Vintage Computing

The Game & Watch

Posted by rizal on Jan 4, 2008 in Vintage Computing | 2 comments

Just added into my vintage collection are these LCD games ,Game & Watch I won at Ebay. Surprisingly (the Octopus game), is still in good condition with the original box! Back in early 80s I used to have two of them — I can clearly recall that night, my aunt, Ngangah came back from her regular shopping in Singapore (that time when SGD1 =RM1) and brought back this Popeye G&W game–it was very late but I forced my self to wake up just to try out what was to me the long awaited “best in the world ever game” -officially that historical day, I would join the coolest guys at school who had this game .

Back in the old days, my old friend Sh. Yusof (was my best friend at primary — he didn’t even completed SPM, I heard ) had this version of Octopus while the Donkey Kong belong to another friend Fadzli (hmm.. I think he was a Cambridge graduate — fate seemed to turn out differently to G&W owners?!).

But being 2nd in the family — by default all games/toys would belong to my big brother and also later we had another version — Mickey Mouse (yes, the one catching the egg from falling ) somehow a “girly” version was belong to my younger sister.

So now, 20++ years later, I finally have my very own Game & Watch Octopus + the multi-screen Donkey Kong too. I was damn good at it before but somehow for the first few attempts yesterday I barely passed beyond 20 points mark! Darn — did it get harder after 20++ years or it was just me getting ..?!

Octopus was released in 1981 while the multiscreen Donkey Kong a year later, 1982. Gunpei Yokoi was the designer of this game — it was believed that this G&W was indeed to be a prototype of Gameboy.
I always wanted to buy this G&W games but was long delayed until one day here in Riyadh, I met my new Thai friend, Kritsada who actually had the same vintage hobby — he showed me two of his G&W collection and after that we spent time talking about the good all days on which version of G&W we had played .

Check this huge collection in Youtube (not mine!)