Nintendo is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto, Japan. It develops video games and video game consoles. Nintendo was founded in 1889 as by craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi and originally produce ...

has released several ''

Mario is a character created by Japanese video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. He is the title character of the ''Mario'' franchise and the mascot of Japanese video game company Nintendo. Mario has appeared in over 200 video games since his creat ...

'' and ''

Donkey Kong is a video game franchise created by Shigeru Miyamoto and owned by Nintendo. It follows the adventures of a gorilla named Donkey Kong (character), Donkey Kong and his clan of other Ape, apes and monkeys. The franchise primarily consists of plat ...

'' LCD video games for the ''

Game & Watch The Game & Watch brand ( ''Gēmu & Uotchi''; called ''Tricotronic'' in West Germany and Austria, abbreviated as ''G&W'') is a series of handheld electronic games developed, manufactured, released, and marketed by Nintendo from 1980 in video gam ...

'' series.

Game & Watch games

''Donkey Kong''

''Donkey Kong'' was developed by

Nintendo R&D1 commonly abbreviated as Nintendo R&D1, was Nintendo's oldest video game development team. It was known as before splitting in 1978. Its creation coincided with Nintendo's entry into the video game industry, and the original R&D1 was headed by ...

as part of the ''

Multi Screen'' series, featuring two LCD screens. Released in 1982, it is a

port A port is a maritime facility comprising one or more wharves or loading areas, where ships load and discharge cargo and passengers. Although usually situated on a sea coast or estuary, ports can also be found far inland, such as Ham ...

of the arcade game, where

is a carpenter attempting to rescue his girlfriend from an evil, or at least angry, ape. Like the arcade ''

'', Mario must climb a building while avoiding barrels; however, beating the game is different from the arcade version. The player must trigger a lever on the upper screen, activating a hook, which Mario must then jump and catch. If the player succeeds, a peg will be removed and Mario will return to the starting point, but if the player does not, Mario will fall to the ground and lose a life. Removing all available pegs in this manner will cause Donkey Kong's platform to collapse, and he will fall to the ground.

''Donkey Kong Jr.''

In this 1982 game, the player controls

Donkey Kong Jr. is a 1982 arcade platform game that was released by Nintendo. It is the sequel to ''Donkey Kong'', but with the roles reversed compared to its predecessor: Mario (previously named "Jumpman") is now the villain and Donkey Kong Jr. is trying to ...

as he works to save his father,

, while watching out for obstacles like

crocodile Crocodiles (family (biology), family Crocodylidae) or true crocodiles are large semiaquatic reptiles that live throughout the tropics in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Australia. The term crocodile is sometimes used even more loosely to inclu ...

s, birds, and electric flashes. The game was released as part of the ''Mini-Classics'' series in 1998 (a set of four ''Game & Watch'' games

ported In software engineering, porting is the process of adapting software for the purpose of achieving some form of execution in a computing environment that is different from the one that a given program (meant for such execution) was originally desi ...

to small

keychain A keychain (also key fob or keyring) is a small ring or chain of metal to which several keys can be attached. The length of a keychain allows an item to be used more easily than if connected directly to a keyring. Some keychains allow one or bo ...

-bound handhelds) and was later included in the

Game Boy Color The (commonly abbreviated as GBC) is a handheld game console, manufactured by Nintendo, which was released in Japan on October 21, 1998 and to international markets that November. It is the successor to the Game Boy and is part of the Game ...

Game & Watch Gallery 2 ''Game & Watch Gallery 2'' is a game developed by TOSE and released by Nintendo for the Game Boy in 1997 and the Game Boy Color in 1998. It is the third game in the ''Game & Watch Gallery'' series, containing six remastered games from the ''Gam ...

'' '' Game & Watch Gallery 3'' in 2000 and as DSiWare game in 2010. In this game,

gives payback to

for stealing his girlfriend, Pauline, by locking him up in a cage.

