Games That Push The Limits of the Game & Watch - Nintendo's 4-Bit Gaming History

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Back with another retro gaming deep dive...
Games that push the limits of... the Game & Watch, is that a thing I can do with these things? I'm going to give it a go! More of a history of the Game & Watch line than my usual limit pushing videos, a look into this most limited of gaming hardware.

00:00 Intro
01:09 Sponsorship
03:33 Ball and the Silver Line
05:42 Helmet and the Gold Line
06:15 Popeye and the Widescreen Series
10:15 Donkey Kong and the dual screen games
12:35 Mario's Cement Factory and the Table Top and Panorama Series
15:09 Punch Out! and the Micro Vs System
17:10 Spit ball Sparky and the SuperColor Line
19:40 Tropical Fish and 1985 and onwards in part 2
20:50 Outro and Patreon thanks

[JoeStuffzAlt]

My expectations were low. I didn't expect to watch Game and Watch games and want to play them thanks to the likes of Tiger Electronics. Some of those look fantastic

[DenkyManner]

I learned of the colour LCD games earlier this year. They look really great and I love how they achieved the effect, an inverted use of LCD tech. The entire screen is blacked out with... liquid crystals by default and the characters on screen are part of the printed background, being revealed only when specific parts of the lcd are turned off.

[georgef]

"Watch" is actually accurate, as it was going for the older days of the pocket watches.

[axilmar]

Donkey Kong G&W was the best G&W game I've ever played, and I've played a lot. I spend thousands of hours of it as a child...

[learrus]

I was born in 84 so these things were always kicking around in various places but were always so obscure and strange at the same time. I remember my friend had one or two that were fun to play for awhile and against each other taking turns. They had a real weird aesthetic but were always really neat to find

[DayAntilles]

I love Game & Watch games. I have all 59 released titles

[SuperMikeKaos]

I loved my Zelda dual screen game and watch, 8 dungeons, 2 quests, it took a lot of time to beat it.... so good :)

[windfisch]

There were also Russian clones made by Электроника (Elektronika) simply called “Игра на экране” (Igra na ekranye, Game on a screen). The “Eggs” game was cloned using the rabbit and the wolf from the famous cartoon show “Ну погоди” (Nu pogodi, “just you wait”) and there was another version with a football theme. The Octopus game was cloned directly. I had the Football and the Octopus game.

[TheRealHedgehogSonic]

3:33 Have a free Skip-a-RAID-Sponsor ticket. My treat!

[greensun]

As kids we had the Mario Bros game with two screens, our first gaming device. But later when my sister and I got the Game Boy, it wasn't interesting anymore and sadly it got lost somewhere... Then in '90 or '91 my mother bought a Megadrive for me, I was very proud of it and amazed by the colorful graphics, it was so cool! Nice childhood memories. I'm 39 now, born in '82, and today's kids growing up with modern consoles like PS5, Switch or Xbox one and the games are looking like movies, it's nothing special for them I think, it's just the normal standard...

[Hwison]

Please! make a part 2 to this video. We left on a cliffhanger lol.
Awesome stuff!

[AnthonyFlack]

Back in primary school days kids would gather on the field and trade game & watch and other handhelds around. If you had one or two good ones, you could play all the other good ones because other kids would want a go on yours. If you didn't, you'd have to wait for a turn.

A game would be considered finished when you "clocked" it (maxed out the score counter) which is something the game's owner usually did.

[Idelacio]

Sigh, used to own the Donkey Kong 2 and Zelda clamshells way back in the day. Memories...

[kloakovalimonada]

Super interesting, I had a lot of these back in the early 90s... I'm from a former eastern bloc country, we were a bit late to the uhm, game :)

[AnthonyFlack]

Oh this video is making me want to collect G&W. I love the graphics on the old Nintendo games. The expressions and changing poses of the little men are what make it. And the tabletop/panorama games are just beautiful.

The Nintendo games had some subtlety as well. For instance in Donkey Kong if you score 300 points without losing a life, you start scoring double.

[nugboy]

12:48. That sentence just shattered my realization station. Never realized why they were called that till just then lol

[nbarkhina]

I'm anxiously waiting for Games That Push The Limits of the TI-83 Calculator

[georgeluyckx]

Good documentary but there were actually 3 games at the end of the game and watches that really did push the limits (Super Mario Bros, Climber and Balloon fight). They also featured levels and worlds.

[Mewtwodestroyer]

Cant wait for part 2, where you talk about the game and watches with clear screens!

[plateoshrimp]

The real question is, is it "Game and Watches" or "Games and Watches".