Space Invaders on your wrist: the glory years of Casio video game watches
9 comments
·May 2, 2025forinti
throwanem
If you can talk Ken Shiriff (righto.com) into decapping one, they won't stay secret for long.
On such a question I suppose he might not take that much convincing, though I only know him by his work. But intuitively for the age of the watch I would expect MSI or LSI ASIC on some kind of mildly exotic film process for the epoxy blob die-on-board packaging they used to do before true surface mount packages made it to consumer products.
curiosity42
My son just past 11, coded his first game when he was 9 (Snake) and then coded pac-man when he was 10. He is privileged enough to have all sorts of gadgets. But one thing he has on his wrists ALL the time is a cheap Casio watch we bought in Japan a couple of years ago. This watch has out-competed an Apple Watch and a cheap Android watch (with 4 G and dual-camera setup). Go figure!
throwanem
Hey, there's a thought. I do have these cute little JS-programmable smartwatches now, and a "digital crown" jogwheel seems like a good fit for Tempest...
JSR_FDED
Just like the Nintendo Wii - graphics didn’t matter, it was just so entertaining!
As a 10 year old I once played NUMBER INVADERS for 12 hours on my Casio calculator watch uninterrupted. My parents were very concerned :-)
dlachausse
What’s old is new again, Atari recently released watches that can play some of their games…
https://atari.com/products/atari-2600-my-play-watch-smartwat...
timewizard
That reminds me of my old Timex Datalink watch which was one of my favorite watches I have ever owned. It was the Ironman Triathlon[0] edition and I was unusually sad the day it died. I got that watch because it was "space certified" and used by astronauts on missions.
The USB edition was kinda neat but just didn't have the same charm of the previous models but certainly had a lot more capabilities including games. I believe this is the Timex watch the article is referring to.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Datalink#Ironman_Triathl...
null
aa-jv
I had a small collection of favored LCD watches in the 80's, including the Scramble Fighter game mentioned in the article .. as well as a few other neat ones, including a DataBank and another Casio which featured 15 tunes/melodies and a small sequencer for composing ones own, which was always a delightful use of time while waiting for the bus.
These days I also have a set of watches - from the PineTime to some TTGO vendor-machine clones, an Oscilloscope Watch and a Watchy by SQFMI. These are mostly just hacking toys - fulfilling the fantasy of having a veritable toolbox of devices to lug around on my wrists - but rarely being actively used.
Well, except for the Pinetime, which I've lately taken to wearing more often to count steps and track heart rate metrics.
That said, this article has lit a fire on the subject of PineTime extensions, and I think I am seeing a future series of watchfaces and smaller apps inspired by the Casio era, on my horizon .. would be fun to have a Casio simulator with a few of their watchfaces on the PineTime - which, for all of its quirks, is a darn cheap way to carry time, even if the current set of watchfaces/apps for it is a bit .. mundane .. to put it politely.
Anyone up for some CASIO inspired PineTime watchfaces, or know of any already? Or maybe for the SQFMI/Watchy, perhaps? Maybe its time to crack out the devtools ..
I bought a Casio recently and I was curious about the mechanism, but I couldn't find anything. The only detail that I found was the frequency of the crystal.
Regarding the controller, the best I could find was a few posts with people theorising about it being an ASIC or an MCU.
I guess Casio is good with secrets.