How The NES Conquered A Skeptical America In 1985 | War Stories | Ars Technica

right now at the beginning of this year one out of every five homes had nintendo by the end of this year one out of every three homes in america will have nintendo that's how fast it's going how long did it take you to get blinking again after that i don't know you look at yourself you realize you're a zombie staring into that screen playing it's scary stuff one end the salesperson said they went in to talk about the terms of the sale and that someone pulled a gun out of their drawer and set it on the table in front of them to show them how serious they were about not taking a risk was definitely a rough chapter i'm gail tilden as the advertising manager for nintendo in 1985 and this is how i helped bring the nes to america when i started at nintendo july 11 1983 7-11 it was really a arcade game company but also we did game watch little handheld games my favorite one was called flag man we also had some table top games they looked like mini arcade games so right after i started i had my first trip to new york to work with dentsu our ad agency back there and make a commercial for mario cement factory at the time i think there were about 70 people at nintendo of america noa it was a very very small group famicom came out not too long after that we were focused on i think donkey kong 3 arcade game right when i started but in japan they launched the family com we got to see the games which were really exciting because they seemed like they looked like the same quality we had in the arcade of course the design changed when it became the nes it was really awesome from the beginning so in 1985 we were dealing with the situation that the video game market had just crashed there was really a lot of oversupply at retail and so things were being heavily discounted you just walk through the mall and see these bins of closeouts of cartridges the consumers were really seeming to say that they were tired of it that the games maybe didn't have enough diversity between different games the over-promising of the marketing was leading to things like e.t came out and there was this huge folklore or urban legend that when it came out that there was so much oversupply that it ended up going into a landfill somewhere in new mexico but actually i think not too long ago someone uh actually dug them up to prove that it was true and the retailers really had suffered from over investing in inventory and over supply and so the whole market just kind of had collapsed it was at that point that we were trying to re-enter with what we thought was clearly a better product you know really coming in at a time when both the consumers and the retailers felt like video games had been a fed and it was kind of over so our approach to kind of coming back into the home video market was we decided to launch in new york only kind of biggest city if you can make it there type of thing so we started in uh september of 1985 in new york only i'm really focused on a deluxe system that had uh the zapper and it had rob the robot before finally rolling out nationally at the in the end of 86 or holiday 86 and at that time when we launched nationally we also had um a base set which included mario and the deluxe set that we originally had so ultimately we took advantage of that killer app with mario for the national launch every game and the hardware came with this big poster it had rob's head and surrounding it was a screenshot of every game divided into categories and we we kept that poster in there for a long time till probably the initial library had 15 titles plus the pack-ins and then also then until we probably had over 30 titles we continued to put that in another element that we put in was a card that actually emphasized the quality seal and that nintendo guaranteed the quality of the product from both an entertainment value and the workmanship of the product that quality seal uh at the time my boss ron judy he's like what could we do that would be more like the good housekeeping seal of approval and that nintendo quality seal it still appears on every box and on licensed products from lunch boxes to whatever so that is something that stayed with nintendo so when the nes launched the launch titles being duck hunt and gyromite those games were fun certainly took advantage of the accessories and you know mario was definitely a killer app i really liked nes golf because i played that in the arcade version but i also liked a little kind of puzzle type game called clue clueland another game with a sunglass wearing polar bear called ice climber a lot of people love clue clue land quickly land where are you when it came to trying to find out what u.s consumers would think about the nes we did a few different focus groups the kids you know i would sit behind the mirror and i was the only one who knew how to play so i would have to come out and demonstrate the product to the kids and the kids were age range from like eight to twelve or eight to fourteen you know they seemed interested like they wanted to see and you know they wanted to see me demo the robot or the zapper and seemed to you know to me they were happy and excited and then we went to new jersey and one of those sessions the uh nintendo executive team came and watched from behind the glass as well so did the same thing and the kids are reacting and some kid who was very unruly he drew a picture of a joystick that looked like a penis and held it up to my face on the mirror he said i know you're behind here anyway so the nintendo executives come they're watching the kids the kids seem enthused etc and at the end they ask the moderator what he thinks about the chances for success and he said you know kids are always enthusiastic you know about a product so you know that's not the best way to gauge it and they said well what do you you know what what should we imagine that our successes he said well i've never seen anyone go ahead and launch with this type of result it was a little uh worrisome that what we were interpreting as positive the moderator was interpreting as neutral at best when uh the nes came out even in new york uh the retailers had really been burned through all of the closeouts of the prior generation so they were not very receptive to taking in the product and that really was probably one of the more difficult goals was to get the retailers to give it shelf space to have them not be concerned that they were going to have a lot of markdowns or be stuck with product that they couldn't sell that they had taken a risk on so it was really one of the bigger challenges and trying to get them to run include the nes and their advertising for the holidays so the kinds of retailers that we had to work with in the early days especially since what had happened in the prior generation a lot of toy stores and that type of retailer were really concerned about uh working with video games so a lot of people um these days look at that iconic imagery the way the packaging is it looks like old-fashioned like pixels like graph paper the way we named things we made sure not to call it a video game system that kind of thing so when it came to these challenges of trying to get away from the prior