If you’re ever lucky enough to find one of these, there’s a good chance the gameplay will come quite naturally. That’s because this watch is the much rarer brother of the Pulsar/Alba Y765-5000 space game watch.
It’s a dual-layer LCD and, like most watches with two LCDs, gives a faint look of ghosting depending where the light hits it, as it casts a shadow behind the LCD layer. One layer of the LCD displays time, date, alarm and stopwatch functions.
The other layer holds all the game graphics, and the Football version is even more impressive than the space game with some great graphics in quite a small space.
Like most game watches, there’s no manual readily available but fortunately the functions are easy to work out, particularly since there are only three buttons! The gameplay, too, is simple to pick up and very engaging 
but you do wonder if getting to the goal line is random or if it’s tied to some strategy that you are missing…
Selecting game mode starts a demo, the current high score is displayed, and footballers make their way up the field. Pressing either the left or right button on the front of the watch starts the game. If you have the alarm or hourly chime turned on you will get sound in your game; if you don’t, you won’t.
Your player (you have three lives) starts on the bottom right of the screen and you must manoeuvre it through flashing opponents (one point for each), to finish at the goal line at the left where you will be awarded an additional three points and it all starts again.
It’s the kind of game where it seems you should be able to score in the hundreds pretty quickly, but it becomes tricky quickly and if you’re a fraction early hitting a flashing opponent you lose a life.
It’s fun, and looks like a business watch normally, until you hit game mode. The football helmets and front buttons are a bit of a giveaway that it’s more of an entertainment device but you can’t tell when it’s in non-game mode.
Plenty of fun in this one, and better yet that it’s a very rare version of a familiar watch. Game on.
If the blue/black crystal isn’t rare enough, Alba also made another version (possibly JDM) with a silver and white crystal, pictured at right, just to give collectors something else to look for!
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