''Donkey Kong II''

''Donkey Kong II'', which is similar to ''Donkey Kong Jr.'', was developed by

and released as part of the ''

Vertical Multi Screen'' series, featuring two LCD screens. It was released in 1983. Donkey Kong Jr. must touch a key, which makes it move up to the top screen. He must then climb to the top screen while avoiding things such as electrical wires, crocodiles & birds. When he gets to the top screen, he must touch the key again, which makes it move right next to a keyhole below one of the chains. He must then climb up the rope below the keyhole, while avoiding birds. When he gets to the top of the rope, one of the chains will unlock. He must do this 4 times until he saves Donkey Kong. After that, the game will start over, at a somewhat faster pace.

''Donkey Kong Circus''

''Donkey Kong Circus'' is a ''

Panorama'' series game released in 1984 as an edit to an earlier Mickey Mouse game. In this game, the player controls

, who is placed on a barrel while juggling pineapples and avoiding flames. This game is very similar to ''Mario the Juggler'', the last

game, as they both involve a character juggling while avoiding objects.

''Donkey Kong Hockey''

''Donkey Kong Hockey'' was developed by

and released in 1984 as part of the ''

Micro Vs.'' series. The game features one LCD screen and two attached control pads. The hockey features Donkey Kong as one of the players and Mario as the other.

''Mario Bros.''

''Mario Bros.'' is a ''

Multi Screen'' series game by

released on March 14, 1983. Despite the title, it is unrelated in gameplay to the ''

Mario Bros. is a 1983 arcade game developed and published for arcades by Nintendo. It was designed by Shigeru Miyamoto and Gunpei Yokoi, Nintendo's chief engineer. Italian twin brother plumbers Mario and Luigi exterminate creatures emerging from the ...

'' arcade game. In this game,

Luigi is a fictional character featured in video games and related media released by Nintendo. Created by Japanese video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, Luigi is portrayed as the younger fraternal twin brother and sidekick of Mario, Nintendo's masc ...

is on the left screen and

is on the right screen. The game's clamshell design is unusual in the series; it opens horizontally like a book (in the

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

ese

right to left In a script (commonly shortened to right to left or abbreviated RTL, RL-TB or R2L), writing starts from the right of the page and continues to the left, proceeding from top to bottom for new lines. Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Pashto, Urdu, Kashmi ...

reading order) and not vertically (like the

Nintendo DS The is a handheld game console produced by Nintendo, released globally across 2004 and 2005. The DS, an initialism for "Developers' System" or "Dual Screen", introduced distinctive new features to handheld games: two LCD screens working in tan ...

). The brothers are working in a

bottling plant A bottling company is a commercial enterprise whose output is the bottling of beverages for distribution. Many bottling companies are franchisees of corporations such as Coca-Cola and PepsiCo who distribute the beverage in a specific geographic ...

, moving packages between the various levels of the bottling machine. The only controls for the game are up and down buttons for each brother. Mario first gets a pallet out of the machine on the lowest level and puts in on the

conveyor belt A conveyor belt is the carrying medium of a belt conveyor system (often shortened to belt conveyor). A belt conveyor system is one of many types of conveyor systems. A belt conveyor system consists of two or more pulleys (sometimes referred to ...

. Luigi then takes it from the other side and puts it on the belt above it. There are 3 points on each side the brothers must do this. Finally, once the package is filled Luigi tosses it onto the delivery truck. Once the truck is full, the brothers get a short break. If the brothers drop a pallet, they are yelled at by their bosses. If three pallets are dropped, the game will end. A homebrew port and sequel, titled ''Mario Bros. II'', was also released in 1987 by Thundersoft for the

Commodore 64 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in the Guinness ...

. It replaced the bottle factory with a cake factory. In the

remake A remake is a film, television series, video game, song or similar form of entertainment that is based upon and retells the story of an earlier production in the same medium—e.g., a "new version of an existing film". A remake tells the same ...

s of this game for '' Game & Watch Gallery'', '' Game & Watch Gallery 3'' and '' 4'', Mario and Luigi are catching what becomes a cake, which is boxed and wrapped up for delivery (with

Wario is a fictional character in Nintendo's Mario (franchise), ''Mario'' series, designed as an Arch rival, arch-rival to Mario. He first appeared in the 1992 Game Boy game ''Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins'' as the main antagonist and final Bos ...

portraying the delivery man). The remakes add a new twist to the game by having

Bowser , or King Koopa, is a fictional character, the primary antagonist in Nintendo's Mario (franchise), ''Mario'' franchise, and the arch-nemesis of Mario. In Japan, the character bears the title of . Bowser is the leader of the turtle-like Koopa ...

