The History of Nintendo 5

The Ground-Breaking Famicom Is Released


You ever heard of that thing about a small light at the end of the tunnel that actually amazes people? Well, in 1983 the release of the Famicom (Family Computer) in Japan was like a supernova in your face! Even though it was selling for $100, which was $25 more than Hiroshi had planned for, it was still at least $100 cheaper than all the rest while it was more powerful, faster, and had better sound capacity. Because of its low price, retailers didn’t make much profit from each unit sold so some stores would force you to buy the Famicom as a bundle with games and controllers and whatever they felt like throwing in to kick up the price (some greedy stores still do that sometimes). Hiroshi tried to stop this by promising that the real profit would come with the games sold. He said that the Famicom was nothing more but a device used for selling software. In just 2 months Nintendo’s jewel sold half a million systems. About 35% of Japan’s families would own a Famicom and it would go on to sell over 30 million units.


Disaster Struck


A few months after the release, Nintendo began to receive complaints from retailers that customers were having certain games freeze. After Nintendo’s engineers searched the machine intensively, they found the microchip that was malfunctioning. In order to keep their customers buying from Nintendo, Hiroshi decided that they would have stores send them all the systems that still hadn’t been sold for correction. It was risky, dangerous, costly, but genius decisions like these that Hiroshi Yamauchi made that are said to have put Nintendo where it is today.


Mario Gets A Companion


In 1983, Luigi was born! He came about with the game Mario Bros. in which Mario and Luigi were actually portrayed as plumbers since they hide behind pipes and enemies and items come out of the pipes in an endless fashion. This game came out as an arcade machine and also as a Famicom game. It would be seen again as a mini-game in Super Mario Bros. 3 and in a different version in Mario Clash for the Virtual Boy.


Trouble Overseas


While the Japanese were enjoying the sweet taste of video games worthy of having the word “Nintendo” slapped on it, everyone else around the world had to deal with repetitive games that were way too costly. Luckily for us after the ever-growing success of the Famicom, Hiroshi wanted to release the Famicom outside of Japan. He started to plan an American release. It was both a good time and a bad time for Nintendo to release the Famicom. Good because of the video game crash that had happened in 1984, so there would be virtually no one competing against Nintendo. Many factors contributed to it happening, partly because of piracy and countless bad games that were giving the industry a bad name. The bad part was that retailers didn’t feel safe selling something for a high price (they were selling Atari games for 10% of the suggested price) that they had never sold before.


Saved By A Hair


It’s amazing to know that Atari had the chance to completely eliminate the Famicom everywhere outside of Japan. What’s even more amazing is how little people know about it. The story goes as follows. When Hiroshi wanted to sell the Famicom, or NES as it would be known in other places, Nintendo turned to Atari for help. Hiroshi was going to give the rights of distributing the Famicom outside of Japan to Atari. Sadly, Hiroshi didn’t know that by giving Atari the rights, it was perfectly legal for them to simply stop distributing it to eliminate some competition and give their own systems a better chance. The contract was like heaven-sent considering that Atari were loosing $2 million daily and the last thing they wanted would be the super successful Famicom to compete against. As if by a miracle, the year the contract was to be signed Atari saw something at the 1983 Consumer Electronics Show (sort of like E3) that would save Nintendo. Coleco, the company that worked with Nintendo on arcade machines, showed a Donkey Kong game preview for their future system Adam. The Donkey Kong game was unlicensed by Nintendo and illicit. Atari assumed that Nintendo and Coleco were trying to con them in some way and this was pretty plausible considering their previous partnership. Nintendo didn’t sue Coleco because the game was canned, but Atari refused the deal, and Nintendo was saved!