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.