You've heard of Game & Watch, but what about Game Watch? Back in the old days, Nelsonic released a series of wristwatches with LCD games built in, and we just got our hands (or wrists?) on a whole mess of them. What are they like? How do they work? Let's find out!

Vintage Mario Madness Notepad Factory Sealed

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Transcript of the video: 

Hi there! Kris from Stone Age Gamer here, and welcome back to Stone Age Gaming. I want to talk today about game watches. No, I don't mean Game & Watches. I mean game watches. This is a Nelsonic game watch based on Starfox. Nelsonic actually made a whole bunch of video game related watches, and we here at Stone Age Gamer recently came into a collection of, well, a whole mess of them. And I thought it would be fun to just go through the box, see what we got, and figure out how to play them. Nelsonic. Let's take a look. 

[00:00:33] All right. Watches. We have a lot of watches here. So, like I explained, we got this collection of watches, online, my boss, and he did, and, it was in service of me making, those, the history videos that I'm doing, specifically the ones about the Mario ones. So, we thought it would be fun to just kind of go through all these watches and show you what we got, because it was a heck of an interesting lot here. So, let's see, let's start at the one that I needed the most. That was this guy. This was, the Super Mario Brothers game watch from Nel Sonic. So now Sonic teamed up with Nintendo and made a handful of interesting video game watches. They made other non Nintendo video game watches too, which, well, there's a couple of those in there too. But these watches are of varying quality. The eBay listing said they were in mint condition. They are most definitely not. In fact, some of them don't work at all. But I'm going to try to run through kind of the basics of what these are and how they work, to the best of my ability. Nelsonic. 

[00:01:31] So here's the Super Mario Brothers one. Let me get this, nice and up close here so you can see what's going on. This is the attract mode screen. And, if I remember right, so you got to press, one of these guys gets the game started. Let's say I need to go to mode, I think there. Okay. So it's actually already started. This game is ridiculous because the way you control it and you see all the little guys moving around on the screen, you're trying to avoid those and get up to the top to Bowser, who according to the instruction manual, is not Bowser. This is the Koopa Dragon because Princess Peach or just Mario sweetheart, the princess has been, captured by a, which you never see in this game, but a witch captured the Princess and the Koopa dragon as her guardian. Which is weird. So. And just my microphone here. Sorry about the noise. All right, so the way this works is that you start off down here on the bottom and, you know. Right. Moves. Mario. Right. Left moves. Mario left. I'm saying that backwards. Right. But the thing that's weird here. Oh, there's a couple things appears. First off, up is jump. Which only works sometimes. Nelsonic. This button is, a little off, but in order to jump, you can jump straight up sometimes. But, in order to jump over this little mountain here, you have to press up and diagonal at the same time, which is bonkers. 

[00:02:57] So what you need to do is that's the flower that just disappeared, and there's a star. You need to get one of those things to make a platform appear above Bowser, so that you can jump on that platform and jump over his head without getting hit by the fire. Now, another thing that drives me bonkers about this game when I was trying to learn how to play it. So I gotta change my angle so I can see these little platforms appearing on the bottom of the screen here. Just to get past this, jump over the Goomba. Okay, so you go through the pipe. This is forward. Oh, no, I don't know if I illustrated that. Well, this means Mario moves forward. It doesn't mean he moves to the left. It means he moves forward. So when you get to this second row, you have to keep pressing that direction to make Mario move forward. Nelsonic. So that one's going to keep him going left and right. And this moves backwards. It is a completely insane control scheme and I hate it. I was so jealous of other kids that had this watch when I was a kid. And I must say, I'm kind of glad I didn't get one because it's kind of garbage. It's really fascinating. It is an interesting little thing, and the artwork is weird. And the story in the instruction manual, I mean, look at this Goomba over here. Like, that's just nuts. But, the actual game is not all that fun to play because you have to do all these, like, diagonal presses. Every time you want to jump up to a different platform, you have to press both of these buttons, which is not ideal on a little watch like this, because I guess you were supposed to have it on your wrist and do two fingers at the same time. But it is, it's it's not the easiest thing to play. Nelsonic

