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The Nintendo Entertainment System brought gaming home. Before Nintendo, video games were just a nerdy fad. After Nintendo, Mario was an icon as known as Superman, and Christmas trees were held up with stacks of games and the console itself. Living rooms became the new social area for teenagers, gathered around the tube for another try through King Koopa's Castle.

With such a great product to ignite video game culture, it's no wonder Nintendo is alive and kicking today, and competing fiercely with two other companies! But only months before the NES launched, the video game industry had almost died, washed out of American soil.

Retailers and consumers alike were sour on video games. Atari had cornered the market and went wild, mass-publishing any scrap of code it could get to resemble a game and fit into a shiny box. Hundreds of titles went out, and only a handful were worth playing. With no video game magazines to give unbiased reviews, consumers could only purchase and pray. They lost. Atari's bank account won.

Things were bad, but the one game to shatter the industry's spine would be a movie-based game: E.T. on the Atari. Allegedly programmed by one guy in only six weeks, millions of copies were shipped to launch with the fabulous family movie. Families went right from the theater to Toys "R" Us and then went right to the garbage dump after five minutes of playtime. Literally. Almost.

E.T.'s first run sold moderately on package design, but word of mouth spread fast, and millions of unsold copies are currently buried in a New Mexico landfill. After that, consumers decided they'd taken enough flak. Sales plummeted, and stores saved precious shelf real estate by moving games to the bargain bins.

But that holiday season, Mario came to dinner. Stores were awfully pessimistichow would this game system perform better than the last? That Mario guy is cool, but how will it sell?

To promote its system, Nintendo took a large financial risk, offering to re-purchase any unsold consoles at the end of the holiday season. Retailers couldn't refuse the offer, but in the end, it didn't matter.

Mario, man. Joyful news spread from living room to schoolyard and back to living room, and then to shopping cart. Everyone wanted to play Mario. He was cool. He was hip. If you had a Nintendo, there was a reason to hang out at your house. An "in" key to socialization, and a whole lot of fun. And you didn't just play video games, you played NINTENDO. There was no other. Sales soared, and dozens

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