Nintendo Game and Watch: The Most Important Video Game Tech Ever

Jamie Logie
Back in Time
Published in
9 min readSep 23, 2020

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If not for this hand-held device, we wouldn’t have video games as we know it

pic via Pinterest

One simple handheld game may have changed the trajectory for modern video games. If Nintendo didn’t experiment with the Game and Watch, they might not have had the confidence to double-down on video games and change the world forever.

The Game and Watch was a hand-held video game released by Nintendo in the 1970s and 80s. Its success would lead to the Famicom and eventually the Nintendo Entertainment System.

With the upcoming re-release of the Nintendo Game and Watch, the company is going back to its roots. This article will be a look back on the significance of the Game and Watch and how it changed video games forever.

A Brief History of Nintendo

Nintendo wasn’t originally a video game company. The Game and Watch was just one of the many products they launched.

Nintendo as a company goes back a lot further than you may realize. Their origins begin back in 1889.

Nintendo first started out selling trading cards. They called these cards Hanafuda which meant “flower cards.” You could play several games with them and they were used for gambling.

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Jamie Logie
Back in Time

Some health, a little marketing, and a lot of 1980s content