Chapter 314: The Nintendo Entertainment System
If video game layman were quite shocked at what Alexander's Chaos units could do, then that feeling was pretty much magnified for industry professionals who knows what's what.
Especially Nintendo. The existence of something like the Creed Chaos System would not bode well for them.
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Whether it be Nintendo of Japan or Nintendo of America, they collectively faced quite an uphill battle to get where they are with their Nintendo Entertainment System.
From producing Japanese playing cards called karuta...
To owning love hotels...
To starting a taxi company...
To the joke-y Ultra Hand...
To creating the light gun and inspiring themselves to build laser shooting range...
It took quite a while until Nintendo finally settled into the making of video games and video game-related technology.
However, their pivot to the NES would still be quite a while from there.
Their first entry into the console market is actually with something called the Color TV-Game.
Nintendo's first video game system was released as a series of five dedicated home video game consoles between 1977 and 1980 in Japan only.
With the Color TV-Game 6, Color TV-Game 15, Color TV-Game Racing 112, Color TV-Game Block Breaker, and the final console of the series which was the computer-themed Computer TV-Game.
Nintendo sold three million units of this series and Color TV-Game is a mildly successful venture in the company's career. Also, established themselves as a considerable player in the first generation of game consoles.
Their next venture, however, was not successful.
Radar Scope is an arcade game wherein the player assumes the role of the Sonic Spaceport starship and must wipe out formations of an enemy race known as the Gamma Raiders before they destroy the player's space station.
Although the gameplay and design were lauded for being a unique iteration of the Space Invaders template, it was still a commercial failure and created a financial crisis for the subsidiary Nintendo of America.
NoA president, Minoru Arakawa, pleaded for his father-in-law, Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi, to send him a new game that could convert and salvage thousands of unsold Radar Scope machines.
This turn of events prompted the creation of Nintendo's greatest mascot characters. Even though Radar Scope failed, it was still pivotal since it inadvertently led to the formation of Donkey Kong and Jumpman. Jumpman is Mario himself.
With these two at the helm, Nintendo turned around their failed arcade venture with Donkey Kong selling over 60,000 units and earning over 100 million dollars in sales.
However, all was not smooth sailing when an entertainment giant called MCA Universal became adamant that Donkey Kong was infringing on their rights to the great King Kong.
As it turns out, King Kong was in the public domain and it was Universal themselves that proved it. All was a ploy for them to take the Donkey Kong franchise for their entry into video games.
Surprise surprise. Nintendo won out in the end and the whole case became an embarrassment on Universal's part.
Anyways, around these stressful court dealings, Nintendo's handheld console called Game & Watch debuted to much acclaim and it was all around success for these video game upstarts.
With the success on arcade, game title, handheld, and against an entertainment giant... Nintendo pushed on and a new generation of a home console was in the works.
The code name for the project was "GameCom" but it settled on being called "Famicom" instead.
It was neither a home nor a personal computer. It was to be a family computer.
Ideas were thrown around, deals were made, and the creation process ensued...
And with that... the Nintendo Famicom was released in Japan!
Thanks in part to excessive advertising, the Famicom was an immediate success and sold up to 500,000 units.
The celebration had to be put to a pause because Nintendo Famicoms were freezing up.
A major design flaw was found and Nintendo President Yamauchi decisively chose to recall every single one.
They lost millions of dollars but the decision paid off.
The new and perfected Famicoms were re-sold and the unit sales more than doubled that of the original faulty sales.
The Famicom was so successful that competitors were leaving the market and Nintendo had propelled itself to become one of the biggest names in video games.
Almost every home that had one of their Famicom wanted more games and all was better than ever...
At least, in Japan, that is.
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North America, however, would come to be a whole other story...
Yamauchi and Arakawa had long set their sights on this market.
It's just that a series of unfortunate events would stall Famicom for a long while.
For starters, Nintendo had no foothold of distribution outside of Japan and for their game console to reach American homes... they had to make a deal with Atari, the American gaming giant.
Deals were made between both companies but factors such as the Coleco misunderstanding and Atari's ulterior motive to reverse engineer Famicom's hardware... ultimately made these deals fizzle out.
Of course, the ticking time bomb that is the Atari 2600 just happened to finally explode and wiped the video game industry to almost total decimation in 1983.
Video game sales were at an all-time low, so much so, that major retailers refuse to display or even try to market any game anymore
Nintendo's Famicom push into a market other than Japan just got complicated.
