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Check Out The Very First Advertisement For The NES
After five years of searching, video game archivist Frank Cifaldi has tracked down the very first advertisement for the Nintendo Entertainment Console, and was kind enough to share it online for everyone to see.
Earlier in August, Cifaldi tracked down one of the first game prototypes for the NES, but his latest find is a little more visually appealing than an unassuming chipboard. The magazine advertisement appeared in the January issue of Consumer Electronics in 1985; Cifaldi says he's only seen two copies of the issue on sale in the past five years on eBay. Thankfully, Cifaldi didn't hesitate sharing the image with the rest of us:
It took five years but I finally found it: the very first advertisement for what became the Nintendo Entertainment System, from late 1984! pic.twitter.com/6r4sv7vSst
— Frank Cifaldi (@frankcifaldi) December 17, 2016
In a follow-up tweet, Cifaldi reveals that even though the NES is supposedly hidden in the advertisement, the protoype console was actually shown off in the same issue just a few pages earlier:
They've got it under a cloth like it's a surprise but there was a picture of it like five pages ago. pic.twitter.com/HrQ93VRn1e
— Frank Cifaldi (@frankcifaldi) December 17, 2016
Cifaldi is currently working as the founder and board president of The Video Game History Foundation, a charitable organization "dedicated to cataloging, digitizing, and preserving the history of the video game industry and the culture it spawned." Based on his recent work, it seems they're off to a good start.
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