[00:04:33] Moving on. We have Super Mario Brothers three. There was no Super Mario two Nelson a game watch, but they, did do a Super Mario three one. This is kind of neat. It's a big step up over this last one. In terms of presentation, especially in terms of musical presentation, because, if I can start this one properly, it'll start making it play Super Mario Brothers three music. Let's see if I can get this to start. That is so cool. All right. So this is kind of similar in that up is jump. And you just got to time yourself. But this one actually the directions work the way you would think that they do. So the this one's really tough because this fire brother is here right at the beginning. And you've got a time landing on these, moving platforms in order to get past him, spitting a little fireball there. And then you got to get a question block to make the pipe work, and then you go through this pipe down in the bottom of the screen. And then you have to get, the music block to go through the ground, and you might make your way all the way up to Bowser. And that's pretty much how this one works. I couldn't find, any instructions on this online. Nelsonic. So, this is all guesswork as far as, like, what the story is, I don't know that this has a fancy story. Like the, Super Mario one watch, which I would love to see. Another weird off brand story, but. Well, here we are. That's the Mario three watch, which I gotta say is pretty cool. This one's actually kind of fun. It's a little too much of a pain in the butt. Like just waiting over and over again for this fire, brother to kind of not be breathing fire where you want to, and jumping over the Goomba over and over again. But it is an improvement over the other one and the next Mario one. Nelsonic

[00:06:27] This one breaks my heart. This is so fascinating because this guy here is Super Mario Brothers four. You can see it right there on the screen. This was clearly being designed before, they changed the North American game to just be called Super Mario World, and it was still called super, but this for Super Mario World. So this watch is fascinating because it has a headphone jack. If you really wanted to listen to the music of this game within headphones without, it's out making the loud noises off your wrist for some reason. You can do that. It's got a really neat looking stage. Nelsonic. If I can get the the lighting right so you can see it better. The problem here is that this one does not work at all. When we first got it, when I got it, sent out to me, it had Mario on here, like he was getting power, but none of the buttons would do anything. It was frozen, so I cracked open the back here. It's missing a screw mint condition. It's missing a screw. So when I opened up the back, I just kind of tapped on where the button was. The the battery was a little bit, and it restarted it, and it started going the attract mode thing where it was just showing all the different images going back and forth. But I still couldn't get the buttons to do anything. So I tried replacing the battery, and when I opened it up, there was all this corrosion inside there. So there was a new battery put in, but the old corrosion was not cleaned out. I don't know if that had anything to do with the lack of ability to actually play the game, but as soon as I took the battery out, there was a little metal piece that just fell right out and I tried cleaning out the corrosion. I tried to figure out where that metal piece was, but I don't think it actually belonged in here. Whoever repaired this thing before did not do a spectacular job, so unfortunately, I this needs to go to somebody who is better at fixing watches than me because, it is just no longer functioning. But it is a fascinating little piece of video game history there as a North American game released as Super Mario Brothers four. I just think that's the coolest darn thing. Nelsonic

[00:08:23] So sticking with, the Nintendo properties, this one, I actually have one of my own, but there's three of them here, check this out. This is the Zelda game watch. And it comes in three fantastic colors. There's pink, there's red, and there's black. Now, I have a black one myself already. That my friend, my dear friend Ferg sent me was very, very kind to send that to me. And, I used that in my other video. Where to? The Zelda. Zelda history video, but. Here's the thing I have. I have no idea how to play this. I know how to play this game. I've got it running and I can move around, but I just. I haven't figured this thing out at all. I haven't put a ton of time into trying to figure it out. Don't get me wrong. But when I took this footage of it for the video, I just let it run on the attract mode. Nelsonic. I just, I because I had no clue how to properly play this game. This is the one even more so than Super Mario Brothers. When I was a kid, I was super jealous of this. I saw this at a kiosk in the mall and I begged my parents, please, I have to have this watch. It's an original Zelda game. It's a new Zelda game. I got to have it. And, fortunately, I didn't get it. Well, unfortunately, I didn't get it because, probably if I did, I wouldn't care that it wasn't very good because I would have probably played the heck out of it anyway and figured it out because I would have had the instruction manual. But there you go. Zelda, this this this collection that we bought online came with all three flavors of it. I think it was just the three. I can't think of any other colors of this Zelda game that I have that aren't these three, that I've seen in the world? But if there are more, let me know. Because that's that's super interesting. Nelsonic

