Toss Up Simulators

Background

This page features reasonably accurate simulators of the classic Nintendo Game & Watch game Toss Up (aka Ball).

Toss Up came out in 1980 and was the first in the very successful Game & Watch series of games made by Nintendo. Toss Up was in fact distributed by a company called TimeOut. Nintendo also released the game themselves calling it Ball. The game was also distributed in Germany by yet another company using the moniker of Jolly Jongleur. There is also some speculation that the game was originally called Acrobat, since the model code is AC-01. I've stuck to using the name Toss Up because that's how I remember it and is name used on the original game I own. Also, there's already a Ball simulator available for Windows (see the G&W Simulators site), therefore using the name Toss Up avoids potential mix ups.

The Game & Watch format was the brainchild of Gunpei Yokoi. Yokoi later went on to give us the Game Boy. It's easy to see a natural progression from these early handheld games to the hugely successful Game Boy.

I have fond memories of this game, I remember playing it at school around 1981. The game also has some extra significance for me, during the early 90's I developed a passion for real juggling and in '96 combined by passions for juggling and programming to produce my first piece of shareware Juggle Saver.

Download

Currently three versions of the simulator are available. If you're curious how I went about creating them then take a look here.

• Toss Up v1.0 for Windows runs on 32 bit versions of Windows (namely Win95, Win98, WinME, NT 4, Win2000 and WinXP - note that NT 3.5x is not supported). It can be downloaded here: tossup_w32.zip (220K).
• If you're using a Java compatible browser you can play an online version here.
• Toss Up v1.0 for Palm runs on a device running PalmOS 3.0 and greater. It can be downloaded here: tossup_palm.zip (8K). A screenshot from the game can be seen here.

A version for the PocketPC platform may appear at some stage.

Links

Game & Watch site: This is the main site giving information about the Game & Watch series for collectors.

G&W Simulators: This site contains a comprehensive collection of simulators for other Game & Watch games.

Tricotronic Another rather fine site about Game & Watch and other Nintendo games.

My Other Programs: Here's plug of my own. Here you'll find a collection of of programs I've released over the years.

Contact

Send any questions, feedback or comments to tossup@brianapps.net.