1980 Didn’t Deliver Just Nintendo’s Game & Watch We Also Got Casio’s Delightful Game Watch
September 20, 2020The same year Nintendo was making its first play into handheld gaming with the Game & Watch, watchmaker Casio was doing the same thing, though it’s focus was on the Game Watch.
Where Nintendo got its start in the 1800s creating playing cards, Casio got its start selling cigarette accessories in the 1940s. By the 1950s, Casio had moved into the electronics business, eventually releasing the first-ever all-electric compact calculator. But it was Casio’s 1974 entry into the watch market that I find most interesting. The company was making bank on for digital watches in the ’70s, but by the’ 80s people weren’t as easily impressed with digital watches. So Casio started examining how it could do something unique with the digital timepiece.
Speaking with me in 2015, then senior executive managing officer Yuichi Masuda said that the company came to the realization that watches could be more than a tool to tell time. The company started examining all the ways it could make the watch do more.
It just so happened that gaming was blowing up, so Casio thought it could make use of that excitement to sell its electronics. First, the company released the MG-880, a calculator with a Space Invaders-like game mode that used numbers to depict the aliens.
Next came a line of watches with games — first a calculator watch with the same game — but then watches marketed as Game Watches. Eventually, Casio would ship the Game-10, Game-20, Game-30, Game-301, Game-40, and Game-401 watches.
The 10 and 20 are both essentially the same, players use the top button on the right side to move the ship up and down across three rows. The bottom button fires a shot. The object is to intercept the other ship’s shot and destroy the ship.
The 30 changes things to sub warfare and the 40 turns the tiny game display into a puzzle game.
Shown here is my precious Game-20. It’s actually the second I owned. I received the first when I was leaving South Korea to move to Texas when my parents divorced. It was my prized possession until some still-unknown kid swiped it from me in junior high school.
I didn’t get the second until my lovely wife tracked one down and surprised me with it as a birthday present decades later.
It’s a great little watch and a wonderful piece of early portable gaming history.
Love retro handhelds? Well then, have I got a bunch of stories, videos, and pictures for you.
