Matt over at Press the Buttons has posted a nostalgic look back at one of those crappy, rubber-banded LCD video game watches so popular in the late 80's amongst ten year olds in geography class. Specifically, the Super Mario watch.

When I first saw the picture to the right, my heart heaved with fond remembrance. I actually owned this watch. My parents believed that video games rotted the mind (they had a point), so never would buy me an NES... forcing me to invest my allowance in crappy devices like this watch (or a Tiger Electronics LCD version of Castlevania II) to get my gaming fix.

And man, do I ever remember this little quirk:

Oddly enough, the "left" directional button is always used to move Mario forward. That works fine on levels one and three, but since level two requires moving to the right, this quirk can be confusing.

It didn't make any more sense even at the time, Matt. But we persevered, because we were desperate, idiot kids. Just what Nintendo was counting on! Florian Eckhardt

Keeping Time With Mario [Press the Buttons]

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