, who waits at the top middle of the screen, cause the conveyor belt to reverse on occasion, forcing Mario and Luigi to correct it with switches placed at their sides. Like nearly all ''Game & Watch'' titles, ''Mario Bros.'' features the standard Game A and tougher Game B.

''Mario the Juggler''

''Mario the Juggler'' is a ''

New Wide Screen'' series game featuring

as the juggler in the very first Game & Watch game, ''Ball''. Released by

in October 1991, it was the final game to be released in the ''

'' series.

''Mario's Bombs Away''

''Mario's Bombs Away'' is a ''

Panorama'' series game released in 1983. The game consists of a military-clad Mario delivering bombs from left to right, while keeping them away from flaming oil spills and enemy torches. It features a colour LCD screen without an internal back-light, which faces downward in order to expose the translucent rear to an external light source, e.g. daylight. The player views the action in a mirror that reflects the screen.

''Mario's Cement Factory''

''Mario's Cement Factory'' was a game developed by

and first released in 1983 for the ''

Tabletop'' series. The game was soon after released as part of the ''Game & Watch New Wide Screen'' series, and also as part of the ''Mini-Classics'' series in 1998 (a set of four ''Game & Watch'' games

ed to small

-bound handhelds). It was also released as part of the '' Game & Watch Gallery'' series for the Game Boy and has a

DSiWare This is a list of games and applications, collectively known as DSiWare, for the Nintendo DSi handheld game console, available for download via the DSi Shop and unplayable on earlier DS models. An update released for the Nintendo 3DS in June 2011 ...

release. In this game, the player assumes the role of

, working in a

cement A cement is a binder, a chemical substance used for construction that sets, hardens, and adheres to other materials to bind them together. Cement is seldom used on its own, but rather to bind sand and gravel ( aggregate) together. Cement mix ...

factory A factory, manufacturing plant or a production plant is an industrial facility, often a complex consisting of several buildings filled with machinery, where workers manufacture items or operate machines which process each item into another. T ...

. The player must empty cement from the hoppers into the cement trucks below. A conveyor belt at the top moves cement into hoppers which can only hold three loads at a time. An alarm sounds when one has been filled to capacity. To move Mario around the screen, the player must use elevators located at the center. If the player moves to the center when an elevator is not present, Mario falls to the bottom and loses a life. Losing a life may also occur if the player stays on the elevator too long, in which case Mario will either fall or be crushed. There are safe zones at the top and bottom of the elevators allowing Mario to hang without danger of being hurt. The game includes two game modes, Game A and Game B. By selecting Game B, the player begins at a higher difficulty level than Game mode A. It was also the 7th Mario game.

''Super Mario Bros.''

''Super Mario Bros.'' was released in two different versions: YM-801 (Crystal Screen series, released June 1986) and YM-105 (New Wide Screen series, released March 1988). Later the same game was repackaged into a yellow special edition Disk-Kun character case (YM-901-S), a character used to advertise the Famicom Disk System. This version was limited to 10,000 units, never sold in stores, and given away to winners of the Famicoms F-1 Grand Prix tournament. The game plays like a scaled down version of the original NES game and features eight levels, which

must pass in order to rescue the princess. The game also features 1 Up Mushrooms, Stars, and the enemies Bullet Bill and Lakitu. Each of the eight worlds feature Mario navigating a scrolling platformer. Mario must avoid getting trapped behind walls as the screen scrolls and navigate successful jumps which can lead to falling into the water below. The level progresses until Mario has moved all of the allotted "distance" points. Distance points are removed for each successful forward movement and added on for each successful backwards movement. Upon beating the eighth level, Mario receives a kiss from the princess, Bowser is thrown out of the castle, and then the game loops with longer distances. Within the levels, 1-Up Mushrooms and

Stars A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma held together by its gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night, but their immense distances from Earth ma ...

