Nintendo Game & Watch (ゲーム&ウオッチ) pocket LCD games were cool in the 80s. I recall owning the widescreen edition of Popeye from 1983, just one of a long series of games. If you lived on Mars thirty years ago (or didn’t live yet) here is a quick recap for you: these are small handheld LCD games with a watch and an alarm function. These games were elementary. Let’s take a look at the Mickey Mouse from the early ’80s. Why this one in particular? You’ll see it soon. The game has four buttons (two on each side of a custom LCD, one above the other), to allow you to direct Mikey – on the center of the screen – to where to hold his basket to catch eggs rolling down from four different hen nests. Simple … in the beginning, hellish just a few minutes in the game. With only two levels – as in difficulty, because these LCDs were custom to each game, and only a few items were moving –), you still could entertain yourself for hours. Ideal for endless car trips. A chick reminded you how many times you missed an egg. After three chicks, game over!
A few months later, Nintendo releases Egg, essentially the same game but swapping out Mikey with a wolf. Copyright issues with Disney seem to be the reason for this release. Because of the huge success of these games, in the late ’80s-’90s a Soviet manufacturer produced knockoffs of many Game & Watch games under the Электроника brand. Today, I am sharing pics from the Egg remake. Instead of Disney’s Mickey Mouse, they use the Wolf and the Hare from Ну, погоди! (Well, Just You Wait!), the iconic Russian animated series. In which, the hare is the wolf’s sidekick character. It replaces here Minnie (and the hen) from Mickey Mouse (and Egg). This specific model of the game (serial #569, sold in 1993) has an acceptable LCD quality, but the object on the lower-left corner of the screen has a lesser contrast, making the game much more challenging to play. It is interesting that the same way Nintendo had multiple variations for the same game, the Soviet copies have a plethora of them. If you still have a version of these Game & Watch, please share your story with us!
