This might be the first Nintendo commercial in the US

on

|

views

and

comments

Nintendo is a gaming juggernaut today, but it wasn’t really on anyone’s radar in the United States in 1980. And what was possibly the first US commercial for hardware produced by the company — a handheld called Toss-Up, from its “Game & Watch” series — certainly didn’t help, as a newly-restored copy shows. That’s because there’s no mention of Nintendo at all, or even Game & Watch.Game & Watch games were simplistic standalone handheld LCD games not unlike the cheap licensed Tiger Electronics games seemingly every kid had in the 1990s. And in the US, those games were initially licensed to a company called Mego (pronounced “mee-go”), and sold as a series called “Time-Out” instead, according to The Video Game History Foundation in a blog post Time Extension spotted. The ad was dated June 25th, 1980 — only “a couple of months after Nintendo of America was incorporated,” Gaming historian Chris Kohler, who found the 16mm reel containing the ad on eBay, told the foundation. The hardware was still apparently embossed with a Nintendo logo on the back.The commercial entreats mostly older, trendy youths (except for the goofy nerdy one because ha, ha, nerds) to enjoy an “electronic sport” when they can’t do real ones. You know, like when you’ve got fallen arches or tennis elbow, or you’re entirely wrapped in a full-body cast. That’s pretty different from Nintendo’s own commercials a few years later! Those tended to focus on kids and families and certainly didn’t have close-ups of butts in skin-tight shorts. Like this one: The Game & Watch games also came in other form factors besides the one Nintendo resurrected for its standalone collectible versions of the NES Super Mario Bros. and Legend of Zelda games a few years ago. Like this dual-screen one:

Share this
Tags

Must-read

Mortgage Rates Could Fall Another Half Point Just from Market Normalization

It’s been a pretty good year so far for mortgage rates, which topped out at around 8% last year.The 30-year fixed is now priced...

Goldman Sachs loses profit after hits from GreenSky, real estate

Second-quarter profit fell 58% to $1.22 billion, or $3.08 a share, due to steep declines in trading and investment banking and losses related to...

Half of Japan’s chip-making equipment exports headed to China in Q1 · TechNode

Japan’s Ministry of Finance trade statistics show that half of Japan’s semiconductor manufacturing equipment exports were heading to China in the first quarter, according...
spot_img

Recent articles

More like this

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here