Breaking
The Waves
Given how important
the NES has been to the growth of the games industry, it's funny to think
that the system was nearly stillborn. To understand why, let's head back
to 1983, when men were men and Atari was still king…
Nintendo's Family
Computer (Famicom for short), released in July of 1983, had already sold
over a million units in Japan. Hordes of Japanese gamers crashed stores
for titles like Baseball
and Popeye.
Although Nintendo of America was already making buckets of cash in U.S.
arcades with their Vs. cabinets, Nintendo of Japan had other plans overseas.
Soon talks began with Atari to form an unlikely alliance.
A sit-down
model of Nintendo's Vs. arcade cabinet with SMB |
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Famicom: the
Japanese equivalent of the NES |
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While still
number one in the market with 20 million 2600 consoles in American homes,
prospects for Atari were starting to decline by 1983. Bad news came from
several fronts: Atari's next generation 5200 system was flopping, the market
was being flooded with mediocre third party 2600 titles, and their president,
Ray Kassar, was unwilling to take necessary steps to stop the financial
hemorrhaging.
The ill-fated
Atari 7800 |
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Nintendo Baseball.
Aww yeah. |
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Since Nintendo
of America wasn't big enough to handle nationwide distribution of its Famicom
system in the U.S., Nintendo's president Hiroshi Yamauchi offered Atari
the opportunity of a lifetime. The proposed partnership would have teamed
up Nintendo's Famicom console with Atari's marketing and financial muscle
for distribution in North America. After all, who better to ask than Atari,
who at the time had both the marketing and retail connections to get the
job done. Negotiations quickly fell through however; Atari turned down
Nintendo's golden offer as they were stalling for time to develop their
own killer hardware, the advanced 7800 system. Ironically, when the 7800
finally saw light of day in 1986, gamers everywhere nabbed the NES as their
system of choice.
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