Avi-8 Watch - Hawker Hurricane Clowes Automatic Capcom 1942 Pixel Limited Edition - Onyx Ace - AV-4126-01

AVI-8 Hawker Hurricane Clowes AV-4126-01 Onyx Ace – Capcom 1942 Pixel Automatic Watch, 200 Pieces, 3D Black Dial, Brown Leather Strap

In 1984, Capcom released a vertical scrolling shoot 'em up that would define a genre for the next decade. 1942 placed the player in the cockpit of a P-38 Lightning over the Pacific, tasked with fighting through 32 stages of increasingly relentless enemy formations rendered in the precise, expressive pixel art that the era's hardware allowed. The black screen, the white and grey enemy aircraft, the slow-building intensity of each wave — it was a visual language as specific and as recognisable as any design movement of the twentieth century. Forty years later, AVI-8 has placed that language on a watch dial.

The AV-4126-01 Onyx Ace is the darkest and most technically ambitious expression of the AVI-8 × Capcom collaboration — a 3D pixelated black dial on which the battlefield of 1942 is rendered in physical relief, numbered to 200 pieces, powered by a Seiko NH35 automatic movement, and wearing the collision of aviation heritage and arcade history on a brown leather strap. This is a watch for two communities that rarely overlap, built to satisfy both.

1942 – The Arcade Game That Earned the Word "Classic"

Capcom's 1942 was not the first vertical scrolling shooter, but it was the one that established the genre's conventions. The setting — the Pacific Theatre of World War Two — gave the game a historical weight that its contemporaries often lacked, and the progression structure, which named each stage after a real Pacific battle, created a narrative arc within the gameplay that players could follow even without reading the manual. The pixel art style, constrained by the hardware of its era, nonetheless achieved a remarkable level of expressiveness: the enemy aircraft were recognisable, the formations were tactically coherent, and the black background — empty of everything except the planes and the occasional power-up — created a visual intensity that compensated for everything the resolution could not provide.

This is the visual language that the AV-4126-01 dial reproduces — not a reference to 1942, not an illustration inspired by it, but the actual aesthetic of the game, rendered in three-dimensional relief on a watchmaker's dial and worn on the wrist of someone who either played it first-hand or wishes they had been there to do so.

The 3D Pixel Dial – Craft Applied to a Different Kind of Art

The dial of the Onyx Ace is not printed. It is constructed. Each pixel of the 1942 battlefield scene is physically raised from the dial surface — machined or cast in relief so that the three-dimensional structure of the pixel art catches and deflects light differently depending on the angle of illumination. The result is a dial that changes as the wrist moves: in flat light, the pixel structure reads as a conventional illustration; in raking light from one direction, the pixel relief creates shadows and highlights that give the scene a depth that no flat print can achieve.

Against the deep onyx black background — the exact colour of the arcade screen in the darkened room in which 1942 was designed to be played — the pixelated aircraft and game elements emerge with the same clarity they had on the original CRT display. The Swiss Super-LumiNova markers are positioned within the composition without disrupting it, ensuring that time remains readable in low light while maintaining the visual integrity of the dial artwork.

The Custom Pixel Date Disc – The Detail That Matters

Most themed watch dials include a date window that has no relationship to the design surrounding it — a standard white or black disc with a generic typeface that breaks the visual coherence of the dial every time the eye lands on it. AVI-8 addressed this with a specificity that distinguishes the AV-4126 series from the majority of licensed watch collaborations at any price point: the date disc uses a custom pixel typeface, matched in colour and style to the 1942 graphic elements on the dial. The date display at 6 o'clock reads in the same 8-bit typography as the game elements surrounding it — a detail that rewards close attention and that demonstrates a level of design commitment unusual in a watch at this price.

