Game & Watch

Game & Watch (Japanese: ゲーム&ウオッチ Gēmu & Uotchi; called Tricotronic in West Germany and Austria) is a line of handheld electronic games produced by Nintendo from 1980 to 1991. Created by game designer Gunpei Yokoi, each Game & Watch features a single game to be played on an LCD screen in addition to a clock, an alarm, or both. It was the earliest Nintendo product to garner major success.

Origin and design

In 1977, Gunpei Yokoi, traveling on the Shinkansen, saw a bored businessman playing with an LCD calculator by pressing the buttons. Yokoi then thought of an idea for a watch that doubled as a miniature game machine for killing time.

The units use LR4x/SR4x "button-cell" batteries, the same type used in most laser pointers or handheld calculators. Different models were manufactured, with some having two screens and a clam-shell design (the Multi Screen Series). The Game Boy Advance SP, Nintendo DS, and Nintendo 3DS later reused this design.

Titles available in Game & Watch form vary from Mickey Mouse to Balloon Fight, including Nintendo staples such as Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, and Mario Bros..

Game & Watch ports and remakes

Game & Watch games have had many different re-releases.

The Game & Watch Gallery series, known in Japan and Australia as the Game Boy Gallery (ゲームボーイギャラリー) series, is a series of compilations of some of Nintendo's original Game & Watch titles first released in 1995. Five installments have been released, all for systems in the Game Boy line; three of these games have also been released on the Virtual Console for Nintendo 3DS. From Game & Watch Gallery onward, the games feature Game & Watch games in two styles: Classic, which features faithful reproductions of the original games, and Modern, which gives the games a different visual style using characters from the Super Mario Bros. series; however, not all Game & Watch games included in a particular game include a Modern style. Also, the titles often feature actual galleries explaining the history of the Game & Watch system and the various games released for it. The first four titles in the series also feature Super Game Boy borders which mimic the original Game & Watch casing designs. While originally released under the title Game Boy Gallery in Australia, the Virtual Console releases use the title Game & Watch Gallery.

Gallery

Gallery may refer to:

Buildings and spaces

Game

A game is structured form of play, usually undertaken for enjoyment and sometimes used as an educational tool. Games are distinct from work, which is usually carried out for remuneration, and from art, which is more often an expression of aesthetic or ideological elements. However, the distinction is not clear-cut, and many games are also considered to be work (such as professional players of spectator sports or games) or art (such as jigsaw puzzles or games involving an artistic layout such as Mahjong, solitaire, or some video games).

Key components of games are goals, rules, challenge, and interaction. Games generally involve mental or physical stimulation, and often both. Many games help develop practical skills, serve as a form of exercise, or otherwise perform an educational, simulational, or psychological role.

Attested as early as 2600 BC, games are a universal part of human experience and present in all cultures. The Royal Game of Ur, Senet, and Mancala are some of the oldest known games.

Game Boy Advance

The Game Boy Advance (Japanese: ゲームボーイアドバンス, Hepburn: Gēmu Bōi Adobansu), often shortened to GBA, is a 32-bit handheld video game console developed, manufactured and marketed by Nintendo. It is the successor to the Game Boy Color. It was released in Japan on March 21, 2001; in North America on June 11, 2001; in Australia and Europe on June 22, 2001; and in the People's Republic of China on June 8, 2004 (excluding Hong Kong).

Nintendo's competitors in the handheld market were the Neo Geo Pocket Color, WonderSwan, GP32, Tapwave Zodiac, and the N-Gage. Despite the competitors' best efforts, Nintendo maintained a majority market share with the Game Boy Advance.

As of June 30, 2010, the Game Boy Advance series has sold 81.51 million units worldwide. Its successor, the Nintendo DS, was released in November 2004.

History

Contrary to the previous Game Boy models, which were all following the "portrait" form factor of the original Game Boy (designed by Gunpei Yokoi), the Game Boy Advance was designed in a "landscape" form factor, putting the buttons to the sides of the device instead of below the screen. The Game Boy Advance was designed by the French designer Gwénaël Nicolas and his Tokyo-based design studio Curiosity Inc.