—staples of the Mario series—can be found by hitting the floor above Mario. When the mushroom is collected they will add a life (unless Mario has the maximum 3 reserved lives, in which case only points will be added); when the Star is collected Mario will be invincible for 10 seconds.

Game watches

From the early mid-1980s to the late mid-1990s,

Nelsonic Industries Nelsonic Industries was an American electronics manufacturing and development company that operated from Long Island City, Queens, New York CityShea, Tom. Shrinking Pac-Man Leads game-wristwatch market'. InfoWorld. pp. 44-45. 20 December 1982. in ...

produced a line of multi-purpose

wristwatch A watch is a portable timepiece intended to be carried or worn by a person. It is designed to keep a consistent movement despite the motions caused by the person's activities. A wristwatch is designed to be worn around the wrist, attached by ...

es called Game Watches. These electronic devices employed an LCD to either tell the time or to allow players to play a game. In 1989, Nelsonic obtained licensing from Nintendo to produce a series of Game Watches based on popular Nintendo franchises such as Mario/Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, and Star Fox. These games would enjoy limited inherited popularity based on the popularities of the original series, and they would periodically be re-released in a variety of colors. Originally retailing at moderate prices, these games have now become collectors items on the secondary market and fetch large prices at places like eBay. The earliest of the Nintendo-licensed watches was ''Super Mario Bros.'', which was released in June 1989. The ''Super Mario Bros. 2'' Game Watch was released shortly after. Subsequent to this Nelsonic released Game Watch versions of ''Super Mario Bros. 3'' (1990), ''Super Mario Bros. 4'' (1991, based on ''

Super Mario World ''Super Mario World,'' known in Japan as is a platform game, platform video game developed and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). It was released in Japan in 1990, North America in 1991 and Europe and A ...

''), and ''Super Mario Race'' (1992) Additionally, ''Donkey Kong'' (1994) was released as a wristwatch, featuring Mario. Critics were generally pleased with the game watches and praised their stylishness as articles of clothing. Gameplay was roundly criticized as oversimplified, however, and the watches were considered to have been largely unsuccessful in evoking their original NES title namesakes. ''Super Mario Brothers 3'' was described as "nothing like the NES game" and its single-screen layout resulted in play dynamics that were described as "boring".Bielby, Matt, ed. ''No. 1 Nintendo Game Watches''.

Super Play ''Super Play'' was a British Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) magazine which ran from 1 October 1992 to September 1996. Overview ''Super Play'' covered in great detail the role-playing video game genre. Many of these games were ne ...

. Issue 2. Pg. 21. December 1992.

Barcode Battler II game

In 1992,

Epoch Co. is a Japanese toy and computer games company founded in 1958 which is best known for manufacturing Barcode Battler and ''Doraemon'' video games, and the Sylvanian Families series of toys. Its current Representative President is Michihiro Maeda. ...

was licensed to print a series of Nintendo-themed cards for their

Barcode Battler II The is a handheld gaming console, handheld game console released by Epoch Co. in March 1991 in video gaming, 1991. The console at retail was supplied with a number of cards, each of which had a barcode. Upon starting the game, the player must ...

platform. Card sets were printed with both Mario and Zelda themes. Functioning similarly to an LCD

e-Reader An e-reader, also called an e-book reader or e-book device, is a mobile electronic device that is designed primarily for the purpose of reading digital e-books and periodicals. Any device that can display text on a screen may act as an e-read ...

, the Barcode Battler II required players to swipe barcodes printed on cards across a visual input in order to enter characters, enemies, items, and spells into the console. The ''Super Mario World: Super Mario Bros. 4'' set features 30 software-only cards and is based on the SNES's original ''

''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lcd Games in the Mario Series Donkey Kong video games Game & Watch games Nintendo Research & Development 1 games Video games developed in Japan Video games developed in the United States Nintendo-related lists Mario spin-off games