain. It opens vertically except it only opens about 50 degrees and the image is reflected from the bottom up to the back for more colors and stuff.

Favourites were DK junior, Mario cement factory, mario bombs away and the origonal donkey kong.

Bare in mind there is no animation in these games, just one frame per position, so gameplay is like tap tap tap stuff. You can actually buy G+W conversions for the GBA.

CIT · Post by **CIT** » Mon Jan 02, 2006 12:34 am

There's actually even more than those three types. There's also Mini Tabletops and Mini Vs. System (which comes with cute micro-controllers for 2P action), among others.

A friend of mine is really into Game & Watch and spends some crazy money on them. A lot of them are pricey collectors items now. If you just wanna check out the games you'll probably wanna get one of the Game & Watch Gallery collections for GB or GBA. To be honest, I never really liked them too much. When I was a kid I had this double screen one called Squish, but even back in the day I thought they were way to low tech.

Anyway, you should probably check this out:

http://www.gameandwatch.com/

BrianC · Post by **BrianC** » Mon Jan 02, 2006 2:42 am

neorichieb1971 wrote:Ive played cement factory and bombs away. Very cool games.

G+W come in 3 varieties. Single screen, double screen and panorama screen.

Single screen is just like GBA, double screen is like DS except it opens like a book or like DK where it opens like a DS and panorama is like hard to explain. It opens vertically except it only opens about 50 degrees and the image is reflected from the bottom up to the back for more colors and stuff.

Favourites were DK junior, Mario cement factory, mario bombs away and the origonal donkey kong.

You forgot about table tops, vs., and color screen handhelds (different from panorama). BTW, there were two different game & watch Donkey Kong Jr. games (one is a single screen b/w handheld and one is available in both table top and panorama screen forms). There is also a handheld named Donkey Kong II, which plays like Donkey Kong Jr.

dave4shmups · Post by **dave4shmups** » Mon Jan 02, 2006 2:59 am

Seven Force wrote:There's actually even more than those three types. There's also Mini Tabletops and Mini Vs. System (which comes with cute micro-controllers for 2P action), among others.

A friend of mine is really into Game & Watch and spends some crazy money on them. A lot of them are pricey collectors items now. If you just wanna check out the games you'll probably wanna get one of the Game & Watch Gallery collections for GB or GBA. To be honest, I never really liked them too much. When I was a kid I had this double screen one called Squish, but even back in the day I thought they were way to low tech.

Anyway, you should probably check this out:

http://www.gameandwatch.com/

Thanks for the website link; the Gallery collections look really cool!

Looks like 4, for the GBA, is the one to get.