Mario Bros. (G&W)

If you recall the name Mario today, a jumping platformer most likely comes to mind. But the Game & Watch version is something completely different and in many ways even more charming: the pair of brothers here does not chase mushrooms but toils in some kind of packing plant, where crates travel along a belt and both characters must hand them off in sync from one floor to another. It is a pure game of reflexes and coordination, built on a principle that Nintendo had perfected at the time.

Mario Bros. belongs to the Game & Watch line, pocket LCD games that Nintendo manufactured from 1980. Behind them stands the engineer Gunpei Yokoi, the man who later also designed the Game Boy and whose philosophy of "lateral thinking with seasoned technology" meant doing astonishing things with cheap, long-established components. A watch and a game in one: each unit had a fixed image on the display and lit-up segments that created the illusion of movement.

This particular title came out in a dual-screen variant, where two LCD surfaces stand side by side in a flip-open case. The player controls both characters at once, one on each side, and must pass the packages along before they fall. As the pace increases, it becomes a relentless test of concentration, where a single hesitation is enough and the coveted score collapses.

The cultural significance of Game & Watch is enormous. These little devices literally created the market for handheld electronic games, taught millions of people that a game can fit in a pocket, and both financially and conceptually prepared the ground for the later Game Boy. The cross-shaped D-pad, today a matter of course on every gamepad, debuted precisely on several Game & Watch units.

Mario Bros. in this form is still a great example today of how little it takes for addictive fun. No story, no levels in today's sense, just increasing speed and your nerves. It is a game you understand in five seconds and will sit at for twenty minutes with tightly pressed lips.

Why play: For a pure, instantly comprehensible arcade challenge and a piece of hardware history from which the entire world of handheld gaming grew.