Simon

Ralph H. Baer and Howard J. Morrison invented the Simon electronic game and it was launched in 1978. The software was programmed by Lenny Cope and manufactured and distributed by Milton Bradley. Simon was a pop culture symbol of the 1980's. Milton Bradley has manufactured and sold many games in the past and Simon was one of their most popular.

The game consists of 4 large colored buttons (red, green, yellow, and blue). The game begins by the unit lighting these buttons in a particular sequence and the player repeats the process by pushing down on the buttons as they just heard them. It is a memory game and the sequence of tones gets longer as the game proceeds. There are three variations of the game and you can control which variation you want to play by setting the switch on the front of the case. A second switch sets one of the four levels available. These levels are easy to more difficult. The player loses when they hit the wrong button in the sequence. There can be more than one person play this game. There is a sequence of 8, 14, 20, or 31 tones available. The player chooses the sequence and the difficulty level they wish to play. The multi-player game consists of each player choosing a color . When Simon gives a pattern, the player has to push his own color in sequence. If the player hits the wrong tone in the sequence, he loses and it goes to the next player to play and the previous player is eliminated. This continues until only one player, or color, is left and they are the winner.The green color is an octave higher than the red and the blue is a fourth higher than the green and the yellow is an fourth higher than the blue. Simon was re-released later and Milton Bradley is now owned by Hasbro. It is sold in several shapes and forms. There was also a pocket Simon, a keychain Simon, and a Super Simon which had eight buttons. All of these were manufactured in 1980. Nelsonic released a wristwatch version of the Simon but the year is unknown. There are still versions of Simon being sold today. There is a pocket version and the table version is smaller and has a different color case. There is also a Simon Trickster where the player can play the original game or they can play the version where the tones move around and the buttons have no colors, making it even more difficult.

The marketing slogan for Simon was, Simon’s a Computer, Simon has a brain, you either do what Simon says or else go down the drain.