The games consisted of you controlling some guy doing some simple task, whether it was rescuing people jumping out of a burning building with a trampoline in ''Fire!'' (you had to bounce them three times before they'd get to the ambulance), or moving a single manhole cover to make sure people don't fall down as they walk across holes. Points were awarded each time you prevented disaster (such as when someone successfully walked across the gap in ''Manhole''), and should you fail, you were marked with a miss. Three misses and you were done. The game would speed up and get more difficult as you went on, but there were methods to clear your misses, usually [[EveryTenThousandPoints after two, five, and seven hundred points]] or similar, though the remakes on the GameBoy had you rescue a star (in ''Fire!'', if you bounced it into the ambulance, you erase a miss).

Oddly enough, they were a major hit in Japan but relatively unsuccessful in the US, to the point where they never became as popular or widespread as overseas. Part of this was due to bad marketing (Nintendo of America used their own employees in commercials) and part of it was due to Nintendo not understanding how the toy industry worked, since they had marketed the Game & Watch machines as toys rather then consumer electronics. This was a mistake they made only once - their next attempt at American video games was with the {{NES}}, and we all know how well that went. On the other hand these games became a smash hit in SovietUnion, where the localized versions was license-produced as ElektronikaIM. [[spoiler:Very interesting fact: while Nintendo bought rights from Elektronika to make ''VideoGame/{{Tetris}}'', Elektronika grabbed the Game & Watch concept, so it's not exactly known if it was done with Nintendo's permission or not.]]

to:

The games consisted of you controlling some guy doing some simple task, whether it was rescuing people jumping out of a burning building with a trampoline in ''Fire!'' (you had to bounce them three times before they'd get to the ambulance), or moving a single manhole cover to make sure people don't fall down as they walk across holes. Points were awarded each time you prevented disaster (such as when someone successfully walked across the gap in ''Manhole''), and should you fail, you were marked with a miss. Three misses and you were done. The game would [[DifficultyByAcceleration speed up and get more difficult as you went on]], but there were methods to clear your misses, usually [[EveryTenThousandPoints after two, five, and seven hundred points]] or similar, though the remakes on the GameBoy had you rescue a star (in ''Fire!'', if you bounced it into the ambulance, you erase a miss).

Oddly enough, they were a major hit in Japan but relatively unsuccessful in the US, to the point where they never became as popular or widespread as overseas. Part of this was due to bad marketing (Nintendo of America used their own employees in commercials) and part of it was due to Nintendo not understanding how the toy industry worked, since they had marketed the Game & Watch machines as toys rather then consumer electronics. This was a mistake they made only once - their next attempt at American video games was with the {{NES}}, and we all know how well that went. On the other hand these games became a smash hit in SovietUnion, where the localized versions was license-produced as ElektronikaIM. [[labelnote:Very interesting fact:]]While Nintendo bought rights from Elektronika to make ''VideoGame/{{Tetris}}'', Elektronika grabbed the Game & Watch concept, so it's not exactly known if it was done with Nintendo's permission or not.[[/labelnote]]

Changed line(s) 22,23 (click to see context) from:

to:

This list shows the last 10 events of 18. Show all.

new edits

TV Tropes by TV Tropes Foundation, LLC is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org.
Privacy Policy