When Nintendo (and Mario) Rescued Video Games
HISTORY This Week
The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios
4.5 • 4.2K Ratings
🗓️ 22 September 2025
⏱️ 28 minutes
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Summary
September 27, 1986. You’re a kid in the mid-80s. You get home from school, flip on the TV, and see something strange: a commercial where a giant egg hatches behind a family’s console, revealing a toy robot. His name is R.O.B. — the Robotic Operating Buddy — but he's just an accessory. The real product: Nintendo.
Today, the Nintendo Entertainment System is launching nationwide. Just a few years earlier, the U.S. video game market had collapsed under the weight of bad games and too many consoles. But Nintendo had a plan — to sell Americans on something that didn’t look like a video game at all.
With a plastic robot, a disguised gray box, and a plumber named Mario, how did Nintendo manage to sneak video games back into living rooms—and rescue a dying industry?
Special thanks to Jeremy Parish, media curator at Limited Run Games, producer of NES Works, and co-host of the Retronauts podcast.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The History Channel, original podcast. |
| 0:05.0 | History this week. |
| 0:06.8 | September 27, 1986. |
| 0:12.2 | I'm Sally Helm. |
| 0:14.8 | You're a kid in the mid-80s. |
| 0:17.2 | You just got home from school or from playing |
| 0:19.4 | wiffle ball in the streets with your friends. |
| 0:21.6 | And you do what most kids do when they come home. |
| 0:24.2 | You turn on the TV. |
| 0:27.6 | Will it be you? |
| 0:29.4 | Will your family be the first to witness the birth of the incredible Nintendo Entertainment System? |
| 0:36.7 | The first NES ad, I believe, that aired in America, |
| 0:40.7 | has these kids in a living room and there's this egg. |
| 0:43.5 | That is Jeremy Parrish, author and co-host of The Retronauts podcast. |
| 0:48.5 | So, The Egg. |
| 0:50.4 | This egg that emerges from, like, behind their TV console, and it cracks open. |
| 0:56.5 | The first to play with Rob, the extraordinary video robot. |
| 0:59.9 | He follows the commands you put on screen so you get to the dynamite before it explodes. |
| 1:05.0 | This is a commercial for a new thing called the Nintendo Entertainment System. |
| 1:11.0 | Today, it's launching nationwide. |
| 1:13.7 | And you would know it as a video game system. |
| 1:17.4 | That's what it is. |
... |
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