Evan Ratliff

They'd spent all this time coming up with the advanced video system, and it went nowhere.

But they also, like, they were it for action figures.

Like, nobody could compete with Migo.

So, again, the head of the company, Hiroshi Yamauchi—

They would buy stuff from Japan and then turn them into new stuff here.

told a couple of people, like, hey, redesign this in an hour.

There was just no competing with Migo in the U.S., even though a lot of people were.

And they did.

And Lance Barr was the guy who did it.

But they also dropped the ball in the most spectacular fashion anyone could ever drop the ball in the action figure world.

And he knocked it out of the park because the NES, as it debuted later on in North America, was essentially what he came up with in that one hour that he was given to do it.

Yeah.

Like, it's almost an elegant end of the story because it literally makes you cringe when you read it.

So they did all this.

and had it done in time for the July 1985 CES.

And there's two different versions, but both of them are like, oh, man.

Yeah, I think there's really only one version.

Like six months after that huge colossal failure, they went back to the drawing board and came back in six months with the Nintendo Entertainment System fully fleshed out, including Robot and Zapper Gun.

I literally could not find a single source other than this one guy's blog who claimed the other version.

But what we're talking about, and if you know action figures, you probably see this coming, they declined the Star Wars brand and allowed Kenner to pick it up.