Engadget
The Game & Watch set Nintendo up for large success, with the original idea coming from a place.
Nintendo is now a company synonymous with video games, but that wasn't always the case. Much of Nintendo's current-day legacy comes down to one man, Gunpei Yokoi, who spearheaded the creation of the Game & Watch. When Yokoi joined the company in 1965, it was floundering.
The stock had recently fallen from 900 yen to just 60, but that would be almost single-handedly turned around by the new hire's innovation.
When it was founded in 1889, Nintendo was a manufacturer of hanafuda playing cards based out of a small operation in Kyoto. In 1966, Yokoi created the Ultra Hand, a reach extender toy, which would go on to sell 1.4 million units worldwide.
By the late '70s, Nintendo had almost shifted its focus to the video game market, releasing the home consoles TV-Game 6 and TV-Game 15 in 1977, and opening a coin-operated games division in 1979.
In a fortuitous coincidence, Yokoi wound up pitching the Game & Watch idea to Nintendo's then-president Hiroshi Yamauchi right before Yamauchi was meeting with the president of Sharp. 1980's Game & Watch: Ball was the first in the lineup, and used a chip that could display 72 segments.
Soon, the team was putting out one Game & Watch title almost every month, releasing 59 total between its inception and 1991.
In an internal interview, the late long-time Nintendo producer and president Satoru Iwata said, "If it weren't for Game & Watch, today's handheld game systems would probably be different."