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1[[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/game_&_watch.png]]
2
3The ''Game & Watch'' series of simplistic games played on single-game handheld consoles. Most of the games rely on earning as many points as possible, with them ending once you run out of lives. There's usually a Game A and Game B option to adjust the game's difficulty slighly, but the main source of it is DifficultyByAcceleration anyway.
4
5To see information regarding the hardware and a list of games running on it, please go to the [[Platform/GameAndWatch Platform page]].
6----
7!!Tropes that apply to the original handhelds:
8* AirborneMook: ''Climber'' has bat bird things called eyeroms.
9* AllThereInTheManual: The plot to later games such as ''Zelda'' and ''Climber'' are hidden in their manuals.
10* AmusingInjuries: A miss in a game that involves people usually results in this.
11* AntiFrustrationFeatures: In ''Mario Bros.'', if you fill the truck or drop a case the game pauses for a quick animation (of the brothers on break until the truck returns, or the foreman reprimanding the brother that dropped the case, respectively). When the game resumes, any cases that were close to falling off the conveyor belt mysteriously disappear, giving you slightly more time to get back into your rhythm.
12* ArtShift: The designs varied from game to game, from ultra-stylized (''Helmet'', ''Fire'') to comparatively detailed (''Fishbowl'', ''Snoopy Tennis''), and from monochrome with a white background to a black background and simple color in the tabletop and panorama series.
13* ArtifactTitle: ''Donkey Kong Circus'' (which takes place in the construction site from DK and Mario's debut, not a circus) is an odd example in that the inaccurate part wasn't even in the original title; the circus-based game it was [[DolledUpInstallment an edit of]] was simply called ''Mickey Mouse''.
14* AttractMode:
15** Time Mode, when the game's ''just'' being a watch, plays animations from the game. This is absent in the ''Gallery'' series, but present in the [=DSiWare=] releases. The Game & Watch Soccer visualization in ''Nintendo 3DS Sound'' works the same way, the game playing itself until controls are initialized.
16** The 2021 ''Legend of Zelda Game & Watch'' exaggerates with its Time Mode, showing an entire playthrough of an abridged version of the original ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaI'' over a 12 hour period, starting with Link receiving the Wooden Sword on the familiar starting screen and ending with Ganon's defeat and Zelda's rescue. It's even interactive, allowing the player to control Link directly to fight enemies, albeit with manual screen transitions locked off.
17* BalloonBelly: If you drop food in ''Chef'', it becomes a large meal for a mouse who gets fatter upon eating it. Misses are also represented by bloated mice.
18* BookEnds: The first game in the original line was ''Ball''. The last was its UpdatedRerelease, ''Mario the Juggler''.
19* {{Bowdlerise}}: ''Helmet'' was released as ''Headache'' in the United Kingdom due to vulgar connotations with the former title in that country.
20* CanonDiscontinuity: Unsurprisingly, the Game & Watch variant of ''Zelda'' is not a part of the ''Zelda'' timeline.
21* CatsAreMean: The one in ''Chef'' who shows up only to shove a fork in one of the falling food items and mess up your timing.
22* CigarFuseLighting: A hazard in ''Mario's Bombs Away''. [[SarcasmMode That guy lounging in the corner is a real help]].
23* CleverCrows: One appears in Game B of ''Rain Shower'' [[{{Jerkass}} just to tug on your clothesline]].
24* ClumsyCopyrightCensorship: The Tabletop version of ''Mario's Cement Factory'' originally had [[Music/{{Queen}} "Another One Bites The Dust"]] as its opening jingle. Later revisions swap this out for a generic jingle.
25* ContinuingIsPainful: ''Gold Cliff'' and ''Zelda'' each have a Continue button that lets you pick up from a game over. However, your score resets to zero.
26* CoveredInGunge: Results in a miss in the following games.
27** Letting pedestrians fall in an open sewer in ''Manhole''.
28** Throwing oil onto customers in ''Oil Panic''.
29** In ''Mario's Cement Factory'', letting one of the mixers overflow and drop cement on one of the truck drivers.
30* CowardlyLion: The player character of ''Climber'' is clearly scared out of his wits, but is fully capable of making it through his circumstances.
31* DeliciousDistraction: This is the core problem in ''Turtle Bridge'', as the turtles will dip into the water to eat the fish swimmming around. Jump onto a turtle when it is submerged and your character will drown.
32* DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment: ''Climber''[='=]s manual calls the Condor "the mysterious bird Hentori". "Hentori" is Japanese for "strange bird".
33* DifficultyByAcceleration: As you progress. Then it slows back down to the first level when you get your score high enough, likely throwing off your tempo.
