The Transformation of Simon – A Closer Look at One of America’s Classic Games

The 1970s saw a huge spike in demand when it came to battery-powered gaming gadgets. However, only one had enough long-term appeal to stand the test of time; a game that has proven itself not only to be a classic but relevant as well.

Simon Classic is the first descendant of the original game. (Photo from Hasbro)

You might have noticed that the color combination of blue, red, green, and yellow is associated with the logos of some of the world’s biggest tech giants including Google, eBay, and Microsoft. Before these companies staked their claim on the colors, they had already made a mark on people’s minds thanks to Milton Bradley’s product. The company (which has roots dating way back to the time of the Civil War) came up with an electronic party game named Simon, made up of four wide plastic arcs, each with a different color.

The electronic game, named after the popular children’s game “Simon Says,” worked by testing the memories of the players, making them repeat patterns of light (which got increasingly harder as the game progressed) by pressing the four different buttons. Players who pressed the wrong button, or failed to press the correct one in time, would be blasted by an offensive raspberry sound from the game. Back then, Simon was sold in stores for $25, equivalent to $92 in today’s currency. It was a huge hit during the holiday season.

Simon, despite being protected by a US patent, soon found itself amid numerous competitors. These included Einstein, a gaming gadget with a rectangular design that featured a commercial starring Bill Saluga, one of Gong Show’s main characters, as Raymond J Johnson Junior, and the ironically named Copycat, an octagon-shaped gaming device from Tiger Electronics. The creator of the 1974 Touch Me game, Atari, also released a handheld version of the arcade game, without the light show excitement that Simon had to offer.

Milton Bradley’s competition also tried to step up their game by producing electronic toys that had multiple games. One of the most prominent examples was Merlin, an electronic game produced by Parker Brothers that looked similar to Motorola’s red MicroTAC cellular phone (which came into production ten years later). Merlin had an option to repeat the pattern for the players. Another game was Mego’s Fabulous Fred, which featured ten games and nine multicolored buttons that lit up. By the end of the ‘80s, however, these handheld electronic games lost their popularity and vanished from the market; all save for Simon.

In 1984, Hasbro acquired the Milton Bradley company. Randy Klimpert, director of Simon brand design and development at Hasbro, said that a lot of complex games came and went. Klimpert noted that what makes the now-classic Simon toy different is the simplicity of its gameplay. The basic elements involved in the game also allow them room to update it to keep up with modern times.

Right from the first model of Simon, it was meant to be a multiplayer game. The players would sit around the table, with the glowing electronic game at its center, similar to how you would hold a séance. According to Klimpert, however, the static nature of the game was more of a limitation of technology at the time rather than an intentional design choice. The original Simon was big and needed 4 D batteries, making it less than portable and meaning it couldn’t help but take up lots of space.

For JP Dyson, director of the International Center for the History of Electronic Games in Rochester, New York, the basic gameplay of Simon is fascinating enough, but it is also attractively packaged with the lights and sounds. He credits the early success of the game to Simon’s social feature, likening it to Pokémon Go versus the isolation usually experienced from earlier models of handheld electronic games which involved a virtual reality experience alone.

Featuring colored lights and a circular exterior, Simon looked like a pan flashing, something you’d think would follow in the footsteps of Pet Rocks in 1975. Fate had other plans as it didn’t turn out the same way at all. Given the go signal by Milton Bradley, the game was first introduced during the Toy Fair Show in February 1978. It was formally launched in May at Studio 54, a swanky nightclub in New York. The party featured a 4-foot Simon floating like a UFO saucer above the crowd.

Ralph Baer, co-inventor of the game and a pioneering engineer in the field of consumer electronics, shared in his autobiography that upon seeing Atari’s Touch Me arcade game, an electronic game similar in concept, he thought that, while it offered nice gameplay, the system was poorly executed. He added that visually, it didn’t make an impact and had horrible sounds. He then teamed up with Marvin Glass and Associates, one of the leading toy design companies back then, to produce what was initially intended to be named Feedback, an 8x8 inch square gaming toy. Baer has been touted as the father of video games after designing the Odyssey console by Magnavox, but Atari had managed to kill off its success with their product. The market for video games flourished while the demand for dedicated portable electronic games died down. Only Simon has endured the test of time.

