Casio CG-8 Reversi

I was never much chop at Reversi — so it’s a good think this calculator came with a ‘teach’ function, much like the ‘train’ function in the similar-but-different calculator game of 囲碁 Go (Tsumego).

Some know it better as Othello (thanks to Mattel marketing it as such) but the game of Reversi has been around a long time.

If you’re a board game fan (that’s strategy-based board games like chess, draughts (or checkers for our US friends) and Go) it can become quite addictive.

This is one of three game calculators Casio made in this design (along with the SG-12 Soccer and PG-200 Pachinko calculators) and like the others it had a non-calculator version too, the CG-88.

Like the SG-12, which appeared under licence as the Olympia FT-1, the CG-8 also had an Olympia version – the SG-1.

It has sound, but is really limited to just a few beeps (not much else they could add really, it doesn’t lend itself to a melody or space sound effects).

The one thing it did have, that Casio included on their membrane-keypad game calculators too, was a contrast control which is one of those things that’s kind of handy and kind of not. Generally if you need to make it darker, you probably need to change the batteries, and the line between just enough contrast and too much is a bit fine, so just leaving it on the default is probably the best bet.

Rare, but appearing on eBay a few times a year, the CG-8 is a great calculator for the cerebral game player!