Description

The Nintendo Entertainment System was originally launched in Japan as the Famicom, its design was very different to the one used in the rest of the world as it was smaller, had a top loading cartridge slot and the controllers were hardwired. The console's drastic design change was made to make people think of it as something other than a video game console, this was because the North American video game crash of 1983 made video game consoles unpopular which meant Nintendo had to make the console seem more like a toy. Its design was closer to one of a VCR than a console. In the United States the console was initially packaged with R.O.B the robot which was an accessory that would allow people to play 2 games, one of these was the pack-in-game Gyromite. The console also initially included Duck Hunt which used the zapper to shoot ducks, this was also done to make the console seem more like a toy. The most successful game on the console was Super Mario Bros which was one of the first side scrolling platformers and turned Mario into one of the world's largest media franchises, the NES was also one of the first consoles to give players the ability to save games, some games like Metroid used a password system while others like The Legend of Zelda used a save battery. In Japan an add-on for the Famicom was made called the Famicom Disk System which used floppy disks instead of cartridges, this was quite successful compared to most console add-ons but was only widely used for 2 years and had no international equivalent although one was planned. In Europe the console struggled to achieve widespread success due to the popularity of micro computers which had games that were less than half the cost of a NES cartridge, because there was no video game crash in the European market Nintendo gave the distribution and marketing rights to Mattel who marketed it badly. The NES did enjoy a little bit of success at the end of its life in Europe after Nintendo of Europe was established.