Nintendo Game & Watch Super Mario Bros YM-105 - Gizmo
The story goes that Gunpei Yokoi was riding the Shinkansen when he noticed a bored businessman idly pressing buttons on his calculator. What if, Yokoi wondered, you could play a game on something that small? The Game & Watch series launched in 1980 and sold 43.4 million units over the next eleven years. It was Nintendo's first major worldwide success - and the foundation for everything that followed.
The Super Mario Bros edition (model YM-105) arrived in 1988, bringing Nintendo's most famous character to the palm of your hand. Like all Game & Watch titles, it offered a single game on a segmented LCD screen, plus a digital clock and alarm. The graphics were pre-printed on the display; the gameplay was simple but addictive. Yokoi called his approach "lateral thinking with withered technology" - using cheap, mature components in creative ways. It's a philosophy Nintendo has followed ever since.
The clamshell D-pad that Yokoi invented for the 1982 Donkey Kong Game & Watch became the standard control interface for video games. The lessons learned here led directly to the Game Boy. In a very real sense, modern handheld gaming started with these little LCD machines.
From the Gizmo collection - a series of prints adapted from Simon Tyler's forthcoming book Gizmo: Retro-Tech We Loved and Lost, published by Laurence King in May 2026.
Produced as an open-edition print on 250gsm archival matte paper, with crisp detail and rich colour faithful to the original illustration.
Gizmo Series
Gizmo gathers illustrations adapted from and inspired by founder Simon Tyler's forthcoming book Gizmo: Retro-tech We Loved and Lost, published by Laurence King in May 2026.
The series is a visual archaeology of consumer electronics - the machines that shaped how we listened, watched, played, and worked from the 1960s to the early 2000s. Synthesizers that invented entire genres. Cameras that democratised photography. Computers that launched industries from bedroom desks. Boomboxes that soundtracked city blocks. Each one arrived as the future and departed as nostalgia, often within a single decade.
Every illustration begins with extensive photographic research - sourcing original imagery of each machine in its best light - and builds toward a clean, considered portrait that honours the object's design intent. The aim is not retro sentimentality but honest observation: what made these machines distinctive, how they looked when they were new, and why their forms still resonate.
Printed with the same archival care as our other series, Gizmo turns industrial design history into crisp, enduring graphic art.
Printing & Materials
Our Gizmo series is produced in collaboration with specialist fine-art printing partners using museum-grade 250 gsm archival giclée paper.
Each print is made to order with exceptional precision and colour accuracy, using pigment-based inks for long-term stability and rich tonal depth.
Prints are carefully rolled in acid-free tissue and shipped in rigid cardboard tubes to ensure they arrive in perfect condition, ready for framing.
All materials and processes are chosen for their longevity, texture, and fidelity to the original artwork, reflecting our commitment to quality and craft.