Water Cooler Games - Wristwatch Gaming

Wristwatch Gaming
April 23, 2007 - by Ian Bogost

I have the Fossil Atari Asteroids watch. I don't wear a watch very often (usually I just check the time on my mobile phone), but I can't help but think one reason I don't wear it more is that the Asteroids feature is non-functional; to quote the product page, "Actual Asteroids game is not playable, but the dial animates and shows the game being played on a black background." Slightly more sophisticated than an Atari-branded watch, but not much more.

Enter high-end Swiss watchmaker Girard-Perregaux, who recently announced the new 1945 Jackpot Tourbillon. This is a completely mechanical watch with a working three-chamber slot machine built into the mechanism. You can pull a small lever to the right of the face to spin the chambers. Of course, to play games of chance on your wristwatch, you'll have to be able to afford the ante. No price for the Jackpot Tourbillon has been announced, but other timepieces in the Vintage 1945 series run $5k-10k.

It does make me wonder what opportunities for wristwatch games have gone unexplored. Sure, there were the Nintendo Game & Watch handhelds of the early 1980s, but those were hardly watches. Perhaps we've been too busy focusing on the elusive and frustrating mobile game market to recognize the opportunity in wristwatch gaming.

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Comment from Dakota Reese on April 24, 2007

Nintendo did do a series of LCD game wrist watches circa 1989-1990. I was the envy of my school bus for a while when I got the Mario watch for Christmas.

I wanted the Zelda one though, but not in pink.

http://www.miniarcade.com/nintendo/supermario-ww.htm
http://www.vidgame.net/NINTENDO/ZELDW.html

Also some interesting stuff here:
http://www.pocketcalculatorshow.com/forsale/watch.html

Comment from Clay on April 26, 2007

This reminded me of a wristwatch that I had circa 1983 that was a playable digital version of PacMan. It had 3-4 small joystick nubs that attached to the band for storage but could be inserted into the face of the watch while playing. I remember sitting in 4th grade class, playing PacMan, getting in trouble for it and then being smacked with a ruler by the teacher for misbehaving.

I looked for a link on Google, but couldn't find the actual watch.

Comment from DanRey on April 27, 2007

Does the Asteroids watch display a continuous animation, or is it just that loop that is shown on the Fossil webpage? One hundred and thirty dollars may hang in the balance.

Comment from Dakota Reese on April 27, 2007

It seems my other comment was eaten.

Nintendo did series of LCD game watches in the late 80's - early 90's. It is often overlooked in that wave of Tiger LCD handhelds that were released.

The Mario, DK, and Starfox watches are listed at the bottom of this page: http://www.miniarcade.com/miniarcade.htm

I know there was a Zelda watch as well.

Comment from Ian Bogost on April 28, 2007

The Asteroids watch is basically just that loop.

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