How a Calculator Inspired Nintendo's Game & Watch

Nintendo was founded in Kyoto in 1889 as a maker of hanafuda playing cards. As that business faded, the company tried ventures including a taxi service and instant noodles. It began to find a modern footing in toys. Yokoi joined in 1965, when Nintendo was struggling and its stock had fallen from 900 yen to 60, according to Engadget. In 1966 he created the Ultra Hand, a reach-extender toy that sold 1.4 million units worldwide.

By the late 1970s, Nintendo had shifted almost entirely toward video games. It released the TV-Game 6 and TV-Game 15 home consoles in 1977 and opened a coin-operated games division in 1979. That same year, Yokoi was riding a train when he noticed a salaryman idly playing with a calculator. He concluded that games should not be limited to arcades or the home and could be played on the go. The idea for Game & Watch followed.

Yokoi pitched the concept to Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi just before Yamauchi met with the president of Sharp, then the world's largest calculator manufacturer, and the two discussed a collaboration, Engadget reports. Game & Watch technology resembled calculators of the period: both used LCD screens, button cell batteries and segment-based visuals. A calculator's numbers are formed from seven segments, and the number of digits depends on the chip's segment capacity. Game & Watch: Ball, the first title in 1980, used a chip that could display 72 segments.

Prototyping was done physically. The team combined painstakingly cut acrylic plastic and tiny wheat bulbs on a circuit board matching the size of the Game & Watch. It soon released almost one Game & Watch title per month, putting out 59 titles between the line's start and 1991. The technology advanced from widescreen displays to the clamshell dual-screen format later used across Nintendo handhelds. The series sold more than 43 million units worldwide.

While working on Game & Watch, Yokoi developed a philosophy that remains relevant at Nintendo: lateral thinking with withered technology. The approach meant finding new uses for older, proven hardware, as with repurposing calculator technology for games. He applied it to the Game Boy, choosing simpler and more affordable hardware than competitors, which made the device more portable and gave it better battery life; it became one of the most popular handhelds of all time. Engadget notes that devices such as the Nintendo Switch 2 may not have the most powerful hardware but excel in portability and price.

Yokoi's push for on-the-go play led to two lasting concepts, according to Engadget: the portable but protected clamshell design and the D-pad. Both are still used. In an internal interview, the late Nintendo producer and president Satoru Iwata said, "If it weren't for Game & Watch, today's handheld game systems would probably be different. I doubt the Game Boy and Nintendo DS systems would have made it out into the world." The article adds that the success of the Ultra Hand and Game & Watch allowed Yokoi to pull Nintendo out of financial trouble on two separate occasions. Today, the line is occasionally marked with themed Game & Watch releases and in-game references.

Editor's Summary Nintendo's Game & Watch, introduced in 1980, came from Gunpei Yokoi's observation of a calculator user on a train, according to Engadget. The handheld series sold more than 43 million units and introduced ideas such as the clamshell format and D-pad that Nintendo still uses. It also helped pull Nintendo out of financial trouble and shaped its portable gaming strategy.