Hawker Hurricane Clowes Platform – Named for a Fighter That Won a Battle

The Hawker Hurricane was the most numerous British fighter during the Battle of Britain in 1940, accounting for more enemy aircraft destroyed than any other Allied type during that campaign. The Hurricane Clowes platform that AVI-8 named after it carries that heritage in its proportions: a 46 mm round case, 13.8 mm thick, with a 56 mm lug-to-lug measurement that positions this as a watch that makes a statement rather than disappearing into the background. The case is sized to give the 3D pixel dial the surface area it needs to render the 1942 battlefield with the detail that makes the concept work — compress a pixel art scene into a 40 mm case and the legibility suffers. At 46 mm, nothing is lost.

The solid screw-down case-back seals the movement and contributes to the watch's 5 ATM water resistance, while the overall case construction gives the Hawker Hurricane Clowes the solidity that a watch of this ambition requires.

Seiko NH35 Movement – Hack, Hand-Wind, Reliable

The Seiko NH35 automatic calibre inside the AV-4126-01 is the movement that the Japanese watchmaking industry trusts for applications that require reliability, serviceability and proven performance over extended use. It hacks — the seconds hand stops when the crown is pulled to allow precise time-setting — and it hand-winds, allowing the power reserve to be topped up manually when the watch has been unworn. The bidirectional winding rotor maintains the power reserve through daily wrist motion, and the approximately 42-hour reserve means the watch keeps running through a weekend without needing to be worn continuously. For a 200-piece limited edition at this price point, the NH35 is the correct movement — well-supported, globally serviceable, and with a track record that gives the collector confidence in the long-term viability of the watch they are acquiring.

46 mm Case and Brown Leather Strap – Aviation Grounding

The 22 mm brown genuine leather strap is the element of the AV-4126-01 that most directly connects the gaming collaboration to the aviation heritage of the Hawker Hurricane platform. Brown leather has been the strap material of pilot watches since the earliest military timepieces were issued to aircrew in the first decades of the twentieth century. On a watch that fuses an arcade game about Pacific air combat with the naming heritage of a British Battle of Britain fighter, the brown leather strap is not a styling choice — it is a thematic anchor, the detail that keeps the watch in the tradition it draws from even as the dial pushes it into entirely new territory.

200 Pieces – The Rarest Watch in the Collection

The Onyx Ace is limited to 200 individually numbered pieces — the smallest production run of any reference discussed in this catalogue. Three hundred and twenty-five pieces for the Spinnaker Piccard Popeye Blistering Red. Four hundred and twenty-five for the Dolphin Project Dolphin Cave. Two hundred for the Onyx Ace. At 200 pieces distributed across global retail — multiple countries, online and offline channels — the effective number available in any specific market at any given time is very small. This is not a production number chosen for marketing reasons; it reflects the reality of a hand-crafted 3D pixel dial that cannot be produced at scale without compromising the quality of the relief work that makes it worth having.

Why the AV-4126-01 Onyx Ace Belongs in Your Collection

The only 3D pixel dial in accessible watchmaking

The physical relief construction of the Onyx Ace dial is a technique applied to watches that typically cost several times what the AV-4126-01 retails for. At this price point, there is no comparable dial — the 3D pixel construction is a singular achievement in the accessible watch market, and the Onyx Ace is the only way to own it.

Two icons, one coherent object

AVI-8's Hawker Hurricane platform and Capcom's 1942 both celebrate the same era and the same activity — Pacific air combat in the 1940s, one through the lens of British aviation history, one through the lens of Japanese arcade game design. The collaboration works because the two sources share a genuine thematic connection, not because a character was placed on a convenient dial. The result is a watch that makes sense as an object, not just as a collector's item.

200 pieces — the decision is now or not at all

At 200 numbered pieces, the Onyx Ace is a watch that will not be available for long once stock is absorbed into collections. The two companion colourways — Azure Ace and Green Ace — are equally limited. For the collector who has been following AVI-8's collaborations and waiting for the right moment, the Onyx Ace at 200 pieces is the clearest signal that the right moment is always the present one.

The AVI-8 Hawker Hurricane Clowes Automatic Capcom 1942 Pixel Limited Edition AV-4126-01 Onyx Ace is available now at Minutimer. Explore the full AVI-8 collection, our range of limited edition watches, and all automatic watches in our catalogue.