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The mini interview about the launch of the Nintendo Entertainment System from Gail Tilden the manager of NIntendo Power magazine (mentioned in the article) after the video game crash was pretty interesting. https://youtu.be/Sn5v09L_uDg

Apparently the initial version came with a robot? Which seems weird to me…

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Yep. ROB was the gimmick that allowed Nintendo to say to retailers "It's not a video game!" and convince them to stock Nintendo's products. You really can't overestimate the difficulty Nintendo faced in getting ANYONE AT ALL to look at their system; the crash had been so devastating to the market that all the major retailers had completely sworn off ever touching consoles again.

In the video, they said they called the "Nintendo Entertainment System" to avoid calling it video game console.

a little digging (ROB is wikipedia famous). R.O.B. (Robotic Operating Buddy) ha!

"In January 1986, an independent research firm commissioned by Nintendo delivered a survey of 200 NES owners, showing that the most popular given reason for buying an NES was because children wanted the robot"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.O.B.

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