generation there there were challenges as related to retail my challenges were more related to how to make sure that the consumer and the parents who were purchasing didn't think that it was just more of the same a group of us uh went back there was a group of five or six and then they brought like five more people back and you know living in temporary apartments that kind of thing in new jersey and renting cars and vans and running out and trying to install these big rob displays at retail and to deliver product to them and you know there were times when like they went to the bronx with truckload of product and a display and while they're in loading in the display people are looting the car like it was just it was crazy and back in 1985 new york was much less safe than it is today so you know park the car get the wheels taken off not only was it difficult to get retailers or business people to take a risk on putting a video game system and cartridges on the shelf but you know parents had seen that they bought these games for their kids and they didn't even play them parents thought i am not spending more money on a video game when you play it for 10 minutes and then you're not interested we felt like we really did have a better product a product that wouldn't disappoint and we wanted to put all efforts into making sure the consumer felt like they got their money's worth and that they would want to buy another game when we introduce more software so some of the things that we did to that end were we called it the nintendo entertainment system and the advertising really focused on the whole family playing together it looks pretty corny today but it's a 1980s family and the dad is playing and the mom is excited about playing and two kids and that type of advertising and positioning was kind of the way that we went also putting rob the robot first in the sale of the nes or nintendo entertainment system you know really gave a point of differentiation and made it look like it was more futuristic and i think we also want to make sure that we would depend on the bug factor which we called kids bugging their parents to get it but that the parent would see that this was something that truly was new and different and would be a good investment for the whole family i think in the early days um making sure that we weren't associated with what had gone on before that these uh video games that were just simple blips and used a lot of licenses like et like other uh other major sports or movies entertainment they would have a picture from the actual movie a real person playing tennis on the cover and then you would open and it would just basically be advanced pong and people were like you know you'd look at the package and then you would play the game and be a complete disconnect so at the time the packaging that we created to make sure people didn't experience disappointment between the trimmings if you will and the actual software was really like made on graph paper it was supposed to represent computer graphics it's quite blocky and it's kind of iconic today people really see it as retro but the whole purpose was that we didn't want to show you know beautiful illustrations or photographs of real things on the packaging and then have people you know kind of say like this game is nothing like this so if anything we kind of undersold in order to continue with this consumer satisfaction need and not wanting to ever disappoint so although kids seemed enthusiastic to us in the focus groups but the experts told us not to expect too much you know we use that in thinking geez we really are going to have to make sure that they think that we present this as new and different things like calling the game's game packs and the entertainment system and coming up with rob your robotic operating buddy you know we had a lot of the nomenclature anything just from the idea of using the word cartridge was something we didn't want to use so we really tried to come up with ways of both demonstrating and visually representing the product that was going to make them understand that this wasn't what that they had seen before so one of the tactics we used to make sure kids could get their hands on the system and actually see it and experience it that it was something new and different was we um did grassroots marketing at mall tours so we booked these malls around the greater new york area and we would go in and set up on friday night and through the weekend we would have the system set up and these interesting cabinets and a big screen which at the time like a 40 inch big screen was like a big deal we had a little platform and a big screen and on the big screen we would play uh nes baseball and we had some stars from the mets come out and um play against the kids so they would create a line and um get to step up and play and so the two celebrities that we were able to contract with one was ron darling from the mets who was really kind of a he was like a playboy kind of guy at the time was very well known and did a lot of promotion and another guy named mookie wilson and mookie had a son named preston and he would also come to the mall tour so sometimes he was the most enthusiastic kid and he probably also knew how to play the games the best of anybody by the time we were done but i remember going to a mall out in long island where the mall uh manager she just didn't want us there so she put us like in the basement in the corner and she and i had kind of an all-out war over you know we had booked this promotion and you know thought she didn't want anything to do with video games and the negative influence that they would have so she wanted to hide us in the corner but it was a way of getting out there getting people to see it and play it and see that it was something that was kind of that it was better than a generation before and it certainly worked in terms of kids definitely wanted to ask for it for christmas and hopefully parents liked it too and saw that it would be fun so the team that was back in new york because it was pretty small i think in total there might have been 10 or 12 people but when we got to the weekend that we were going to actually launch and the product was going to go out to retail night that it came in and we were ready to go we had you know ron judy and uh bruce lowry was the vp of sales mr arkawa our president and howard lincoln our senior vp were all back there with us and we loaded up the truck in the warehouse and uh opened a bottle of champagne that we drank out of styrofoam cups and we were in new jersey and off went the track for delivery so the next more few of us went and stood outside of fao schwartz the system was all set up and we waited for people to come in and make the first sale so someone comes in and they not only buy the system but they buy like every game and it was so exciting it's like oh my god they're they're buying it they're buying it you know and um you know later we found out that it was like a japanese publisher who came in and bought it for like samples for their for their business later after new york we went to la and we used the same tactics we did mall tours we were starting to prepare for how we were going to do a national launch it's tough because we are a