As we all know, Christmas is a time for both giv­ing and receiv­ing. The UCHG have a habit of exchang­ing par­tic­u­larly mar­vel­lous bits of retro gam­ing periph­ery; gift results have in the past included mul­ti­ple Alex Kidd games and light­guns in all shapes and sizes.

Xmas 2011 came bring­ing gifts of retro gam­ing — although this time from the unex­pected quar­ter of Fen’s girl­friend, who appar­ently knows him rather well.

He was pre­sented with:

A Nintendo Game and Watch (1982).

The Game and Watch solved a major prob­lem young gamers always face: how can I play awe­some arcade games on the move, and always be aware of what time it is? The Game and Watch is the answer. I admit I have always assumed that because of the dual-screen setup, you gamed and…watched. But no, there is a clock but­ton, with fully func­tional alarm. Amazing!

In class­rooms it would have pro­vided the per­fect cover: “Is that a game?”; “No sir, it’s a watch”. Because it looks like a watch! Doesn’t it?

No, it doesn’t look like a watch.

But what it does look like is a Nintendo DS. The design of the thing is obvi­ously now rather iconic, and Nintendo rather won­der­fully applied this clas­sic their new series of hand­helds. I find it rather awe­some that some peo­ple are wan­der­ing around with a brand new 3DS, unaware that it looks just like some­thing from 1982.

My par­tic­u­lar Game and Watch comes in clas­sic orange, and plays a basic ver­sion of Donkey Kong. It has two dif­fi­cul­ties, Game A and… Game B. You jump over bar­rels and beat that mon­key — it’s clas­sic Kong. My best score so far is 203. Is that good? I don’t know — but what I do know is that it only goes up to 999.

I also never knew that there were loads of these things released — Donkey Kong is just one of many Game and Watch ver­sions, with around 60 vari­a­tions pro­duced. But this one is excel­lent, and in great nick; i was even pro­vided with spare bat­ter­ies, so I can keep on gam­ing (and check­ing the time).

Have you ever checked the time on a Game and Watch? For some more retro fun, check out the 80’s TV ad:

Fen