An ultra-rare Game & Watch build, actually dating back to before Nintendo had its branding involved with the hardware, has been put up for auction.
While Nintendo and the Game & Watch series of handhelds are practically synonymous these days, the earliest Game & Watch machines were built by North American toy company, Mego. The unit you see before you was manufactured by Mego and actually served as a way for salesman to demonstrate the potential of traditional Game & Watch machines; because retail units are so small, demonstrations were difficult to see, so this larger screen did the job wonderfully.
This particular unit actually plays a fully working version of Vermin - one of the 60-or-so Game & Watch games that were available at the time. You can see it working and hear more about it in the video below.
The machine is up for auction right now at Heritage Auctions - the very same place which recently sold the famous Nintendo PlayStation. Bidding ends in 16 days' time as we write this, with the current high bid standing at $575. You can see it for yourself here if you're interested.
It's not often you see something like this pop up for sale. Have you ever seen one of these before? Let us know in the comments.
[source comics.ha.com, via gizmodo.com]
Comments 20
Its funny that the console has Popeye on it since Popeye is what inspired Donkey Kong.
In fact imagine if Popeye never existed, then quite possibly Mario would have never existed either. Quite the chain reaction.
This belongs in a museum.
My first ever gaming system - of sorts - was a game and watch. It was one with a flip lid screen and a paleish green colour. Loved that game so much. No idea if I still it own it tbh 30 off years on!
It was called...
@Moon So do you, Dr Jones!
Hello nerdy awkward girl, who else would play video games.
shame it's all stickered up. it looks well loved, but i'd love to see it fresh ad new
@somebread : Yeah. I hate the stickers on them. And I dread to think of how worn the machine would be (potentially poked and prodded by countless people over the years), which, to me anyway, would really devalue the unit. As said above, this would be better placed in a museum.
Upon seeing the thumbnail, I was initially under the impresssion that Nintendo were releasing a mini Game & Watch arcade cabinet. Come to think of it, a complete collection of Game & Watch titles for Switch would be pretty sweet.
Why the heck does this thing have so many stickers on?
@Bearzilla823 Looked into it and it was just Popeye the Sailorman in general, not the arcade game. Miyamoto just noticed how popular the series was at the time, and took influence from its many elements. 2 of which were the love triangle, as well as a big muscular ape-like antagonist.
A little goo gone and a hair dryer would take those stickers right off without damaging the cabinet itself. Would make it look a lot nicer. Makes me think of the time i had to remove a price sticker off the front label of a copy of chrono trigger for the snes, that was a bottom clincher for sure.
@patbacknitro18 and wasn't Popeye brought into life so kids would be inspired to eat spinach? Ergo if spinach was more delicious, Mario might have never been created.
@mrmememan I can assure you that if 4-year old me had been given this thing in 1980, I'd have covered it in stickers.
I had no idea that these cabinet game & watches existed; nor that Nintendo didn't create game & watch at all!
@chardir Me neither, I thought it was a Nintendo invention!
@chardir My understanding, which may be incorrect, is that Game & Watch is a Nintendo invention, but the first four games were manufactured and sold by Mego in the US as the Time Out series. Mego folded shortly after that, so Nintendo took it back over and relaunched as the Game & Watch series here, too.
http://megomuseum.com/catalog/1980e/game.shtml
The fact that this device says Game & Watch on it must mean that it's either from a time before Mego decided to rebrand the series or it's from right before they folded.
@brideck Ah, yeah. It looks like mego were just re-branding the Nintendo Japan-built devices to sell in the US. They even kept the polystyrene insert and added an oversize box!
Maybe they had the same demo units in Japan and Mego didn't bother to remove the game & watch logo.
I'd love it if someone made a recreation of it. Honestly it doesn't even look like it would be that hard to do.
Yeah i know another unit like this one, an orange Flagman :
https://youtu.be/Wr1JBQ3eK6A
These 2 units are the only one known in the World.
This article is full of misinformation. What made you think Mego made the Game & Watch first?? It was a Gunpei Yokoi invention (along with the D Pad and the Gameboy) in the late 70's and brought to market in 1980 in Japan. Nintendo then manufactured units for rebranding by Mego in the USA.
Sooo, its a Nintendo invention after all?
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