So now it\u2019s June of 1986. It’s been 7 months since the rollout of the NES. Sales started in New York and California, and now we\u2019re spreading inward across the country into flyover country. Sales are ramping up, Nintendo is meeting the demand so far with the system and current games. But the people in the original sales areas are clamoring for more games. Nintendo is proving that the infamous video game crash of the early 80s is over, and they want to ride the wave of demand straight to the bank. They put a TON of work into the first batch of games, but the next batch of games aren\u2019t ready. What\u2019s easier than making a bunch of new games? Recycle games you\u2019ve already released elsewhere. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nintendo truly made their name as an arcade game developer, riding the wave of success from Donkey Kong. So the next batch of games, with one exception, were all ports of previous Nintendo arcade games. (the term \u201cport\u201d comes from either the French portare <\/em>(to carry) or from being \u201cportable software,\u201d meaning it could be transferred from one system to another. It\u2019s easier to take a pre-existing game for, say, the TRS-80, and make it work on an Atari 2600, than it is to design a game to sell for each.) So that\u2019s what Nintendo decided to do. They went to the stable of games built for the arcades by Miyamoto, crammed them into cartridges, and sold them for the NES. It worked. The public was sated until original content could be released, and it was kinda cool to have an arcade game at home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The next games released for the Nintendo were Mario Bros, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., Donkey Kong 3, Donkey Kong Jr Math, and Popeye. (short updates below, because I\u2019m not going to spend a ton of time talking about non-original games, especially since some of them have been discussed before.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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