Some games make you build empires, others simply want you to not let anyone hit the ground — and Fire belongs precisely to that second, purely nerve-racking category. This classic Game & Watch game from the early era of Nintendo's portable LCD devices puts the player in the role of a rescuer and turns a simple principle into a surprisingly stressful race against time.
The game mechanics are a model of the exemplary simplicity on which the entire Game & Watch series was built. People jump out of a burning building and you, with a pair of firefighters holding a rescue tarp, run along the bottom of the screen to catch them. Every bounced person must be safely delivered to the ambulance on the other side. The pace relentlessly speeds up, more and more figures appear, and a single miss means a loss. It is a pure reflexive challenge where every fraction of a second counts.
Fire was created during a period when Nintendo, under the leadership of Gunpei Yokoi, was only just discovering what could be done with a cheap LCD display and simple electronics. The philosophy was clear: no levels or story, just one perfectly tuned principle that drives the player to chase higher and higher scores. It was precisely this purity of design that made Game & Watch a phenomenon.
Culturally, Fire fits into the mosaic of titles that defined what portable gaming looked like before the arrival of the Game Boy. These little devices were immensely popular among children and adults alike, and the principle of catching falling objects became one of the archetypes of the genre — you will find variations on it in electronic games all over the world.
The simplicity and immediate comprehensibility make Fire an ideal illustration of why Game & Watch worked. You don't need instructions, you don't need time to learn — just a few seconds and you are already desperately chasing the figures across the screen so that no one hits the pavement.
Why play: For pure, addictive reflexive fun from one of the archetypal titles of portable gaming, where every second decides between rescue and a fall.
Game 2 of 17 for Nintendo Game & Watch