34* DifficultyLevels: This is typically the difference between Game A and Game B. The [=DSi=] remakes even have a Score Select feature to play at any [[DifficultyByAcceleration speed]].
35* DolledUpInstallment:
36** ''Egg'' and ''Donkey Kong Circus'' have Disney-fied versions starring Mickey Mouse, both simply having his name as the title.
37** The two Anniversary Editions each include versions of ''Ball'' and ''Vermin'' altered to star Mario and Link. Bizarrely, despite what an obvious layup it would have been, neither handheld features the ''actual'' Game & Watch title for its respective series.
38* DoWellButNotPerfect: Keeping the cats subdued is easier but you can only get points in ''Lion'' by stopping them right on the verge of escape.
39* DoubleTheDollars: If you reach 300 points without getting a miss in some games, points will be doubled until you get a miss.
40* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness:
41** Applies to the ''Silver'' series of games which have limited LCD capabilities. Some of them have odd rules as well.
42*** ''Ball'' gives you no second chances; if you drop a ball, the game is over. Also, catching a ball in Game A is worth one point, ten in Game B.
43*** ''Flagman'' is two different games: In A, you repeat a sequence the flagman gives you. In B, you are given limited time to press the same number as the one shown on the screen.
44*** In ''Vermin'' and ''Fire'', misses can't be cleared.
45*** In ''Fire'', points are awarded only if you bring a victim safely to the ambulance. In the wide screen remake, catching someone with the life net is worth one point, and misses are cleared at 200 and 500 points.
46*** ''Judge'' ends when one player reaches 99 points. Game B is the only two-player ''Game & Watch'' title outside of the ''Micro Vs.'' series.
47** The series had different ways of rewarding players for reaching a milestone without any misses, until the "doubled points at 300 until you get a miss" rule was set in stone. These are all timed, whereas later "Chance Time" bonuses are not.
48*** ''Turtle Bridge'': At 200 and 500 points, no fish appear underneath the turtles for a while. The recipient of the packages is also omnipresent during this period.
49*** ''Fire Attack'': At 200 and 500 points, knocking away projectiles and attackers are worth five points instead of the usual two. This bonus period is slightly longer than the one for ''Turtle Bridge''.
50*** ''Snoopy Tennis'': At 200 and 500 points, returning tennis balls for a time are increased by three points.
51*** ''Oil Panic'': At 300 points, a second manager appears underneath the employee and all drips emptied into the drums are worth double points. The bonus period returns to being the same length as ''Turtle Bridge''.
52* EasterEgg:
53** The 2020 ''Franchise/SuperMarioBros Game & Watch'' includes a cheat code that unlocks the option to play ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros1'' and ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBrosTheLostLevels'' with infinite lives.
54** The 2020 ''Franchise/SuperMarioBros Game & Watch'' includes an UpdatedRerelease of ''Ball'' alongside ports of two ''Mario'' games, and in addition to featuring Mario as the default juggler, there's a cheat code that unlocks the option to play as Luigi.
55* EndlessGame:
56** The extreme simplicity of a Game & Watch game meant that there's no story or a victory condition. Only an aim for the highest possible score until you failed three times.
57** Averted with ''Judge'' and ''Zelda''. The former ends when one player reaches 99 points, and the latter is won once Zelda is rescued.
58* {{Engrish}}: The majority of the instructions; this [[http://www.gameandwatch.com/screen/widescreen/fireattack/images/screen.gif scan]] provides a good enough example. Averted with games launched after the NES, as their marketing became more global, the translations improved.
59* EpicFail: There are plenty of ways to get a miss and defy common sense in the process, given that the situations are rather bizarre. A good example is in ''Bomb Sweeper'': accidentally blocking the path to the bomb will make the player wait until the bomb goes off and kills him!
60* EurekaMoment: Meta example; Gunpei Yokoi watching a bored businessman play around with a calculator, which inspired him to make the Game & Watch.
61* ExplosiveStupidity: Not only can the smoking soldier [[CigarFuseLighting blow up the bomb in your hands]] in ''Mario's Bombs Away'', but Mario also has to dodge the oil spill he keeps setting ablaze.
62* FiremansSafetyNet: You have to move one around in ''Fire''.
63* FloatingLimbs: Due to system limitations, limbs on characters are not always fully attached in the earlier games, most obviously with ''Ball''.
64* ForeignRemake: Some of the Platform/ElektronikaIM titles, most famously ''Nu Pogodi'', of ''Egg'', as detailed above.
