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| [[Image:GWSymbol copy.jpg|thumb|300px|right]] | | #REDIRECT[[Game & Watch (universe)]] |
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| The '''Game & Watch universe''' refers to the ''Smash Bros.'' series' collection of characters, stages, and properties concerning and modeled off of Nintendo's old ''Game & Watch'' series of dedicated handheld gaming devices, released from 1980 to 1991. For predating even 1981's ''Donkey Kong'', the ''Game & Watch'' series is sometimes labeled the grandfather of gaming. Of the various game franchises that have been heavily represented thus far in the ''Smash Bros.'' series, this can be considered the most "out there" universe of them all, featuring a unique and distinctive flat "mascot" character referred to as [[Mr. Game and Watch|Mr. Game & Watch]] as a playable character in ''Melee''.
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| ==Franchise description==
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| Prior to his work in Nintendo in video games, where he would eventually create the first games in the ''[[Metroid (universe)|Metroid]]'' and ''[[Kid Icarus (universe)|Kid Icarus]]'' series, Gunpei Yokoi was traveling on a Shinkansen Bullet Train when he saw a businessman pressing buttons on a Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) calculator in an attempt to kill time. It occured to Yokoi that there could be an audience for a handheld machine meant specifically for game-based entertainment, so as head for Nintendo's R&D1 he created the first games in what would be a long-running line of ''Game & Watch'' handheld dedicated consoles (dedicated in that each individual unit had one game built into it). The games in the franchise were released as "subseries" based on the consistent design of each Game & Watch; the first set of G&W games released in 1980 was called the "Silver" series. The Game & Watch made handhelds vastly popular and prompted other companies such as Tiger Electronics to produce similar devices of their own.
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| After the first ''Game & Watch'' games helped carve more of the path towards gaming as a mainstream commodity, a path formerly started by such products as ''Pong'' and ''Tetris'' and would later be continued by ''Nintendo'' in releases such as ''Donkey Kong'' and then ''Super Mario Bros.'' for the NES, new subseries of ''Game & Watch'' games were developed and released in the years afterward, and they would eventually be superseded by the Nintendo Game Boy, which was the first handheld to be able to play more than one game. The sequel subseries to ''Silver'', ''Gold'', was made in 1981, and further new subseries of Game & Watch products that were released in the years afterward were the ''Widescreen'' (1981-1982), ''Multiscreen'' (1982-1989), ''Tabletop'' (1983), ''Panorama'' (1983-1984), ''New Widescreen'' (1982-1991), ''Super Color'' (1984), ''Micro Vs. System'' (1984), ''Crystal Screen'' (1986), and much later in 1998, the ''Mini Classics'' series. Throughout the Game & Watch's entire history, approximately 59 distinctive titles were released. The name of each subseries generally denotes the physical build and layout of the game devices in that subseries, such as games in the ''Multiscreen'' subseries being "clamshell"-designed handheld devices with two separate screens displayed simultaneously, one above the other. The Yokoi-designed multi-screen layout of ''Game & Watch'' gaming devices is extremely similar to the design of the modern-day handheld gaming device, the Nintendo DS.
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| The games themselves were generally simple in design, especially so for the earliest of the games, such as ''Manhole'', which comes packaged with the e-Reader for Game Boy Advance. They often had buttons titled "Game A" and "Game B", where selecting one game mode over the other would affect difficulty. As the rest of the gaming industry expanded and developed, the ''Game & Watch'' series became somewhat less antiquated; it would soon play fully ported versions of ''Donkey Kong'', ''Balloon Fight'', ''Super Mario Bros.'', and ''The Legend of Zelda''. ''Game & Watch'' games were not limited to known Nintendo characters either; there were also games based on Disney's Mickey Mouse, and several of the games featured an unnamed fully black-colored character in particular.
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| After the ''Game & Watch'' series was superseded by the Game Boy and its many future successors, the ''Game & Watch'' name took its place as an artifact from gaming's early history. When HAL Laboratory was designing ''[[Super Smash Bros. Melee]]'' in 2001, it decided to renew historical appreciation for the franchise by featuring properties from ''Game & Watch'' in ''Melee'' as a playable franchise alongside such major game franchises as ''Mario'' and ''Zelda''. To this end they gave the unnamed character from several of the games the identity [[Mr. Game and Watch|Mr. Game & Watch]] and made him to be the playable "mascot" of the ''Game & Watch'' series. ''Game & Watch'' has since become a better known subject among the gaming community, enough that properties from it make occasional cameo appearances elsewhere, such as a false clone of Mr. Game and Watch appearing as an NPC in ''Wario Land 4'' for Game Boy Advance.
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| ==In ''Super Smash Bros. Melee''==
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| ''Game & Watch'' is a franchise first introduced in the ''Smash'' series in ''Melee'', featuring one character and one stage.
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| ===Character===
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| [[Image:SSBMIconGAW.png|right]]
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| *'''[[Mr. Game and Watch|Mr. Game & Watch]]''': A small, flat, black, and voiceless personality who made several appearances among several of the games in the ''Game & Watch'' series, Mr. Game and Watch was given his identity for his appearance as a ''Melee'' fighter. A character like no other in the ''Smash'' series, Mr."G&W" is almost totally flat, and nearly every movement he makes is distinctively frame-by-frame and is accompanied by a "beep-and-boop" sound. As a ''Melee'' fighter, he is also unique in his B-Forward move, Judgement, which creates a random effect that can be powerful, but may actually hurt him at times, and his B-Down Bucket collects projectiles thrown at him; when three projectiles are gathered, their accumulated damage and knockback is dealt the next time he whips out his bucket and there is an opponent in his way. However, overall he lacks outstanding power and has light constitution, making him not a hard opponent to deal with, so he is among the bottom tier in the competitive metagame.
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| ===Stage===
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| ''Melee'' features one stage based, quite literally, on the ''Game & Watch'' platform.
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| *'''[[Superflat World: Flat Zone]]''': This stage takes place in the screen of a giant old-style ''Game & Watch'' platform, where the characters appear 3D but can seem to reside in a flat space. Visual elements of its layout are combined from elements of the ''Game & Watch'' entries named ''Manhole'', ''Helmet'', and ''Oil Panic''. It has several platforms and one small house rooftop to the right, and various hazards such as spilled oil on the ground and falling tools from the sky complicate the action. This could be the smallest and most cramped stage in the game, with the left, right, and upper KO boundaries all rather close to the edges of the visible screen. This makes for a stage not often allowed in [[Tournament Legal]]. However, it is always fought as the last stage in [[All-Star Mode]] (where the opponents are 25 Mr. Game & Watches), and it is the stage where Mr. Game & Watch's [[Target Test]] challenge takes place as well.
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| ===Full Trophy List===
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| *[[Mr. Game and Watch|Mr.Game & Watch]]'s three game trophies
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| *[[Game and Watch|Game & Watch]]
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| ==In ''Super Smash Bros. Brawl''==
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| As of now, no ''Game & Watch''-specific content has been revealed for this game.
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| {{Universe}}
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| [[Category:Universes]]
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