Concept
The Game & Watch brand (ゲーム&ウオッチ Gēmu & Uotchi; called Tricotronic in West Germany and Austria, abbreviated as G&W) is a series of handheld electronic games developed, manufactured, released, and marketed by Nintendo from 1980 to 1991. Created by game designer Gunpei Yokoi, the product derived its name from it featuring a single game as well as a clock on an LCD screen. The models from 1981 onwards featured an alarm in addition. The series sold a combined 43.4 million units worldwide, including 12.87 million units in Japan and 30.53 million overseas. It was the earliest Nintendo video game product to gain major worldwide success. The units are based on a 4-bit CPU from the Sharp SM5xx family that include a small ROM and RAM area and an LCD screen driver circuit. Game designer Gunpei Yokoi had been head of Nintendo's Research & Development division in the 1970s, designing physical toys and games until the 1973 oil crisis, after which the market waned for these products. At the same time, the first arcade and home video game consoles had been developed in the United States, and Nintendo had quickly caught onto this wave in Japan. While traveling on a Shinkansen (bullet train), Yokoi saw a bored businessman playing with an LCD calculator by pressing the buttons. Yokoi then thought of an idea for a watch that doubled as a miniature game machine for killing time. Later, he had been able to pitch the idea to Nintendo's president, Hiroshi Yamauchi, when Yamauchi requested him to chauffeur him to a business meeting. Though Yamauchi had not said anything during the drive, the meeting he was at included the CEO of Sharp Corporation, and the two discussed Yokoi's idea. Within the week, Yokoi was invited to a meeting between Nintendo and Sharp, giving him the go-ahead to develop his concept. Yokoi designed the controls for this portable system based on the success of Nintendo's arcade game Donkey Kong incorporating a single button along with a d-pad for movement. This led up to the creation of Ball, which became one of Nintendo's first major hits.
