Ball

This is where it all began. If you want to understand where portable gaming as you know it today came from, you have to go back to a single device with a silver body and a simple LCD display — the first Game & Watch, called Ball, from 1980. This is literally the zero point of the history of Nintendo's handheld games.

The gameplay principle is disarmingly simple: you control a character juggling balls, and your only task is to not let any of them fall. By moving your hands left and right you catch and toss the balls in a rhythm that gradually speeds up. No levels, no story — just pure reflexive challenge and the pursuit of the highest possible score. But it is precisely this simplicity that makes Ball immortal.

Behind the whole concept stands the legendary Gunpei Yokoi, a designer whose philosophy of "lateral thinking with seasoned technology" shaped Nintendo for decades to come. Yokoi bet on cheap, reliable, and accessible components — LCD displays and simple electronics from calculators — and turned them into entertainment that almost anyone could afford. Ball was proof that a game does not need power but a good idea.

The cultural significance of this device is enormous. Game & Watch kicked off an entire era of handheld electronic games and laid the foundations on which the Game Boy and all of Nintendo's later handheld consoles would later grow. Without Ball and its successors, the gaming industry would have taken quite a different path. It is a relic that shows how little it took for a phenomenon to be born.

Thanks to its historical significance, Ball was even commemorated later — Nintendo never forgot it, and this title remains a symbol of the beginning of the entire line. For collectors and fans of retro hardware, it is an iconic piece around which the story of portable gaming revolves.

Why play: To touch the very beginning of handheld gaming with your own hands — a primitive but historically priceless moment when an entire category of entertainment was born.