Shivas Space Raider game watch

This is a rare one — I must have seen only 3 of these in 20 years — the metal-cased version of the Space Raider game.

The plastic versions are rare enough — like the Sinitron and the CompuChron — but the metal version is right up there in grail territory.

This was a bit of a lucky find – buried in a lot of mostly junk watches on eBay. The postage of sending the whole lot from the UK to NZ would have been horrendous so much thanks to Andrew for the freight-forwarding, pulling this and a couple of melody watches out of the lot and onsending to me — I owe you one mate!

Function-wise, the watch is the same as the plastic models with these features:

• 12/24 hour time
• Date
• Hourly chime
• Daily alarm
• Two games

It’s definitely a more solid construction, the plastic versions feel quite delicate after 40+ years whereas the metal case is a comfortable daily wearer and looks sharp!

Find out more about playing the game and how to score points on the Sinitron page.

The top score of 999 is difficult, but not impossible to achieve and once you roll it over it just displays the score without the thousand which, considering it saves the high scores, looks a bit underwhelming when you see the top score is only 50 points instead of 1050, for example.

The metal version has been badged by Inotime and Sensor, and probably others but you won’t find many, if any, of these on the web. If you find one, grab it – it’s unlikely you’ll even see another!