Fortunately, the arcade market was more or less spared so the Famicom hardware could still be introduced to Americans via an arcade version called the 'Nintendo Vs. System'.
The VS. System became somewhat of a major success in North American arcades, growing their reputation and people's interest in Nintendo games.
This gave them a boost in confidence to try and release their prided home console once again.
They even rebranded the whole thing into the AVS or Advance Video System... with all the cool lock-out chips and upgrades to not fall into the same pitfall that the Atari 2600 had.
They upgraded it with a lot of peripherals that it may just be a jerry-rigged computer.
With great confidence, in January 1985...
The Nintendo team unveiled the AVS at the Consumer Electronics Show...
And...
No one would buy it!
As hard as they tried to be the better Atari 2600... they were still associated with it.
The AVS was just another video game console and video game consoles for retailers were taboo.
Sure, it was probably the best 8-bit third-generation home console ever... but it was still about video games.
Coupled with absurd peripherals like the mouse, keyboard, and whatnot. Why won't retailers just go with real computers instead?
Without a doubt, they failed again!
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Nintendo was really fighting an uphill battle.
The more they take a step forward... the steeper their path gets.
Was entering the North American market even worth it in the first place?
Nevertheless, they didn't want to give up just yet.
And they reformed the Famicom once again.
The AVS didn't work so they tried for the nth time with the Nintendo Entertainment System.
It took quite a journey but the NES was finally here.
They made it simpler, they made it fun, but not to a point of being video game-y.
The NES was still about video games but didn't want to admit it so that traumatized retailers would give them a chance.
They were now an entertainment system. That was not a video game system at all. Wink, wink.
They even built the R.O.B. or the Robotic Operating System. It was a toy because this whole Nintendo Entertainment System was a toy. Not a video game system. Wink, wink.
Nintendo really tried hard on this one.
And at another Consumer Electronic Show held in June 1985... the NES was unveiled...
And... it still wasn't working...
The reaction was better but no retailer was still willing to order it. Nintendo's try-hard wink-winks weren't fooling anybody.
In desperation, they had a focus group of kids try it... and what they got was the resounding comment that "This is shit!".
NoA President Arakawa really wanted to give up now!
All that effort and hard work and what they got were comments like 'shit!'.
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"Try to sell the system in one American city?" Fortunately, NoJ President Hiroshi Yamauchi was one persistent cookie. "Then, if it fails, it fails."
With his seniority and ownership of the company, who could refuse?
As such, Nintendo was at their last straw.
If they tried hard on their previous attempts, they tried extra harder now.
With an extremely last-ditch publicity and selling plan in hand, the NoA team finally chose New York City and went full swing from October of 1985 till the next 3 months.
They lowered their retail prices...
They set up shopping mall demonstrations...
They hired athletes for these demonstrations...
They lobbied every toy store, electronic store, and department store in the city...
They even had a risk-free display preposition that got these risk-averse retailers interested...
Nintendo employees worked day and night, setting up displays, making constant sales calls, and standing next to sports stars as they pitch the NES to passersby.
Anything to get the customers to at least try the system.
They even had a commercial with the catchphrase: "Now You're Playing With Power!"
Finally... by Christmas of 1985... 500-600 stores were convinced to carry the NES...
It wasn't an immediate success but it did well...
Only a measly 50,000 units were sold... but that was not the only cause for celebration.
With a favorable test in one of North America's prime cities, the NES' feasibility was proven!
Stores and interested parties were finally opening up to sell the system.
Nintendo finally did it! Their long and arduous fight for their console to infiltrate America was finally paying off.
Oh... how much sweat and tears they had to shed...
Oh... how many embarrassing wink-winks they had to do...
Oh... how many shitty kid comments they had to endure to get to this point.
Trying to revive a dead video game industry was not easy at all!
With New York City as their favorable start, Nintendo's next plan was to repeat what they did in New York's rival city...
The city of Los Angeles.
They were allotted some rest in January and February was the month for their NES to journey in the city of angels, Hollywood, and glamour.
If they did well here, they could move on to the next city, then the next city, then the next, and the next.
Hopefully, with that momentum, they'll be able open up to the whole United States.
Fingers crossed, the Nintendo Entertainment System should totally be unstoppable by then.
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Little did they know... Los Angeles was so close to Creed's home turf and something called the Creed Chaos System was there to plunder their hard-won momentum!
This whole time, a devious anomaly was patiently waiting for them.
The Nintendo Entertainment System was their last-ditch plan... but it was actually just a part of Alexander's.