[00:09:58] All right. Let's see. Sticking with Nintendo, there were a couple other Nintendo ones they sent here is this one. This is super cool. This is Donkey Kong now Sonic game watch. What's super cool about this is that this is specifically based on Donkey Kong 94 for Game Boy. I think you would think there was an old LCD watch. Oh, it must be based on the original arcade Donkey Kong. But no, this was after Donkey Kong 94 on Gameboy, which is fantastic game. And it's not just because looking at all the artwork, that's what it's based on. Look at the stage itself. The stage layout is one of it's based on one of the early city stages in the game, and it makes the sound, let's see if I can. I love it. Nelsonic. All right, this one I also haven't figured out very well. It's kind of tough because things are moving all over the place. So. Rats. See, I got hit by something. I couldn't even see what it was. The the LCD on this is a little messed up. It's sometimes it's hard to see where things are like. Things tend to disappear and then reappear in weird places. But it looks like there's this wire here in the beginning that I can jump off of or swing around on. But there's also this ladder that I feel. I feel like I climbed up this ladder once, and then I haven't been able to do it again, but. I can make myself flip around on this wire just so you can in the Gameboy game, but then I don't know where to go from there. And I keep dying. But I haven't figured this one out really well yet, obviously. But it is a neat little thing, and I just love that there's another game based on econ 94, which is a freaking masterpiece. It's such a good game. I wish I knew this existed around when that came out, because I know now in 94, I was probably old enough to just kind of get one of these myself. So I'm, sad that I didn't know this existed sooner, but, well, here it is, and I've gotten to play around with it. It's an interesting little doodad. Nelsonic

[00:11:56] All right, I got one more Nintendo themed one, and it came in two different flavors. This is the Starfox one. I also remember seeing this one around when I was younger. It's the same game in two different flavors. Just two totally different form factors. This one here looks like the Mario three one. No, not that one. That's Mario world. Here's the Mario three one. It's got the same exact shape. Down with screen size. The buttons on the side of the same. The layout is the same. But this one here obviously is the newer version, because this is done just like the Donkey Kong one. This is a weird game. It's it's it is surprisingly playable. If that makes a lot of sense. All right, I'm going to play on this one, because this one has the, the, the shoot and the bomb buttons over here. So here I am. Nelsonic. I can just move my arm, swing back and forth, and I can move up and down. So basically you're just trying to dodge stuff and then you've got, you can shoot your laser to blow up enemies at some things. You can blow up some things you can't. I again, have not really mastered the, intricacies of this game yet. But I want to let's see if I can start this over. There's the game over screen, right? I'm going to start this over because it plays the, Starfox music. Like a little rendition of Corneria. Isn't that great? I love it. So yeah, there's there's Starfox on a watch. This one, this one really impresses me because this one is shockingly, it reminds me a lot more of the actual game than the other ones too. Like the other ones are very LXD game takes on it. This really isn't that far off from what you would do in Starfox. You're moving through a 3D space technically and shooting and well, there you go. There's oh, this one also has a headphone jack, which is amazing. Nelsonic

[00:14:02] Now, I do have another couple of ones here that aren't Nintendo based. However, they don't work all that well. I've got this one here, which is Kubert, and you can see this one's lit up. So when I got this one, I pulled this one out of the box. There was nothing on the screen, but I noticed that the back is bowed a little bit. It's like sticking out a little bit. So when I messed with it, I saw some images show up and then disappear again. So I cracked it open, and there's, the thing on the inside that holds the battery in place, and it if the screw on one side of it is stripped so the battery doesn't really stay in place all that well on this, this is the best I've been able to get it to do is just kind of turn on and have everything lit up. None of the buttons seem to do anything. No matter how many times I open it up and poke around inside, I can't get this to actually function. So yeah, like I actually just turn it off. Looks like just from pressing on the back. Yeah, maybe it's back. I don't know, it's it's hard to tell what's going on with this thing, but yeah, this is a bummer because I really like to try this one out. I love Q*Bert, and this seems like the kind of thing that would work well on a watch, but, alas, this one does not seem to function either. So much for mint condition. Nelsonic