65* {{Golem}}: ''Climber'' has brick monsters called blockmen who fill in gaps in the path you can jump or fall through, namely by deposing of themselves to become new brick path.
66* HitPoints: In ''Boxing''.
67* HoistByHisOwnPetard: In ''Safebuster'', you're a bank guard defending against a bank robber trying to blast open a vault door. If you dump the robber's bombs into the furnace rather than into the empty bunker, you can send some nasty cinders up the chimney and into the robber's crate of unlit bombs. This will set off all the bombs and send the crook flying away.
68* InNameOnly: ''Mario Bros.'', which took place a factory with conveyor belts rather than a sewer that could be run through.
69* JustifiedExtraLives: ''Octopus'', instead of tracking misses, gives you three scuba divers, and if one of them gets captured by the octopus, the next takes his place.
70* LaterInstallmentWeirdness: Of the twelve titles released after 1985, eight of them have only one game mode: the last two Multi-Screen games ''Gold Cliff'' and ''Zelda'' and both Crystal and New Wide Screen versions of ''Super Mario Bros.'', ''Climber'' and ''Balloon Fight''. ''Gold Cliff'' and ''Zelda'', two of the last games in the series, are the only ones with a Continue option.
71* LimitedAnimation: The handhelds used the same architecture as a calculator, so animation in any real sense was not supported at all, only fixed frames which "filled in" at different times.
72* LockedDoor: Most of the difficulty of ''Helmet'' comes from not being able to manually open the door and it not staying open very long.
73* MundaneMadeAwesome: High-speed acrobatics just to keep your clothes dry in a rain storm? Taking care of garden pests with a giant mallet? Yes, please.
74* MythologyGag: ''Mickey and Donald'', with Mickey and WesternAnimation/DonaldDuck tasked with putting out a fire in a burning building, is strongly reminiscent of the WesternAnimation/ClassicDisneyShorts cartoon "Mickey's Fire Brigade". To further drive this home, Mickey's sprites are based on his classic 1930's design.
75* NewJobAsThePlotDemands: Mario has been a packager, cement factory worker, soldier in Vietnam, a lot more things than he even normally is. That's not even taking the ''Gallery'' series into consideration.
76* NoEnding: As simple as the games are, did you really expect one? ''Judge'' and ''Zelda'' are the two exceptions.
77* NoNose: The sailor giving you instructions in ''Flagman'', the exterminator the player controls in ''Vermin''.
78* NoOSHACompliance: Where do we start...?
79** ''Helmet''[='=]s entire premise is that careless construction workers are just casually dropping their tools. You're a fellow worker who can hardly get from one office building to another without getting his head smashed in because of it.
80** ''Manhole'' has massive gaping holes in busy bridges that anyone can [[TooDumbToLive and does]] just fall through to the water system below. You and the manhole cover you carry are the only reason why everyone there isn't soaking wet.
81** The kitchen in ''Chef'' has a cat and a mouse who have sneaked inside.
82** ''Oil Panic'' has a gas station that has a big enough structural fault to where gasoline is constantly leaking from the ceiling. Oh yeah, and it immediately catches fire if it hits the ground. And the disposal crew is just above the customers.
83** The titular cement factory in ''Mario's Cement Factory'' functions thanks to its open elevator shafts that barely stay in one place long enough for the worker to get on. They're lethal if you misstep.
84* NobleBirdOfPrey: The Condor of ''Climber'' that carries you to new areas should you reach it. Sometimes you have to catch a sword to chase away a dragon first.
85* NotTheFallThatKillsYou: Fail to catch a civilian on remakes of ''Fire'', and they just storm off in a huff. On the original ''Game & Watch'' games, it's all but said that the civilians die if you fail to catch them.
86* OlderThanTheNES: By five years. In fact, by a month it's older than ''VideoGame/PacMan''.
87* OneHitPointWonder: Mr. Game & Watch and his few fellow playable characters, with few exceptions.
88* PaletteSwap: Sort of. ''Mickey Mouse'' and ''Egg'' are the exact same game bar the unit's colours and the character you control, and they were even released on the same day.
89* ParachuteInATree: A definite possibility in ''Parachute'''s Game B.
90* PlayerVersusPlayer: Whenever it didn't adjust DifficultyLevels, Game B started a multiplayer game, such as in ''Judge'', ''Donkey Kong 3'' and ''Boxing''.
91* PublicDomainSoundtrack: The panoramic games ''Mickey Mouse'' and ''Donkey Kong Circus'' open with "Pop Goes the Weasel". The jingle that plays for misses is "London Bridge is Falling Down".
