Nintendo: The Company and its Founders - Sharyland ISD

NINTENDO OF AMERICA EXPANDS
type of arcade game that allowed
two players to play at the same
time, called the VS for versus. The
Famicom video game system also
continued to sell very well in Japan,
but most of Nintendo’s business in
TWIN FAMICOM
the United States was based on the
Sharp electronics was Nintendo’s
coin-operated arcade games.
partner in hardware products,
Yamauchi wanted a bigger
and in 1986, Sharp released
the Twin Famicom, licensed by
slice of the US video game
Nintendo. Like the Famicom,
market. He told Arakawa that he
it was essentially a computer,
wanted to launch a US version
but it combined the Famicom
Disk System (FDS) with the
of Famicom. However, the home
Famicom game console. The
video game business in the United disk system allowed players to
States was barely breathing. Game store game data on separate
floppy disks. The system was
manufacturers had flooded the
sold only in Japan.
market, and many of the games
were poorly produced. Video
game systems did not have control
over who made the games for
their systems, so it was hard for
consumers to tell good games
from bad ones. If a game was bad, it could not be
returned. The US video game market collapsed in
1983, and consumers moved on to other forms of
entertainment.
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