[00:15:20] Then we've got this, which is just appears to just be a generic racing game. It's kind of neat, except that I haven't been able to. Steering it back and forth. Come on. How do I get this thing started again? That's the other challenge of these things, is trying to figure out how to make them actually do what you want them to. All right, so here we go. I think this is starting all right. My problem is, is that every time I try to dodge cars, they seem like they're coming at me faster than I can react to. Like, it seems like I was getting out of the way of the cars as they were coming. But then I crash like every time I was. I can't seem to get any sound out of this one. I don't know if it has any sound, but I can't figure this one out. For the life of me, it's it's neat looking. It's not as intuitive as Starfox, but I like little trees and stuff. Very poor position. Ask, but yeah, I can't get anywhere in this little racing game. I also don't know what it's called. I should try and look that up. Is it can't be, that difficult to track down what this is. I wonder if it's actually based on any sort of existing property, I don't know. Nelsonic

[00:16:28] All right, next up, we have this one, which is blackjack. I don't know how to play blackjack at all, but, yeah, this is another one that's, just like the Mario three and that other Starfox. One sister got the same exact form factor, except it's blackjack, and you can, surrender. Stand. Bet. Double and. Hit in deal. I. This is ridiculous because it's just there's no. Oh, here we go. There's no, like, images or anything. It's all just like. All right, let's go with. Yeah, sure. Do it. And, yeah, there's no pictures or anything like the car. There's no pictures of face cards. It's all numbers. And so I assume you have to know how to play blackjack to be able to do something like this, because. But that's not me. But, hey, there's blackjack on the wrist of your hand. Any time you want. I guess before cell phones, this was pretty darn novel. And finally, last but not least, we have this, which I believe is supposed to be an FM radio, that I can't get to do anything. And it's got this little dial up here. You've got reset and scan. Wait, it just did something for a second there. I saw a number. Just showed up for a split second there. Hit buttons. Yeah. No, no I got oh because I had it off maybe. All right. On hit buttons. Do something. Maybe nothing. No, nothing. Nothing at all. Nelsonic

[00:18:01] So this is one one other one with the headphone jack. And that's kind of an interesting concept. A wristwatch that has an FM radio built in. Now, imagine walking around in the 90s or whatever with your headphones plugged in, your radio on your watch. I feel like quite the cyborg. This is an interesting concept. I didn't really crack this one to open a chat test and see if the batteries were working or anything. Just because I'm not sure what kind of radio signal I'm even getting down here in my basement, but that. There you go. That is this random collection of now Sonic game watches. These things have always been a source of fascination for me, these LCD games in general, whenever talking about video game history. People tend to gloss over this stuff. And I read it somewhat understandably so. They're not that in-depth, but they are unique games and individual franchises, so I can't tell a complete history of Super Mario without talking about the Super Mario game watches. So I'm glad I got these. And, well, here they are in all their glory. I know there's other ones out there. There's tons of game watches that I don't have, and I'd love to learn more about them. And I really hope somebody figures out how to emulate these things one day, because that would be super wild. Tada! Nelsonic

[00:19:13] Well, there you have it. Unfortunately, the condition of these things, left a lot to be desired. And I really wish I could have gotten that Kubert one working, but I'd say, by and large, it was a pretty nice collection of watches, and I got to play around with some of the things that I'd always wanted to play with. I do really hope that someday somebody, gets around to properly emulating these things. I feel like it requires somebody to actually donate one that will be completely destroyed in order to make the emulation of this stuff happen. But I know that people have emulated game and watch stuff brilliantly. You can find really awesome direct feed video footage pretty much every game watch ever, and it would be really great to be able to do that to the nail Sonic game watches someday. So fingers crossed that happens. In the meantime, let me know what you think. Thanks for watching. If you like what you saw here today, please follow, comment, like, subscribe and let us know down in the comments! Did you have any of these? Super cool. Now Sonic game watches. Which one is your favorite? Do you know how to play the Zelda game? Because I've read the instruction manual a couple of times and it just goes in one ear and out the other. I just can't figure that game out for the life of me. And I know it's super simple, but yeah, that's my brain for you. Anyway, thanks again for watching. On behalf of all of us here at Stone Age Gamer, keep playing games. I have no idea what I'm doing. Why won't you move? I know I had to do something. Nelsonic. These things are ridiculous.