The Space Invaders: My Play Watch does not connect to a smartphone, but it does let you play Space Invaders on your wrist.
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Taito Corporation, which gave the world Space Invaders over 45 years ago, has collaborated with the designers of Floor 84 Studio to create a watch that pairs retro gaming with basic health tracking capabilities. The Space Invaders: My Play Watch is now available for $60 for the earliest backers of a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign.
The My Play Watch was teased earlier this month, but we now know more about what its creators say it can do. Its design looks inspired by, or directly lifted from, the Apple Watch, but with a 1.86-inch touchscreen display and a body that’s not as thin as the Series 10 or as thick as the Ultra 2. It comes with two watch straps that match its retro gaming aesthetic, and it’s compatible with standard 22mm straps.
The watch has different faces with pixelated fonts and graphics all themed around Space Invaders, authentic sounds sourced from the original arcade machine, and even health tracking features like a heart rate monitor, a step counter, and an estimation of calories burned throughout the day. The real reason to strap the My Play Watch to your wrist is a custom version of Space Invaders that can be played using the watch’s touchscreen or its crown dial.
But the My Play Watch is unlikely to give the Apple Watch or Pixel Watch much competition. Its creators boast that it doesn’t connect to a smartphone at all. It won’t notify you of messages, emails, or phone calls, you can’t use it to ping a misplaced smartphone, and all of the health data it collects is only available on the wearable.
There’s no shortage of Space Invaders games available for various mobile devices, including watchOS. The My Play Watch is leaning hard on nostalgia as its main selling point as a way to convince retro gaming fans to take a risk on its Kickstarter, as the watch is still in the development phase and hasn’t yet moved to production.
Crowdfunding is a chaotic field by nature. Companies looking for funding tend to make big promises. According to a study run by Kickstarter, roughly 1 in 10 “successful” products that reach their funding goals fail to actually deliver rewards. Of the ones that deliver, delays, missed deadlines, or overpromised ideas mean that there’s often disappointment in store for those products that do get done.
The best defense is to use your best judgment. Ask yourself: does the product look legitimate? Is the company making outlandish claims? Is there a working prototype? Does the company mention existing plans to manufacture and ship finished products? Has it completed a Kickstarter before? And remember, you’re not necessarily buying a product when you back it on a crowdfunding site.
For the first 48 hours of the crowdfunding campaign, a yellow or red version of the Space Invaders: My Play Watch is available for preorder with a $60 contribution. After that, they’ll jump to the same price as the blue version at $75. The creators say that they expect to ship it as early as December, but that feels optimistic since they admit that development of the watch’s custom OS is still underway.
Many Kickstarters have been plagued by unexpected delays as products move from the development phase to production, particularly those involving electronics. Some have been delayed for months, while others fail to materialize at all, leaving backers without anything to show for their pledges. This might be one to keep an eye on until it actually ships.
