Nintendo Pioneer Talks NES Phenomenon

Posted by simoniker on Tuesday July 22, 2003 @08:04PM from the mario's-box-of-tricks dept.

Thanks to Video-fenky for his article translating a recent Famitsu interview with Hiroshi Imanishi, former executive director of Nintendo, about the original launch of the Famicom/NES console, which celebrated its 20th anniversary last week. The Famicom wasn't immediately well-received, according to Imanishi: "We were the new kid on the block, and a lot of places said to us 'We've already seen Donkey Kong in the arcades and on the Game & Watch! You're putting it out again?'" He also describes how the trademark NES controller almost never came to be: "...during development the majority of Nintendo wanted to include a regular joystick with the system. However, during that time, we made the first multi-screen Game & Watch, and we introduced the control pad so you wouldn't have to keep on glancing at your hands while you're playing the game"

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Toy? by TripleA · 2003-07-22 21:19 · Score: 2, Insightful

Well, thet wanted the machine to look like a toy, didn't they? To take a step away from all the coputer wannabee videogames of that era. So they made the controls non-changeable and the colors very silly.