It's likely that this month marks exactly thirty years since Nintendo's very first home video game console launched in Australia, and while you might think you could confirm that by asking the company itself or with a simple Google search, it's not that easy.
Details of the Nintendo Entertainment System's early days down under — when it was distributed by Mattel, not Nintendo proper — are surprisingly difficult to come by, with information gleaned online based overwhelmingly on childhood memories, collective assumptions and details of the US launch incorrectly extrapolated to Australia.
Many online articles are unattributed, or reflexively attributed to each other, but Joshua Rogers — a historian and student researching the launch for a book about the Japanese gaming giant's arrival in Australia — says the information exists primarily offline, in printed books, old newspapers and the minds of some of Australia's earliest game developers.
Aside from the date of the system's launch — most people just say 1987 but Rogers, 20, says interviews and books have left him confident it was some time in July — the main thing missing from most accounts is that Australians initially "weren't really interested in the NES".
"It was a release that had been looming for months", Rogers says.
"Basically Mattel, who also distributed in the UK, couldn't release it because nobody wanted it. Same thing happened in Australia. They tried releasing it in early 1987, but no retailers wanted it".
Of course today Nintendo is a household name in Australia, with the company's new machines often selling out (including last year's miniature replica of the NES), but in 1987 the local market was enjoying the games provided on microcomputers like the Commodore 64.
Nintendo's real big splash was in the US, where microcomputers never took off and where Atari had previously led the games console industry into a massive crash.
"One of the things people always get wrong is that Nintendo 'saved' the games console, or games in general, but it's really only in the US that they did" Rogers says.
The NES is a westernised version of Nintendo's popular Family Computer (or Famicom), which it released only in Japan in 1983. The shrewd company knew it would have a hard time selling its video game system in the US after the crash, which is why the NES is much larger, less colourful and has a unique horizontal cartridge loader.
It looked more like a VCR than what Americans knew of games consoles, and consumers ate it up stateside when it launched in 1985.
In Australia and the UK, where the NES was in the US style but modified to run on our TVs, the delayed release put Nintendo in direct competition with Sega, whose Master System console was also out in 1987 and which was more effective at pulling Aussies away from their microcomputers.
"If you go through archives of newspapers it always talks about Ozisoft Sega making huge profits, and Nintendo falling behind and looking to up their advertising campaigns", Rogers says, noting that Mattel's NES advertising strategy in Australia was profoundly weird.
"Any place that wasn't Japan or the US ... they just could not get it right".
Another common misconception, Rogers says, is that Nintendo and Mattel made a concerted effort to address the Australian market. In reality Nintendo was "thinking locally and acting globally", he says, merely applying much of what it was doing in its lucrative market of America.
It's often asserted that Mattel or Nintendo tapped Melbourne developer Beam Software to make games for the Aussie market, for example, but Rogers says that isn't the case.
"Beam Software got a publishing licence [or the NES], and apparently the owner Alfred Milgrom was overjoyed with that", Rogers say. "He wanted to publish Australian games".
The company's Aussie Rules Footy and International Cricket games, then, came from the passion of Beam and not the marketing savvy of Mattel.
While Australian NES pricing is not common knowledge, the Dick Smith ad puts the Deluxe Pack at $450. Adjusting for inflation, that's $1057 in 2016 money. The stock standard console was $295 (still almost $700 adjusted). The prices were apparently lowered significantly in the early 90s as Sega continued to undercut Nintendo.
All Rogers' research, which includes interviews with former employees of Beam and other companies, business books written about Nintendo in the UK, content shared by prominent games researcher Helen Stuckey and his own collection of games, prototypes and advertising material, points to a slow start for the NES.
"I have a [Mattel Australia] flier from 1993 and it actually says 'we're so glad the NES is taking Australia by storm'", he says. "The thing is that's six years after release".
A representative from Nintendo Australia couldn't confirm the Australian NES launch details when contacted by Fairfax, noting that the company didn't take over distribution duties from Mattel until 1994.Â
While Rogers contends it's a case of intentionally letting rose-tinted glasses write the history books ("the cynic in me thinks they just don't want people to know it wasn't that great back then", he says), vague details of gaming in the west are essentially par for the course. Even in the US, where the NES was a bona fide hit, historians are still struggling to categorically prove basic facts like the release date of Super Mario Bros.
Coincidentally, July 2017 also marks 40 years since the 128-year-old company first got into video games, producing two Pong clones which it only sold in Japan: the Colour TV Game 6 and Colour TV Game 15.
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