QJ's Game & Watch - Nintendo Vintage Retro Games Info

Here's a list of the Nintendo Game & Watch games with a small bit of infomation about each one. Although all of them were made and manufactured by Nintendo, there were many different brands names which they were released under, often in addition to the regular Nintendo versions. I hope you'll find some interesting facts here. You'll be surprised exactly how many different versions and variations actually exist or are rumoured to exist! They are many unanswered questions which I guess is another reason why collectors are so interested in these classic handhelds.

Silver Series
01. Ball (AC-01). Released 28/04/1980. Also released under the Time Out brand which was called Toss Up.
02. Flagman (FL-02). Released 05/06/1980. Also released under the Time Out brand which was called Flag Man.
03. Vermin (MT-03). Released 10/07/1980. Also released under the Time Out brand which was called Exterminator and in a black colour case rather than the usual white. Also a few black versions of Vermin itself have also been found and it's unkown if these are early release versions (as pictured in genuine Japanesse advertisment flyers) or fakes (where the front plates have been swopped with Exterminator games). Also a blue version of Vermin exists under the Mizuno brand and oddly bears the model number of Fire (RC-04) on the back of the game. Again it's unsure why this mis-match of model numbers came about, but one theory is that because the Mizuno version was blue it was easier and cheaper to use the game cases from Fire rather than re-manufacture a new batch of MT-03 cases for what would have been a very small quantity.
04. Fire (RC-04). Released 31/07/1980. Also released under the Time Out brand which was called Fireman Fireman. This game was the most popular of the Silver Series and was later re-made as Fire (FR-27) using the same name in the widescreen series.
05. Judge (IP-05). Released 04/11/1980. This game is available in 2 colours; green and purple. The green was the earlier release but there was a slight fault with player 2's scoring in the fact that if player 1 incorrectly dodged when he had the higher number, player 2 would only be awarded 1 point instead of 2. The purple version does not have this scoring error and I can only assume Nintendo re-released this game in purple to clearly identify which version had the score bug fix.

Gold Series
06. Manhole (MH-06). Released 29/01/1981. Also released under the Computer Games Limited brand (CGL) with the CGL logo printed on the front of the game. This game was later re-made as Manhole (NH-103) using the same name in the new widescreen series.
07. Helmet (CN-07). Released 21/02/1981. The UK version of this game was called Headache and was released under the Computer Games Limited brand (CGL). I can only assume because 'helmet' is often used in a context as a rude word they decided to censor it! Ironically the instruction booklet in the Headache boxes was unchanged and still came with the original Helmet instructions. Another odd thing about this game that I've discovered is that at least some versions of this game have the model number CN-17 stamped onto the processor chip inside rather than the correct CN-07 number, I currently have no idea why this is so and it could be an update or bug fix. There's also a cheat for this game, please see collector Aaron's excellent site for infomation about this here.
08. Lion (LN-08). Released 28/04/1981. Also released with the Computer Games Limited (CGL) logo printed onto the front plate of the games.