Discuss the impact of Gunpei Yokoi and the Game & Watch series here.
So... I think I owned only one Game & Watch handheld, which my Dad bought for me when we passed through Hong Kong in the early 1980s. It was Mario Bros. But I also remembered Boxing, Fire Attack, Octopus and Super Mario Bros. at least, which were traded around the playground in elementary school. I always loved playing them, and recently learned more about their history and the fact that they were rated by Gunpei Yokoi, who I think was a really gifted designer.
If you haven't found them yet, check out (and play!) Itizso's brilliant RetroFab line here: https://itizso.itch.io/retrofab which include alot of G&W titles.
Anyone else play the original handhelds at some point?
My first approach to LCD games was in the mid 90s when I was a kid with Tiger portable consoles. I remember having one of Star Wars ep I, the console itself was a lightsaber and when you swim it the character (Obi-wan) attacks. For the Nintendo game and watch, I remember a friend of mine had a mini version of Dk jr, it was like a special edition.
The thing I love about the LCD games is the design limitations. Jumpei put a good basis to design a game, in my opinion in LCD games the flow is very important, and they achieve a good flow of difficulty on those G&W that holds up very well.
Hi SCONIN! Welcome.
I had the LCD handheld of Snake's Revenge back in the 90s which I sold on eBay a few decades later after the Metal Gear franchise got big. I think that was the only Tiger handheld I had.
I absolutely agree with what you are saying about design limitations. By actually making a G&W-type game myself, I was pushed to think differently about art & gameplay design, which was really inspiring.
I've often felt there's a bit of a foot race between technology and creativity, with creativity lagging some time behind. Gunpei's concept of taking older technology and finding new creative possibilities with it really resonates with me, and I wish it were something that all designers learned about early on... not just for games, but architecture, science, etc.
Fostering creativity in this way would bring alot more joy as well as novel solutions to our problems, IMHO.