92* ReformulatedGame: Games based on existing Arcade and NES games, like ''Donkey Kong'', ''Super Mario Bros.'', ''Balloon Fight'' and ''Zelda'', capture the essence of the gameplay of the originals, while translating them to work with the Game and Watch graphical limitations.
93* RuleOfFun: Most of the premises of the games have {{Mundane Solution}}s to them. But then there wouldn't be a game to play.
94* RuleOfThree: Getting three misses in most titles will cause your game to be over!
95* TheSavageIndian: With torches, trying to burn down your fort in ''Fire Attack''.
96* ScavengersAreScum: The mouse waiting to steal your food in ''Chef''
97* ScoringPoints: Almost all of them have this as their primary goal.
98* SideView: Almost all of them, with few exceptions. [[PaperPeople Mr. Game & Watch HAS no front side, after all]].
99* {{Slapstick}}: In ''Oil Panic'', one way to get a miss is by dousing a female customer with oil.
100* SpikesOfDoom: Thorny/brambly vines/roots hang down in climber.
101* SwordOfPlotAdvancement: The magic sword in ''Climber''. It's an endless game like the rest, so you'll end up getting it several times.
102* TemporaryPlatform: The ''Turtle Bridge'' turtles dive if a fish swims under them, resulting in you falling in the water if you remain standing on or jump where they once were.
103* TentacleRope: This is how you lose divers in ''Octopus''.
104* TentacledTerror: The antagonist of ''Octopus'' is terrifyingly huge, or should be [[{{Greed}} but]] your divers keep going back in the water with it and refuse to return to the boat if they are not holding treasure.
105* TheDragonslayer: The player character in ''Climber''.
106* ThreateningShark: In ''Parachute'' and ''Life Boat'', people who fall in the water get eaten by a shark. In the former, grinning sharks represent your misses.
107* TooDumbToLive: The civilians in ''Manhole'' will walk right into an open pit. That's why it's your job to make sure that they don't.
108* UpdatedRerelease:
109** ''Mario the Juggler'' is an updated version of the original ''Ball''.
110** The earlier ''Wide Screen'' series were mostly just variants of the ''Silver'' and ''Gold'' line up with some nicer visual touches and a [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin bigger screen]]. These include ''Fire'' and ''Manhole''.
111** The ''New Wide Screen'' and ''Crystal'' models, launched later in the Game & Watch's lifespan, are re-releases of some of their more popular and in-depth games, such as ''Super Mario Bros.'', ''Manhole'' and ''Climber''. They typically incorporated newer technology for the screen as well as making it bigger.
112** The Mini Classics line-up, again taking the most popular games and putting them in a scaled-down Game Boy style casing with a key-chain. They were first released back in 1998, although Nintendo ''still'' allows companies to produce them to this very day.
113** The 2020 ''Franchise/SuperMarioBros Game & Watch'' was released for the 35th anniversary of the ''Mario'' series and includes ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros1'', ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBrosTheLostLevels'', and ''Ball'', with Mario replacing ''Ball'''s original juggler. The two ''Mario'' games in the package feature an added save feature, and the system features cheat codes to play the two ''Mario'' games with infinite lives and play ''Ball'' as Luigi.
114** 2021 followed up with a ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda Game & Watch'' for its own 35th anniversary, including the original ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaI'', ''VideoGame/ZeldaIITheAdventureOfLink'', the original Platform/GameBoy version of ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaLinksAwakening'', and a special version of ''Vermin'' with Link replacing the exterminator. The three ''Zelda'' games feature a cheat code to start with all {{Heart Container}}s, and a timer minigame featuring elements from ''Zelda II'' is also included.
115* UnintentionallyUnwinnable: In ''Squish'', you control a character who is trying to avoid getting squashed by randomly generated moving walls. The walls will sometimes spread across the entire screen, rendering misses unavoidable.
116* UrExample: Of the handheld video game console, of the D-pad (''Donkey Kong'')...
117* UseYourHead: Your player character uses his head in the lower left corner of ''Manhole'' to keep pedestrians from falling.
118* VillainProtagonist: The central character in ''Egg'' is a wolf stealing eggs from hens.
119* WhackAMonster: ''Vermin'' is a variation of the ever popular whack a mole.
120* WingedSoulFliesOffAtDeath: How misses in ''Fire'' are represented. ''Gallery'' remakes change this to the fallen person walking away and the miss icon becoming a bandage.
121* WormSign: You get a miss if you fail to stop a mole in ''Vermin''. Thankfully you can see them coming.
122* WrapAround: You can and often have to do so in ''Climber''. Bluto uses this against you in ''Popeye''.

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