Nintendo Entertainment System Console

Product Information

Consumer confidence in Atari had fallen after a number of highly anticipated releases failed to impress. The 2600 version of Pacman looked nothing like Namco's arcade hit, and Atari spent a fortune on the rights to produce a game for E.T. So confident were they that the game would outsell anything else ever produced that they (apparently) produced more copies of the games than there were consoles! The game was a disaster, and Atari ended up destroying millions of copies of both games, along with a slew of other games they had 'over produced'. was the most disastrous year for the American Video Game market. MB had dropped the price of the Vectrex so much it was losing money on every console sold, eventually causing it to be scrapped. As previously mentioned the Colecovision disappeared without trace, and the Intellevision also bowed out after Mattel Electronics was shut down. Finally, after a series of game flops, poor console sales and other financial scandals, Warner sells off Atari. Its new owners announce they will no longer be selling video games consoles, only producing games. Nintendo noticed that their machine had done relatively well not as a home computer, but as a games console. They had ported the same games onto their new Famicom that disappeared with the Colecovision and this seemed to be the selling point of the new machine. Nintendo had initially signed a deal with Atari, which gave the American giant the sole rights to produce the Famicom outside of Japan. Unfortunately, in the aftermath of a insider trading scandal at Atari, the Nintendo deal fell through. But as one door closed another one opened!

Such was the demand for the new console that shops could not keep up. This was a feat that even Atari hadn't managed to achieve. The American gamers had been waiting a long time for something new, something that offered better titles than what Atari had churned out and the Nintendo had it all. Helped along by an Italian Plumber named Mario, the Nintendo Entertainment System was the must have toy for the American Youth during 1984/85. Nintendo had felt some of the impact of this as they had ported a few of their successful arcade games (Donkey Kong & Donkey Kong Jr) onto the Colecovision. But Nintendo had also decided that if they were going to release their own titles onto the home video game market, they would also produce the machines to play them on... In the late seventies and early eighties, American giant Atari dominated the worldwide home video game market, with a number of other developers trying to compete but falling short. However, between 1982 and 1984, the American videogame market crashed and paved way for a new wave of consoles & manufacturers. The crash was due a number of key events which effected each of the existing video game companies at that time. The Nintendo Entertainment System is one of the great success stories in video game history. To better explain the story of this console, we first have to talk about some of the history of videogames before the console was even started...