Mini Match Me


Match Me

A number of electronic games are based upon the children's games Follow The Leader and Simon Says. The intent in both games is behavioral replication. In Follow The Leader, player's are required to mimic the physical behaviour of the leader immediately after the leader's example. In Simon Says, players watch and listen to a leader's sequence of verbal and behavioral actions, and then repeat these actions. While the major winning ability called for in Follow The Leader is often gross motor skill, Simon Says relies heavily upon a player's auditory and visual memory. In translating these games to a hand held computing device, designer's chose to rely upon a player's ability to remember color and musical tone sequences. Mini Match Me is a game of this genre.

This 1980 British designed Kingsford Ltd. produced game is 16cm long x 8.5cm wide x 4cm high. In the rear of the plastic case is a sliding battery door. On the surface of the case are a number of control switches: on/off, music control, manual/automatic, amateur/pro. Three buttons are labeled "Last", "Start", "Long". On the lower top surface of the case is a circle of 8 touch sensitive wedge shaped large colored transparent buttons. In the center of the circle is an LED and each wedge is numbered. The case is raised on 4 legs, and on the base is a speaker, and a place to plug in a 6V adapter.

How to play the game

In automatic play, the game chip randomly lights a sequence of the colored wedges and plays the corresponding musical tone. A player then tries to replicate that sequence by rapidly pressing the wedges. As the game progresses, the sequence lengthens and becomes more complex depending upon the setting of the amateur/pro switch. In addition to an instruction booklet, the game comes with a Music Book, to be used in manual play. This latter book includes cartoons and the "musical score" for six songs. The "scores" are numbers that correspond to the numbered colored wedges on the case. Each wedge represents a tone in the musical scale, and a player can "play" a song by pressing a numbered wedge.


Last update March 22, 2010