The American version of the Famicom, known to all of us as the Nintendo Entertainment System, debuted in October 1985, but that was not the Japanese giant's first foray across the Atlantic. According to history, in the early '80s, Nintendo joined forces with toy manufacturer Mego to market a new line of handheld video games called Time-Out. In other words, these were the original Game & Watch devices that reached the United States under a different name, and recently, the folks at the Video Game History Foundation managed to access what appears to be their first TV commercial…
A quick search on eBay confirms that some users are asking a fortune for the original Game & Watch games. Seeing the Super Mario Bros. Crystal Screen (a game I had as a kid... and broke in half trying to see something on its screen) at a price of $600 makes me want to travel back in time and punch myself. However, there are even rarer models than the Japanese Game & Watch, and those are the Mego Time-Out.
Mego Time-Out: The first TV commercial for Nintendo outside Japan?
Collector and historian Chris Kohler explains that before the creation of Nintendo of America, Nintendo made a deal with manufacturer Mego to release four Game & Watch games in the United States. The chosen games were Toss-Up (Ball), Exterminator (Vermin), Fireman Fireman (Fire), and Flag Man (Flagman). Browsing eBay, Chris discovered a film with the commercial for Toss-Up, the first in the series, and sent it to the Video Game History Foundation for restoration and backup.
The film box indicates “Lion Rock Ltd.”, a division of Mego at the time, and the date goes back to June 25, 1980, a few months after the official birth of Nintendo of America. Unfortunately, the VGHF cannot process tapes (and the 16mm format complicates things), but they got in touch with the folks at Movette Film Transfer, who have all the necessary equipment. Time has definitely taken its toll (the loss of color is the main symptom), yet their results are excellent. As a final tidbit, copies of the commercial already exist on YouTube, but this is a revised version, making it even rarer.
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