DALLAS, TX.- A fully operational table-top upright demo of the Game & Watch title Vermin, used by Mego and Nintendo to showcase the technology’s capabilities at a tradeshow more than 40 years ago, will be offered in Heritage Auctions’ Comic and Video Game Signature Auction April 30-May 3 in Dallas, Texas.

The Vermin Game & Watch Sales Demo – Mego and Nintendo (c. 1979-1980) was used to show prospective buyers at a tradeshow the technology behind the commercially produced, calculator-sized electronic handheld Game & Watch toys. Mego only distributed the very first series of these handheld toys on behalf of Nintendo in North America, which included just four titles: Ball, Fire, Vermin, and Flagman. Collectors refer to these as the "Silver line,” and the offered unit is the only known demo cabinet for Vermin.

"This is the very first Game & Watch item that we have offered so far, and it is nothing if not unique. While this is currently the only known, surviving example of the Vermin demo cabinet, there is one other existing cabinet known, but it’s for Flagman,” Heritage Auctions Video Games Consignment Director Valarie McLeckie said. "Whether or not others were created is difficult to say, but it seems unlikely that multiple units were created for each title. Mego produced the handheld Game & Watch toys on behalf of Nintendo for such a short time before their company went bankrupt, so it seems likely these units didn’t get to see more than one tradeshow in their time.”

Game & Watch toys may not have been the first electronic handheld games, but they are some of the most historically significant and were integral to the progression of video game technology. Each unit only had the ability to play one game, and a variety of 60 different game-units released was released between 1980 and 1991. Nintendo’s Gunpei Yokoi had the idea to create the Game & Watch toys from watching a businessman playing around with a pocket calculator while on his commute. It’s no surprise that Yokoi was also integral to the creation of Nintendo’s first handheld video game console, the Game Boy, roughly 10 years after the Game & Watch.