pretty lean team and at the time a guy named don kingsborough had uh launched a company called worlds of blender with teddy ruxpin was their big product line and he was someone that we knew from the business and mr arkawa really liked him and he and ron judy talked to don about maybe there was a way that we could use their distribution process to get our products into stores uh nationwide at the time there were a lot of regional chains as opposed to national chains that we have now like target or walmart that kind of thing he decided to use their rep firm and we went to a meeting i believe it was before a ces and we went to this meeting to introduce them to the product and show them what it was like and i know i was demoing the product and that they were gonna have this big opportunity to add this nintendo line along with teddy ruxpin to take out to retailers and many of them had also already been through the fall of the video game industry and how challenging it was when all the accounts want to return the product or deal with markdowns etc and they were not enthusiastic and they were actually downright disrespectful during the meeting and so don i recall he got up and he essentially yelled at them about their disrespect this whole sales team of like 50 people in this room are amazingly saying we don't want to sell your product but they went on to uh of course have great success and many of them uh stayed with nintendo after world of wonder wasn't really in business anymore or the teddy ruxpin fad was over they continued to have a good business with nintendo for many years since my job was marketing communications doing things like advertising pr trying to get stories that was very difficult trying to get stories about nintendo trying to do events where you know we even did an event in l.a where we had a whole bunch of kids celebrities come like at the time jason bateman was a kids celebrity and his sister and you know we had all these people will wheaton from stand by me at the time and even with that type of what we considered kids star power we had a hard time uh getting pick up on public relations getting people to talk about it as we launched nationally and you know it became something where you kind of would see it in your personal life i think you kind of feel the success when as a regular consumer you walk into a store and you really see your work right there it's on the screen you know that really it it just legitimizes it so much and it made me feel like not only were we successful but it was going to be a big thing and that it was going to be around a long time so once we launched nationally with the nes the company was really growing and started changing the marketing department went from two or three people to dividing into different departments and um having many more layers people with more experience we ended up forming our publishing division and i got asked to move and start nintendo power magazine which was an outgrowth of the fun club newsletter we decided to make a full fledged magazine but there were other things that changed also with at the senior level ron judy left and went to start nintendo in europe and peter maine came on board he was a seasoned marketer that mr arakawa knew from canada bob thompson that i mentioned he's our customer service department became huge and we founded the game counseling customer service and with hundreds of people in that area areas like licensing when we started licensing other companies to make software that area was incredibly important to nintendo and to support that we had a huge testing group that would test all the games and make sure the content met nintendo's criteria and made sure that the programs themselves didn't have any bugs or any glitches in them so that became a huge group of people so you know really during the mid and late 80s the company really grew maybe it just started looking a lot more like a lot of other companies but um definitely just it it grew by leaps and bounds at that time so along with all of the pack-ins um at some point we shifted to offering a newsletter and it grew so quickly people wanting to get this newsletter that by the time we had the issue called the punch out issue it we had about 600 000 uh subscribers so it was eating up a lot of marketing budget to mail out this newsletter create it print it mail it and mr arakawa had seen that in japan uh publishing about video games had grown and become its own kind of category and he wanted to do that in the us too so he asked me if i would consider taking on this publishing role as a director of publications then we started nintendo power working with a co-publisher in japan who really understood how to take things like screenshots and make all those cool maps to show people how to play the games and you know that was a really fun rule for me nintendo power continued for i think almost 25 years so with nintendo power one of the big purposes was to make sure again that people like the games make sure that they were satisfied and they would always be ready to buy the next game felt it was worth their money so we would show a walkthrough of the whole game in nintendo power or a player's guide but there was one policy which was you don't show the final boss or the final scene and the reason is and i think i recall that mr miyamoto was a big driver of this was that's the payoff for all your hard work you spent all this time investment of playing this game and getting to the end and to not let the consumer and the player really enjoy the success of that final moment you know was it was felt like let's just keep that um for them so when i think of the influence nintendo had on people probably the area that i am most proud of is when i think of nintendo power and the millions of readers of nintendo power the idea that we were actually getting kids to read and getting them to study these things like these maps and uh and the detail and to take something that they loved as much as playing the game and then want to really learn about it so just think how much you have to learn when you're playing a game and how much you they people enjoyed reading and pouring over these things like i think it it created a um mindset amongst those those people who were involved at that time as players as kids that it was hopefully really valuable in their whole life to think if they wanted to know about something they would go read about it or study about it and that they knew that they could expand their knowledge and through additional information and learning so i think that that's the coolest contribution from my side

Channel: Ars Technica

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Keywords: war stories, ars war stories, ars technica war stories, war stories nintendo, ars technica nintendo, ars nintendo, nintendo entertainment system, nintendo power, nintendo power magazine, nintendo 1985, nintendo 1986, nintendo of america, gail tilden, nes, n.e.s., nes launch, nes 1985, gail tilden nintendo, gail tilden nintendo power, original nes, 8bit nes, 8bit nintendo, history of nintendo, history of nes, ars technica nes, ars technica, ars, technology

Id: Sn5v09L_uDg

Length: 26min 23sec (1583 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 29 2020