Casio Game Watch History - The Original Mobile Gaming
Casio GE-6 featuring Egg Panic
With the recent rise of smartwatches, we often forget the extraordinary capabilities that some of their contemporaries had back in the 1980s. Casio, in particular, produced many iterations of digital watches, one of which was especially intriguing…that is, if you’re into video games.
When Space Invaders was released in 1978, it marked a new era for gaming, which still mainly took place in the arcade. Casio executives foresaw the shift to handheld gaming, or as they would put it: the opportunity to ‘play anywhere’, and capitalized it on it; first in 1980 by released the MG-880, a calculator that featured a numerical version of Space Invaders; then, the following year, by released their first game watch, the CA-90 (which featured the same numerical version of Space Invaders). Casio’s foray into video games was driven mainly by market opportunity and their principle of multi-functionality. At the time, Casio was very focused on combining different digital functions to create more practical products, and gaming proved the perfect target. However, they did find a major competitor in Nintendo, who released the first Game & Watch in 1980. As both Casio and Nintendo’s game watches were doing well, the focus eventually turned to who could make watches that played multiple games – instead of the current one game per watch.
Although very popular for a time, increasing competition from smaller players, and consumers’ short attention spans put a lot of financial pressure on Casio and others’ game watch operations. As such, by the mid-1990s, Casio stopped making game watches altogether and Nintendo shifted to the Game Boy, focusing exclusively on handheld games. Albeit short, it was a great run, with Casio making over 40 different game watches and selling tens of millions of dollars-worth. Their legacy in the video game industry remains; with games like Fortnite and Pokemon Go making billions of dollars, we mustn’t forget that mobile gaming got its start on the wrist.