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The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was originally released to the United States on October 18, 1985, as part of a test launch in the New York market. It was a Western version of the successful Japanese console the Famicom, releasing into a much less certain market in the U.S., still recovering from the ravages of the ’80s-era Video Game Crash. 40 years later, we in the modern games industry are still feeling the effects of that day’s launch.
To mark the occasion, I got the chance to speak with Frank Cifaldi, the founder and director of the Video Game History Foundation, a video game historian who has made it his mission to preserve all of the corners of the industry across the decades. As one might imagine, the NES launch was a topic with great depth and history behind it, and I suspect it would take several interviews before we covered it fully.
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