Lion

"Run back and forth with chair."  --instruction manual

Developer
Nintendo R&D1

Release Date
29th of April, 1981

The video game industry has a habit of evolution through mitosis. Whether it be players, sticks or screens developers periodically reach that point where they ask the inevitable question - "If it works with one, why not try two?". The results are never entirely predictable. It often proves to be more than a mere quantitative doubling, but something that fundamentally alters the core function of the game. In the case of Game & Watch, such an evolution would occur twice in just thirteen months. And the first of these evolutions came in the unassuming final entry of the Gold series known simply as Lion.

The centrepiece of Lion is a three-storey tall cage in which the player must contain a number of...well, lions. They do this by steering two chair-wielding zoo-keepers up and down - one on the left and one of the right. Though there has been some aspect of multitasking since the series' beginning, this is the first Game & Watch title to split the players' attention over two distinctly moveable characters. Keenly aware that they were pushing their audience into unfamiliar territory, Nintendo's developers designed this game to be sympathetic by maintaining vertical symmetry in visuals and in controls.

It is easy to miss the novelty of multitasking in an age where people have grown accustomed to having a phone in one hand, a game in the other, and a third screen blasting out their favourite television programme over the top (possibly with their second favourite programme on picture-in-picture). But game-players of the eighties were not as used to being stretched in this cognitive direction, and the appeal of this challenge affirmed it as a mainstay in the future of the Game & Watch range.

There are teething troubles, however. The player can only move one of the two zoo-keepers on each 'frame', which can stymie the flow of movement at times. And with only three positions for each character, it's easy to get trapped in the rhythm of centre-react-centre with no need for strategic thinking. On the positive side, Lion's scenario is perhaps the best use of Game & Watch's trademark 'perpetual crisis' so far. This time, the player is not relieving a disaster in progress but containing a disaster yet to happen. A disaster that will only happen if the player is inattentive, at the very time their attention is being carefully bisected.

In terms of retrospective celebration, Lion's share of the attention has not been wanting. It has hit that coveted trifecta of Game & Watch Gallery bonus, WarioWare microgame, and Smash Bros. stage hazard. Rarely though is it mentioned in discussions of Game & Watch classics, and I would not have suspected it to make the leap forward that it does. Eight games and two product lines in, this franchise continues to be surprising. The golden age is by no means over yet.

Crossover

"A plurality of polarizing plates."  --U.S. patent abstract

Developer
Nintendo

U.S. Patent Priority Date
10th of March, 1981

Though this blog's arbitrary starting point of 1980 was fitting in many respects it inevitably causes some aspects of Nintendo's past to be misrepresented. And for nothing is this more true than their production of toys, where the dying gasps of a decade-strong venture come across as little more than momentary interruptions to a different story. But the truth of it is, it's very much the same story. It was through toys that this aimless ancient business found its focus. It was through toys that its staff learned lessons of design, and of play, that proved vital to their future success.

It was a crucial chapter of Nintendo's history. And this is where it ends.

Crossover is a combinatorial conundrum that clearly extends from the lineage, and massive commercial success, of Rubik's Cube. And just like the last such product from Nintendo, the permutations arise from extraneous components being shunted in and out of the play-field. In this case, there are eight squares which slide in and out of a 4x4 matrix  - that is, one spare for each row and column. The entire top casing is semi-transparent to allow players to see the outliers and keep track of the game's current state.

...to a point. There's a slight wrinkle in that each square of the 4x4 grid has a fixed semi-transparent cover which polarises light in one of two alternating directions. And the twenty-four movable tiles underneath likewise alternate between two polarisations. If the polarisations of the tile and cover agree, light passes through. If not, the light is blocked and the resultant square appears to be filled. The goal is to cycle the tiles around until all polarisations clash and the playfield is one solid colour.

I hope that description made the mechanics of Crossover clear to you.  And if it did, would you mind explaining them to me sometime?

It is clear from the design of this puzzle that the challenge, and the intrigue, of Crossover revolve around it being as obfuscated as possible. The patent delights in claiming that the difficultly players have in identifying and remembering the underlying configuration makes it "more interesting and complicated". In my mind, it is more of a two-edged sword. The reduced physicality of the mechanism immediately make it seem less intuitive, and less fair, than Ten Billion. Coupling that with an intangible manipulation of electromagnetic wave forms, and the whole thing feels purpose built for frustration rather than fun.

Admittedly, this was the trend of puzzles at this time. And it is difficult to speculate on just how fun this all might have been without a physical Crossover unit in front of me. But judging by the quantity produced, and the very limited international distribution, I feel safe in saying that Crossover did not quite match the success of its predecessor. In the end though, the question of whether it was a failure or not is almost an irrelevancy. Crossover might come as the end of a long legacy of toys and puzzles, but it should not take the blame for ending it.

Ever since it started, Nintendo's toy department was a one man show. And that one man was no longer available. In some ways, Gunpei Yokoi was a victim of his own success. The engineer who wiled away his leisure time puzzling out the Ultra Hand was now in such hot demand there was precious little time for side projects. The rapidly swelling Game & Watch line was the pride of the company, and had grown an insatiable international market with which no polarising puzzle-box could ever complete. After two decades of building the company to the point where it was poised to conquer the world, Nintendo's toy division suddenly found itself a step back from where the company was headed. The best it could offer was to come to a dignified end, close this chapter of Nintendo's history, and pass its proud legacy on. So it did.

And yet here, in the throes of amiibo fever, one cannot shake the sense that this chapter might not quite be over yet.