My G&W Corner Story. Not a poetic one.

Warning: this post occasionally contains strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humor (which may be unsuitable for adults), and advanced mathematics (which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors)."

Chapter 1 - Beginnings and Endings

(I said not poetic I didn’t say it was going to be short)

I lived on an island called Bahrain during my childhood. There was only one library. One computer store. One arcade shop. It was also very expensive to insert and spend coins that I didn’t have as a child. Sometimes I stole money from my parents to go play a few games at the arcades. I didn’t own any consoles or video games as a child as my parents didn’t believe in such “none sense”.

My first exposure to a handheld game was when my parents took me to Egypt to visit family. My older cousin had a DK JR and dual screen DK. Fascinated by them I would try to play them all the time. My cousin didn’t like this. He sometimes didn’t allow me to play with it. One visit I decided to steal them… I took them before we had to travel back so that I don’t get caught.

Well he never actually caught me, he accused me obviously and tried to force me to confess through vocal and physical ways, but I was such a destructive child in my younger years that his attack meant nothing. I ended up destroying both games because I was spiteful at him and I also thought if I was caught with them by my parents I would be in trouble.

Chapter 2 - 30 years later…

Nothing happened since then due to family / life situations I didn’t have opportunities to own consoles etc as a child and as an adult I didn’t live in any stable location to be able to collect such things. But I knew of them. I repaired and modified many items for friends / colleagues / customers.

Then one day before the pandemic years… a Russian friend from work saw in my office I had some “gaming” style environment and we discussed some game history. I told him my story about game and watch…

He then goes on vacation back to Moscow.

He returns to my office one day with a brown rectangle game. I ask what it was, he responded with “Nu Pogodi” it was a cheap looking game with Russian letters I was fascinated by it. Unfortunately it wasn’t working! But he is an electronic engineer and I had some batteries and we opened it up together at his station and we talked about the design and simple architecture, while he was repairing.

Eureka! It works? It works!

So… something clicked in me. I don’t know how to explain it, nor do I wish to. Even if I did know how to explain it I don’t have time to talk about my inner psychology and talk about Game & Watch collecting saga!

Chapter 3 - is this ever going to end?

Casually I began looking at consoles and groups. I had invested time to register for Reddit / Facebook and I was already on discord and other “underground” game conversation forums because modification and hacking devices was something I made side money from. I thought there might be money in the LCD/Game & Watch trade.

Slowly.. and as many of use have already experienced the fact that buying one item isn’t enough.

Particularly since the pandemic had placed me in a position of boredom and some depression it was an escape for me.

Then the one became two then four then eight then sixteen, thirty two etc
Buying first from eBay without any prior experience and knowledge I learned very quickly how much money I wasted buying some items due to overpricing but not knowing.

Then I expanded to many markets and learned how to register for foreign sites and learned how to have items shipped to USA through “life hacks” proxy addresses or even meeting someone online who I built a trust relationship with and would buy items for me in their country.

I became a moderator at the only Game & Watch discord server and then partner due to my contribution. Many members are there that are sellers, buyers, engineers and designers. We talk about many obscure technological things. We don’t just show off our collections 😉

There were talks and rumors but nothing official regarding the fact if you could use a Russian Elektronika LCD inside a Nintendo Game & Watch and vice versa. I officially claimed online with proof of photos showing that this in fact was possible before anyone else.

The funny part is that after my discovery and video tutorials. One Italian and a UK seller show up selling their eggs with Russian screens. They mentioned this but gave no credit to how they discovered this, even after I messaged them telling them congrats and asked them where they saw or got this idea. No response 🙂

Anyway.

The fascination of different brands such as Epoch, Tiger, Ludotronic, Bandai, Orlitronic, Nintendo have made me appreciate these games even more than ever.

Because of this I ended up collecting items such as posters, magazines, books even store signs all Game & Watch specific to try to hold on to something that I never grew up with and try to relive the feeling of childhood that I never got to experience. That’s the good news so far 🙂 the unfortunate news is that I am in a position that I have to offload everything I own but the vultures are not friendly and offers are many times below half the value of the items because they sense or see a desperation in my tone. Oh well.

this is my story.