ConsoleHandheld electronic games1980
Game & Watch
Game & Watch is a series of handheld electronic games developed by Nintendo. Designed by Gunpei Yokoi, the first game, Ball was released in 1980 and the original production run of the devices continued until 1991.
- First released
- 1980
- Made by
- Nintendo
- Generation
- 2
- Units sold
- 43.4 million
Overview
Game & Watch is a series of handheld electronic games developed by Nintendo. Designed by Gunpei Yokoi, the first game, Ball was released in 1980 and the original production run of the devices continued until 1991. The name Game & Watch reflects their dual functionality: a single game paired with a digital clock on a segmented liquid-crystal display (LCD) screen. The Game & Watch series proved a monumental success, selling a total of 43.4 million units globally, marking Nintendo's first major worldwide success with electronic games.
Specifications
- Manufacturer
- Nintendo
- Developer
- Nintendo R&D1
- Type
- Handheld electronic games
- Generation
- Second
- Released
- 1980-04-28
- Discontinued
- 1991
- Units sold
- 43.4 million
- Processor
- Sharp SM5xx MCU family
- Memory
- 80–128 nibble RAM
- Storage
- 1,792–4,032 byte ROM +; 0/256 6-bit Melody ROM
- Video output
- Segmented liquid-crystal display
- Successor
- Game Boy
- Best-selling game
- Donkey Kong (8 million)
More from Nintendo
- Family Computer 1983
- Nintendo Entertainment System 1983
- Family Computer Disk System 1986
- Game Boy 1989
- Super Famicom 1990
- Super Nintendo Entertainment System 1990
- AV Famicom 1993
- NES-101 (top loader) 1993
- Virtual Boy 1995
- Game Boy Pocket 1996
- Nintendo 64 1996
- New-Style Super NES (SNS-101) 1997
- Game Boy Color 1998
- Game Boy Light 1998
- 64DD 1999
- Game Boy Advance 2001
- Nintendo GameCube 2001
- Panasonic Q 2001
- Game Boy Advance SP 2003
- Nintendo DS 2004
- Game Boy Micro 2005
- Nintendo DS Lite 2006
- Wii 2006
- Nintendo DSi 2008
- Nintendo DSi XL 2009
- Nintendo 3DS 2010
- Wii Family Edition 2011
- Nintendo 3DS XL 2012
- Wii Mini 2012
- Wii U 2012
- Wii U Basic 2012
- Wii U Deluxe 2012
- Nintendo 2DS 2013
- New Nintendo 3DS 2014
- New Nintendo 3DS XL 2014
- NES Classic Edition 2016
- New Nintendo 2DS XL 2017
- Nintendo Switch 2017
- Super NES Classic Edition 2017
- Nintendo Switch Lite 2019
- Game & Watch: Super Mario Bros. 2020
- Nintendo Switch OLED Model 2021
- Nintendo Switch 2 2025
Sources
- Wikipedia overview and specifications
- Game_and_watch_logo.svg
- Nintendo Donkey Kong Game and Watch.png Rogerdahl CC BY-SA 3.0
- Game & Watch Super Mario Bros - Color Screen (5).png Artistosteles CC BY-SA 4.0
The overview is adapted from Wikipedia and shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.
Checked October 2026.
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