It seems Hasbro is driven to prove that no limitations exist in technology when it comes to the Simon brand. Throughout the decades, Hasbro has shaped Simon in different ways, including downsizing the original disc, converting it into a handheld game, making keychain-sized versions, and even releasing a model of the game that is shaped like Darth Vader’s head. Hasbro has added to the basics of Simon many times, but here are the most notable versions that showed up over the years:

1979 Super Simon – Super Simon was introduced in 1979 by Milton Bradley. Straying from the original circular shape of the game, it featured a rectangle body with four buttons set out beside one another like the keys of a piano and a Decision button to reveal to players who reacted the fastest. Milton Bradley also introduced a variation to the game that replaced the progressive sequences with new patterns each round to make replicating them even more difficult.

2004 Simon Stix – Simon Stix, released in 2004, was modeled after the appearance of drumsticks connected to an audio cable. It was one of the earliest attempts to add sensors into the game and produce something similar to a cross between Simon and Bop-It. The latter is a smash & hit toy acquired by Hasbro, with sensors as part of its integral function. Instead of pressing buttons like in the original game, players made use of the sticks, either shaking or crossing them, in response to the game’s flashes of lights. The game, however, was criticized due to its use of 6 AAA batteries and for its lack of intuitive gameplay. 

2005 Simon Trickster – In 2005, Simon Trickster was introduced on the market. It went beyond the game’s original pattern, upping the ante by including three different variations during gameplay, specifically Simon Bounce, Simon Surprise, and Simon Rewind. The Bounce variation causes the color to move to different buttons while Surprise turns all the buttons into the same color, removing visual memory cues a player might use. Rewind makes players repeat the pattern but in reverse order.

Just like the original Simon, Trickster was also more compact, but the entire premise of the game was abandoned in the end. According to the senior director of marketing for Hasbro’s Simon brand, Jennifer Boswinkel, Trickster ended up straying too far from the original “watch, remember, and repeat” concept of the game.

The Simon Flash versions deconstructed the original Simon into handheld blocks. (Photo from Hasbro).

According to Boswinkel, while Simon never really lost its charm for players, it was only in 2012 that Hasbro started to focus more on boosting the brand by adding a touch of gameplay nostalgia integrated with modern technology. This effort resulted in three more Simon versions over recent years.

Simon Swipe – The advancement in smartphones, particularly the technology that allowed users to go from tap to swipe, was integrated into the game. Simon Swipe had a redesign of its classic form, with the buttons now allowing a swiping motion. Apart from the basic concept of remembering the order of flashing colors, players also needed to remember which direction to swipe across the game. This version, unlike the classic one, was not meant to be a stationary game on the table. According to Klimpert, it was designed to be passed around based on the belief that people would want to gather and play the game together.

Simon Air – From a horizontal orientation, Simon Air moved the game into a vertical one. It marked the removal of one of the basic elements of the Simon games – the buttons. Instead of pressing the buttons, players had to copy patterns by placing their hand near a light. The game dynamic is similar to Beamz – musical instruments that produce canned samples. Boswinkel shared that the main idea behind Air was to get people up so they could be active and find a new way to use their hands.

Apart from the lack of buttons, Air also introduced something new: focusing on collaborative play instead of the usual competitive vibe of the game. It allowed you to play all of the four colors at the same time, and to do that, you would need to use four hands. Boswinkel said that this change was in line with their vision of making it more than a solo experience. You could get your family and friends to join in and challenge them to replicate the patterns together.

Simon Optix – Fashioned like a headset for augmented reality, Simon Optix is Hasbro’s first wearable Simon. In the past, the company licensed the Simon name for a Simon wristwatch to Nelsonic. Optix, which costs $20, flashes lights in front of your eyes which you then need to repeat by waving your hands in front of the visor. Similar to Air but far from the classic game, Optix enables up to two colors to flash at the same time. The toy comes in a pack of two that allows players to engage in the game as individuals or collaboratively with another person. Headsets can also be synced, though Hasbro says that they have a limit of 15.

Simon has faced a lot of competition over the years, not only from other electronic games but from technological challenges too. In recent years, its biggest competition has been from mobile games, with both Google Play and the iOS app store offering cheap and even free apps with a similar concept. While the toy industry has always struggled with video game competition, this genre is significantly threatening to Simon, a game with a simple theory at its core. With the release of Optix and Air, which both do away with the touch factor, recent developments in the game do give it a certain edge to help differentiate it from others in the market. 

iMimic, a memory challenge game, is inspired by Milton Bradley’s original Simon.

For Klimpert, much of Simon’s appeal comes from the experience of face-to-face gaming. Unlike smartphone games, Simon brings people together, regardless of whether you are playing against or with each other. Boswinkel says that Simon fans shouldn’t worry about the future of the game as their current lineup is doing great in the market.

Hasbro will be offering Simon Classic over the holiday season in response to overwhelming demand for the original that started it all. Let’s hope history repeats itself and that Simon will once again reach the pinnacle of success.