¶ Technical data
- Manufacturer: Nintendo
- Year of release: 1980 (April, first machine: Ball)
- Units sold: around 43.4 millions across all series
- CPU: Sharp 4-bit microcontroller from the SM5xx family (SM5, SM510, SM511…) depending on the model
- Display: segment LCD, pre-printed shapes, fixed decorative backdrop
- Sound: piezoelectric buzzer
- Media: game built into the machine, not interchangeable
- Power: button cells
¶ Presentation
The Game & Watch are a range of handheld electronic games produced by Nintendo from 1980 to 1991. The idea is credited to Gunpei Yokoi, who reportedly imagined the machine after watching a commuter kill time with his calculator on the train. Each device contains a single game, burnt into its microcontroller, and doubles as a clock and alarm — hence the name.
Technically these are not matrix displays: the characters and scenery are pre-printed LCD segments that the machine merely switches on or off, over a printed decorative backdrop. That constraint explains the very particular style of these games, made of discrete positions and timing rather than fluid movement.
Around sixty models followed one another, split into series (Silver, Gold, Wide Screen, Multi Screen, Tabletop, Panorama, New Wide Screen…), for roughly 43.4 million units sold. Along the way they gave Nintendo two decisive contributions: the directional pad, introduced on the Donkey Kong Multi Screen in 1982, and the dual screen, which the Nintendo DS would reuse twenty years later.
¶ Emulators
Emulator availability per board:
| Emulator | RPI3/RPI02W | RPI4/400 | RPI5/500 | OGA/OGS/RG351 | PC | RG353 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Libretro GW | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
Libretro GW is the only emulator for this system, available on every board. It builds on MAME's emulation of LCD handheld electronic games: it runs the original microcontroller and draws the machine's artwork on top (printed backdrop and LCD segments). It supports neither netplay nor softpatching, but it declares CRT display support. RetroAchievements are not available on this system.
¶ Roms
Put your games in:
/recalbox/share/roms/gw/
Supported extensions: .mgw .zip .7z
The expected format is .mgw: one file per machine, bundling the microcontroller dump and the matching artwork (backdrop and segments). A .mgw is therefore not a plain MAME rom — do not rename a MAME romset .zip into .mgw, and do not unpack .mgw files. .zip and .7z archives are also accepted, with a single game per archive.
A controller is required, even though these games only use very few inputs: the action buttons, and the directional pad on models that have one.