[Flashbacks] News Reports about Nintendo in 1988

[Refractive Reflections]

It's always interesting to get a historical perspective on cultural phenomena, and of course video games are no exception.

Came across these YouTube clips of news organizations (Inside Edition and 20/20) reporting about the unprecedented and incomprehensible success of the Nintendo Entertainment System back in 1988. (Just my luck in discovering these 25 years later... ) Of course the NES was released to the U.S. in late 1985, but because in those 3 years NES simply became unavoidable to the mainstream public, which was the reason for these reports.

It's hilarious when they question people on the street who Mario, Luigi, or Nintendo is, and how adults have NO clue about them. Little do they know in the future how big they will become... And also it's adorably funny how the reporters storytell these video games like epic adventures from a novel; you don't see or hear that type of journalistic reporting nowadays about video games.

Hope these clips bring some hilarious and interesting reflections:
1. Inside Edition's Nintendo Success Story (1988 )


2. ABC's 20/20 "Nuts For Nintendo" Special (1988 )



3. (I found this clip about the arcade game craze during 1982 that was worth watching. The video is choppy though.) ABC news channel in Los Angeles report about the video game industry in 1982.

It unavoidable to think about the imminent North American video game crash of 1983 when seeing this video, and entertaining to see how a rheumatologist was consulted for "Pac-Man Wrist" [carpel tunnel syndrome], and how towns wanted to ban arcade cabinets because they caused "delinquency".

Enjoy the trip down memory lane...

[CyberCubed]

Yeah, the start of Nintendo home consoles and then the Pokemon era in 1998 were quite big when the general public had no idea what was going on.

[Zulithe]

cool. when this came out I was too busy being a kid actually playing my NES to watch 20/20. Guess it's catch-up time. I really do love old videos like this.

I love how they call the NES a "deck", you'd never hear that today :p

If you could travel back in time and show the kids in these videos Super Mario Galaxy 2, do you think their heads would explode?

[Refractive Reflections]

Originally Posted by Zulithe

cool. when this came out I was too busy being a kid actually playing my NES to watch 20/20. Guess it's catch-up time. I really do love old videos like this.

I love how they call the NES a "deck", you'd never hear that today :p

If you could travel back in time and show the kids in these videos Super Mario Galaxy 2, do you think their heads would explode?

I thought these videos would be a good perspective to see, since experiencing events in history can be interpreted differently when we were children in the late 80s, to now seeing these same events as an adult (with some of us having children of our own.)

With these videos, we can now sense just how innovative and new the whole NES phenomenon was, compared to so many other "children's toys" beforehand and the immense pressure our parents must have felt to go out and buy these hot new video games. Back then as kids, we were so short-sighted to realize how culturally transforming the whole NES phenomenon was unlike if we were adults (that had some years of experienced history to reflect upon) to see how the entertainment industry was being radically transformed because of it.

It's very entertaining to see these videos from a 25 year hindsight perspective. Never more has the phrase, "Hindsight is 20/20, but foresight takes a greater vision" can be applied here since what is now dead common and ordinary for us (home console video games), was wildly fresh and exciting for people back then.

...Who knows...maybe even these videos might help us to empathize with our parents' situations from a financial perspective, or a child upbringing perspective, and in the process, help bridge the generation gaps.