game & watch

In the infancy of video games, there were quite a few options.

- Jose Alvarez

Many companies had tried their hand at creating a successful video game console, but only a couple succeeded. Before the video game crash of 1983, there were tons of products on the market but very little knowledge of what was good and what wasn’t. With competition from PCs and a flooded market, the industry contracted by an estimated 97 percent, from USD 3.2 billion in 1983 to USD 100 million in 1985.

Nintendo emerged from the ashes with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in the mid-1980s, but did you know Nintendo made consoles before that? The Game & Watch is often considered the first portable video game console. Where did the idea come from? Game designer Gunpei Yokoi, who would go on to design and produce a lot of other iconic game series like Metroid and Kid Icarus, was on a Shinkansen (bullet train) and observed a businessman playing with an LCD calculator by pressing the buttons. He wanted to design a watch that also doubled as a handheld video game console.