Hey everyone, Apple is making a watch. You might have heard. It’s like a normal watch, in that it goes on your wrist and tells the time, but it also does some computer stuff. Sound familiar? Of course it does. Other companies have been doing it for years. Including Nintendo. Sort of.
OK, so Nintendo’s watches didn’t ship with fancy straps. Or monitor your heartrate. Or pair with a mobile phone. Or were even strictly Nintendo watches, since they were actually made by Nelsonic under licence (remember, the Power Glove wasn’t really made by Nintendo either, since Mattel manufactured it).
But they did ship with genuine (if terrible) Nintendo games inside, badass Nintendo straps and faces more awesome than any amount of polished metal could manage.
You could get Zelda watches, six different Mario watches with six different Mario games and an incredible Star Fox watch. There were also a bunch of other licensed Nelsonic watches that didn’t concern Nintendo, covering stuff like Q*Bert and Ghostbusters.
They sold at the time for around $US20 (Vintage Computing did the maths and that works out to around $US38 after inflation). These days, you can get them on eBay for around $US70-$US100.
[via Vintage Computing. Images courtesy of Handheld Museum]
Comments
3 responses to “Screw Apple’s Watch, Nintendo’s Watches Were Way Cooler”
I’m a Game & Watch fan, so would these count as part of that?
And I love that the Star Fox one apparently comes with Fox’s headset.
I was looking these up as I KINDA want one. Did anyone actually know of one that had an anywhere near ok game on it? The Donkey Kong one looks pretty rad, cowabunga etc.