The inofficial Game&Watch collectors catalog

The culture of collecting in the field of computer and video games experiences a growing number of active people worldwide. Due to the powers of innovation, quality, playability and design the Game & Watch series has now the reputation of being the “Märklin train” of video games. In fact these Nintendo systems are unique and arouse more nostalgia for visitors to our exhibitions than the Commodore C64. Reason enough for much later-born video game enthusiasts to be interested in and afford one or more collector’s items.

The difficult task of David Gschmeidler and Gerhard Meyer was to develop a reference work that addresses nostalgia fetishists as well as tourists – a compendium of all the Game & Watch devices, which functions as an appetizer for young collectors, but also pleases the often critical community of specialists.

The Collector Catalog is more than the name suggests. Besides game descriptions and screenshots which are important for new collectors object images were produced for each game and digitally processed. In addition to perfectly aligned and lit photos of the handhelds themselves there are even vectorized objects from the respective game for background illustration – the random reader does not notice those but the expert puts this book under the pillow!

Additional information such as a rarity barometer and price trends are a unique feature of the book, however, they could be a little smaller. Much more relevant is the timeless content of the compendium. The contents primarily originate from the gameandwatch.at and gameandwatch.ch websites. Both are reputable reference portals about Game&Watch. It is clear that the writers of the collectors catalog rely on “old hands” and have obviously sacrificed a lot of time and meticulous attention to detail in order to produce this charming and unique book. The printing quality is also appealing .

In direct comparison with the for some time available “The History of Nintendo” it becomes obvious that the collectors catalog is slightly more expensive and does not feature as many model variations and contextual information on the history and origin of the Game & Watch series . However, qualitatively the collector catalog wins hands down in terms of layout , clarity, design, photography and illustrations. Therefore “The History of Nintendo” is reading for professionals, while the “Unofficial Game & Watch Collectors Catalogue” targets a broad audience and may be referred to as a standard work.

You can order the book here: http://www.gameandwatch.at