ADEC 4918 Tank Game

If you’ve read a lot of these posts you’ll know Adec is a sub-brand of Citizen (as are VEGA and Q&Q).

The advantage of these sub-brands (like Seiko has Lorus, Pulsar etc) is that you get the build quality of the parent brand, with the fun and quirky kind of functionality they wouldn’t put in their main brand.

Not that Citizen wasn’t innovative, they made some very funky watches like their ana-digi-temp range or the voice-controlled VX-2. But ADEC and VEGA got the games.

This particular ‘Tank Game’ watch is similar to the Planes and Tanks game but just different enough to make it unique.

Your character is a tank which has to enter the firing line of missiles approaching from the top of the screen on a perspective plane, and make it to safety through an exit that opens and closes at different periods.

It’s much more fun to play than it is to describe. The buttons are response, and the graphics are great.

Along with the game, you get 12/24 hour time, date, an hourly chime and daily alarm.

There’s also a variation (same module with a different LCD) called Shark Game which swaps out the missiles for sea creatures and is even rarer than this one.

On the subject of rarity, I’ve seen less than a handful of these come up for sale in around 20 years, so they were either produced in low numbers, or like many game watches played to death and then binned.

Grateful thanks to Harald for selling me this one, in new condition, and taking pride of place among the other game watches.