The Original Retro Shells

One day way back when, a certain Gunpei Yokoi was sitting on a Bullet train, no doubt his mind on other things, when he spotted a fellow traveller (presumably bored) playing with the buttons on his calculator. (Make that definately bored.) This gave Gunpei an idea and lo and behold the Nintendo Game and Watch was born. I friggin' LOVED these handheld games back in the early 80s (they were produced from 1980 to 1991) and was positively obssessed with the orange Donkey Kong version. I even accidentaly put my foot through a toilet lid on my travels to get one (long story to be written another time.)
Unlike the handhelds of today which can play hundreds of games, the Game and Watch only had one game on a LCD screen along with the clock/alarm. Actually there were two games (game A & B) but B was simply a faster version of A. There were sixty made in all and they were such cool things to have back then, especially in school.

Donkey Kong: My Ruin

The ones I had were Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong II, Donkey Kong Jr, Pinball, Mario Bros Factory, Parachute and Lifeboat. There might have been others but those were the stand out titles for this young (back then) gamer. I may purchase a few at some point again, when I am better able to justify shelling out £70 for what is in effect a dinosaur piece of kit. (Im certainly not at the moment as im halfway through buying an entire PAL Dreamcast collection.)
One could say it was these games that started it all off for me regarding videogames. They were the little lithium battery 'seeds' planted in my brain which would go on to bigger gaming things and indeed flower still to this very day.