Robot Claw

Over the years both VFD games and Game & Watches have featured several times on this blog. I have a nostalgic fascination for both types of handheld game since both were an important element of my early gaming years.

Since I have often joked about BS seeking out and buying me a VFD game, and have many times bored KLS with stories of long-lost Game & Watches, you can imagine my surprise – no, astonishment – when on a recent trip to Rochester, a long-forgotten box of stuff from KLS’s childhood was unearthed and yielded one of each. And now I proudly present the latest two additions to my collection of Legendary Items:

Caveman

As found, the game was dirty (even a bit sticky) and hadn’t been used in aeons. This is the 1983 Tandy version of a game manufactured by Tomy Japan in 1982, and was amongst the first wave of VFD games ever made (this predated Scramble). Over the years I’ve read quite a bit about these things (I even have a book on handhelds…) and knowing that the VFD displays are unreliable I had great concern that this guy wouldn’t work. So I started by cleaning it:

Then plugging in a 6V AC power supply. No luck – nothing happened. Unlike seemingly everything manufactured these days, these games use ‘C’ batteries, and we had none in the house. So a trip to the store later, I trepidatously put the batteries in and…

It worked!

The display, sound, controls. Everything works perfectly. I was elated!

This game seems to be quite rare today, possibly for reasons stated above. A brief search online found virtually none for sale, with the exception of one boxed example on ebay for $150. I’m going to treasure mine 🙂

Mario’s Cement Factory

Of the two, this one gave me the biggest start when I saw it. Nintendo manufactured 59 different Game & Watch games between 1980 and 1990 and four of them were also made in a special colour ‘tabletop’ model. Only two of those four were ever sold outside of Japan, and Mario’s Cement Factory was the rarest of the two. It’s always been floating around somewhere in my brain as an ‘item I’d love to have’ because many, many years ago I saw a few of these being sold at clearance at a K-Mart in Australia and I never bought one (shades of the story behind this, wouldn’t you say?).

At any rate I now had my own Mario’s Cement Factory! But it was very dirty, especially the screen and the LCD panel. But I had high hopes for this guy, since the solid-state technology in Game & Watches is very robust (they can survive going through washing machines, for instance) and the mirror and panels in this example were intact. So once again, I sat down and gave it a careful and thorough cleaning!

The technology is simple but clever. You play by looking at the reflection in a mirror of an LCD mounted (in reverse) just under the white transparent plastic panel on the top. Light passes through this panel (and through the LCD) and is reflected off the mirror. Images are formed via the LCD blocking light and a plastic coloured film which makes the LCD itself appear coloured. Back in 1983 when this game out the technology seemed magical, since every other Game & Watch was black and white. Even today it is a very impressive bit of trickery created by Nintendo many years before actual colour LCDs became a reality.

Oh, and it works! Here’s a shot of the full LCD panel after I put the batteries in:

Click on it and have a look at it in high resolution. You can see the ‘bleeding’ of the colour at the edges of the film, which would be due mostly to optical (refractive) events. They are tiny enough to not be visible when solid lines separate the elements (such as the concrete tanks) but easily visible on the Mario ‘sprites’. I wonder if the 11-year-old me would have noticed this if I got this back in 1983?

Here’s a video of the gameplay:

And a photo:

This is a real treasure! It cleaned up beautifully, is in near-mint condition, and works perfectly. It will occupy a place of great pride in my collection! Since I knew these were pretty rare (one source I checked estimated only about 30k were made for export) I checked the prices online. I couldn’t find any boxed examples, but there are a few on ebay that seem to be in worse shape than mine going for $130+. The Game & Watch name really helps, but it’s amazing how these things have gained value isn’t it?

I feel as if I have out-legendaried any other possible additions to my collection in obtaining these two. Could this be the last ever ‘legendary item’ post? Time will tell 🙂

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 17th, 2012 at 10:03 am and is filed under Games, Otaku, Tech, Toys. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.