Video: Before the Switch, before the 3DS, and even before the Game Boy, Nintendo had the Game & Watch: A series of handheld video games that were primitive by today’s standards, but mind-blowing to ’80s kids. And they made such an impression on computer scientist Thomas Tilley that he recently created a gigantic version of the toy built around a 46-inch LCD display.
Aside from the flatscreen and a hidden laptop running a Flash-based recreation of the simple Octopus game, everything else in this over-sized Game & Watch – 17 times larger than the original – was part of a custom build that took about six months to fabricate. Sure, its size might negate the best part of the original Game & Watch devices, but I’d rather have this hanging on my wall than a questionable da Vinci.