A little history lesson here, first.
Way back in 1984, Nintendo was crafting plans to capture the videogame market in North America, after the Great Crash of 1983 had taken out much of America's gaming industry. They planned to do this with their Famicom, already a mega-hit in Japan, and with a series of games that would absolutely blow anything on the old Atari 2600 out of the water.
There was a problem. Nobody in America, at least nobody who was an adult, actually wanted videogames anymore, because of said Crash. To them, videogames were just overpriced shovelware that grabbed your money before you realized just how bad the game was. Even those who saw greatness in the Famicom knew that it wouldn't sell as a games console.
Then Nintendo found a sneaky trick. They won't sell a 'games console'. They'll sell a toy, an 'Entertainment System'.
Enter R.O.B. One of the most advertized elements of the Famicom (renamed the "NES" and redressed to look vaguely like a video cassette player) was a one-foot-tall toy robot, the Robotic Operating Buddy. Using words like 'fun', 'video' and, extremely rarely, 'game', Nintendo promised that R.O.B could be played with by children as the next generation of electronic toys.
He was extremely slow, could barely interact with his own sub-peripherals, and had a grand total of two games, neither of them particularly good even if played with a second human player. Truly, he was one of Nintendos most godawful pieces of hardware, matched only possibly by the Virtual Boy.
But that didn't matter mucy, as his actual purpose was to be Nintendos Trojan Horse. What he did do was get NESs into peoples homes, allowing Nintendo to then sell America their games. Retailers and potential customers could look at the NES and say 'Hey, isn't this a game console, like that Atari/Intellivision/Colecovision thing that imploded two years ago?' and Nintendo could say 'Uh, nope, it's a toy. Look, it has a little robot, how could it not be?'. By the time parents found out R.O.B ripped them off, their kids were pleading them for more money to buy Mario, Zelda and Metroid.
It was a beautiful moment in the history of business where not only did the company know what the customer wanted, they lied through their teeth in order to sell him it, because he sure as Hell hadn't a clue what he wanted.
That all said, was there potential in R.O.B himself to actually be a proper add-on to the NES, like the Zapper? If he was made a little less cheaply, a little more care was given to his compatible games, he wasn't abandoned so quickly after Nintendo takes root? Basically, could one of gamings biggest and earliest scrappys have been saved from the scrappy-heap?
Way back in 1984, Nintendo was crafting plans to capture the videogame market in North America, after the Great Crash of 1983 had taken out much of America's gaming industry. They planned to do this with their Famicom, already a mega-hit in Japan, and with a series of games that would absolutely blow anything on the old Atari 2600 out of the water.
There was a problem. Nobody in America, at least nobody who was an adult, actually wanted videogames anymore, because of said Crash. To them, videogames were just overpriced shovelware that grabbed your money before you realized just how bad the game was. Even those who saw greatness in the Famicom knew that it wouldn't sell as a games console.
Then Nintendo found a sneaky trick. They won't sell a 'games console'. They'll sell a toy, an 'Entertainment System'.
Enter R.O.B. One of the most advertized elements of the Famicom (renamed the "NES" and redressed to look vaguely like a video cassette player) was a one-foot-tall toy robot, the Robotic Operating Buddy. Using words like 'fun', 'video' and, extremely rarely, 'game', Nintendo promised that R.O.B could be played with by children as the next generation of electronic toys.
He was extremely slow, could barely interact with his own sub-peripherals, and had a grand total of two games, neither of them particularly good even if played with a second human player. Truly, he was one of Nintendos most godawful pieces of hardware, matched only possibly by the Virtual Boy.
But that didn't matter mucy, as his actual purpose was to be Nintendos Trojan Horse. What he did do was get NESs into peoples homes, allowing Nintendo to then sell America their games. Retailers and potential customers could look at the NES and say 'Hey, isn't this a game console, like that Atari/Intellivision/Colecovision thing that imploded two years ago?' and Nintendo could say 'Uh, nope, it's a toy. Look, it has a little robot, how could it not be?'. By the time parents found out R.O.B ripped them off, their kids were pleading them for more money to buy Mario, Zelda and Metroid.
It was a beautiful moment in the history of business where not only did the company know what the customer wanted, they lied through their teeth in order to sell him it, because he sure as Hell hadn't a clue what he wanted.
That all said, was there potential in R.O.B himself to actually be a proper add-on to the NES, like the Zapper? If he was made a little less cheaply, a little more care was given to his compatible games, he wasn't abandoned so quickly after Nintendo takes root? Basically, could one of gamings biggest and earliest scrappys have been saved from the scrappy-heap?
