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#68:

"Game Time watch" vs. "Game & Watch"

July, 2008

I've worked on a lot of games, all the way back to the early 1980's. And my very first game design (well, the first one I was paid for and the first one that was released to the world) is often miscredited by my well-meant biographers.

I never worked on "Game & Watch."

The game I worked on was called "the Game Time watch."

Let's see if we can clear this up for once and for all here.


Here's the Game Time watch.


The Game Time watch by GCE

Game Time was conceived by Jay Smith, the president of Western Technologies, to be an LCD watch that would not only tell time but also play multiple games.


Jay Smith, receiving an award at the Classic Gaming Expo in 2002, twenty years later.

In my FAQ 18 I described how I came to be the WT employee who designed the multiple games:

The Game Time was licensed to GCE, who had the chips made in Japan and the devices made by a Hong Kong or Taiwan manufacturer. The Game Time was the first of a series of three game watches. The other two were Arcade Time and Sports Time. I designed the LCD and the games for the Arcade Time watch as well.


In all, there were three GCE game watches. My friend Patrick King designed the games for the Sports Time watch.

GCE also manufactured two game calculators (see my FAQ 19) and the Vectrex (for which I designed two games: Spike and Bedlam).

Just to add to the confusion, nowadays there's a company called "Game Time" that sells sports watches without games in them. I wasn't involved with that company. I never designed any watches, just game watches.


Now let's consider the Game & Watch.

"Game & Watch" was a line of handheld games made by Nintendo in the same period that GCE was making its watches and calculators.


Two of the "Game & Watch" toys from Nintendo. I had nothing to do with creating these.

Nintendo and GCE are (or were, since GCE no longer exists) two completely different companies. I doubt Nintendo did any business with GCE.

I never worked at Nintendo.

As you can see just from the images above, the "Game & Watch" toys were completely different from the "Game Time watch" that I worked on.

I did collect a number of Nintendo's Game & Watches to study them and enjoy them. I also collected handheld electronic games from Bandai and other manufacturers circa 1982. But now I digress. I hope that I've made it perfectly clear that I did not work on Game & Watch. My "gameography" should only list the game watches and calculators (and of course the numerous video games and computer games) that I actually did work on.

I hope we've got that straightened out. (^_^)


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