'Game and Watch Crystal Screen' handheld games console, with inbuilt 'Climber' game, Nintendo, Japan, 1986

Handheld video games console, made from crimson and clear ABS. There is a large, rectangular transparent screen in the centre, printed with stylised blue clouds. To the left of the screen are eight buttons, the topmost are 'ACL' and 'ALARM'; below these are 'TIME' and 'GAME'; then, arranged in a cross, 'UP', 'LEFT', 'RIGHT', 'DOWN'. On the reverse is moulded product information on one side, and on the other is the battery compartment.

Nintendo is among the world’s largest video games companies, originally founded in 1889 in Kyoto, Japan, as a manufacturer of hanafuda playing cards. Nintendo entered the electronic toy industry in 1966, producing a series of early light gun games, but not to great success. In 1974, they were able to secure the contract to distribute the Magnavox Odyssey home video games console in Japan, which marked their first entry into this market. Nintendo began to produce arcade games from 1975, although the company’s fortune was truly made in 1981 with the release of the Donkey Kong in 1981, the title character being designed by Shigeru Miyamoto, who also designed Nintendo’s signature character Mario (an early version of whom appeared in Donkey Kong as ‘Jumpman’).

The previous year, 1980, had seen the release of Nintendo’s first Game & Watch handheld console. The idea of simple handheld game supposedly sprung from Nintendo’s Gunpei Yokoi’s observation of a commuter fiddling with an LCD calculator whilst on a train. The Game & Watch series spanned several versions throughout the 1980s, until superseded in 1989 by the Game Boy. Many titles were released across the different versions, although the games were not interchangeable between them: each had a single, inbuilt game.

'Game & Watch' consoles were a long-running series of games produced by Nintendo between 1980 and 1991. The original idea supposedly came from one of Nintendo's designers observation of a commuter fiddling with a pocket calculator whilst on a train. The 'Crystal Screen' was the last major innovation of the 'Game & Watch' series, featuring a transparent clear screen. In this game, the player controls a character called 'Climber' as he makes his way upwards to defeat Dragalo the Dragon.

B.614-2016