Nintendo Retail Holiday Demonstration VHS from 1993!
Join us, as hip early 90s Ben takes us on a journey to prepare our retail operation for an onslaught of Nintendo products.
This video was sent to retail stores across the US prior to the holiday season of 1993 to demonstrate how to effectively sell Nintendo’s products. During this time, the Super Nintendo is in full swing and Nintendo remains the largest video game company in the world, so if you want access to their products, you do what you’re told.
“It’s radical fun, man!”
After Ben gives us the low down, we get an abbreviated history of Nintendo as a company from their beginnings as a card manufacturer in 1889. Following this, we are given the directive from the mothership:
- SELL THEM THIS PRODUCT AND RELATED PRODUCTS
- MAKE THEM PLAY USING YOUR IN-STORE DEMO KIOSKS
- ANSWER THEIR QUESTIONS
Not only do they tell you what to do, but they send you a box that looks like a refrigerator is in it and tell you to set up everything inside of it. It has a full stand-up display with places to set up game demos and product brochures. They seemingly give you thousands of pages of product information that they tell you to read after watching this video. Not only that, but they include vests and hats you need to wear, pins you need to wear on those vests, information cards they tell you to carry around at all times for reference, and they give you flyers to hang up where your employees review their schedule so they are forced to read this information even more.
Now I don’t have a ton of retail experience, but I have to imagine that someone who runs one of these stores isn’t too keen on an outside company demanding all of this. Sure, it’s one thing to get the displays and comply with all of that, but to force employees to memorize binders full of books when they have their own company policies they need to know and memorize on top of what the King of Video Games demands. I imagine that retailers put their displays up and just left the binders and flyers sitting around.
It says that after the period in which the demo station has to be set up, the “demonstrator” gets a copy of Mario Paint and they get to keep all of the swag that came in the demo station. That’s pretty cool, I guess, but I bet there were either fights over their complimentary copy of Mario Paint or managers just snuck them home for themselves.
After this, they tell you how you have to dress. They tell you to “Dress casual” but to also “dress professionally.” So they’re telling us how to dress, too?! How do they enforce this? Do they have Nintendo Undercover Agents who go to stores and judge them based on how they dress?
Soon the video gets out of the habit of telling you how to do your job and begins to show you some demonstrations on how to play Super Scope games, Mario Paint, NES and the Game Boy.
“Get your store’s customers rockin’ with your suave, bold demeanor. Be enthusiastic and talk video game fun!” is a real quote.
They have an example of a customer interaction where a customer is asking about why they should choose a Game Boy when there is “a handheld unit with color.” The employee then says that “color has its drawbacks” and that it makes the handheld weigh THREE POUNDS and require additional batteries. Of course they don’t mention the Game Gear by name. They tell you not to mention their competition by name, but why do you give a shit if you’re working at a Sears?
They go on to address some of the criticisms of Nintendo you may hear while doing this job, like “Nintendo doesn’t use up to date technology like CD-ROM!” If you hear this, Nintendo says to tell the customer just how slow CD-ROMs are and that cartridges are where you go for fast games.
Also, they tell you that Nintendo is working on creating next generation hardware under the codename ‘PROJECT REALITY.” I guess this is to give you confidence in telling customers that Nintendo isn’t that far behind their competition. This, of course, is the codename for what would ultimately become the Nintendo 64. They show some tech demos that don’t look like any N64 games I’ve ever seen.
This covers the gist of the tape. If you’re interested, I suggest you watch the entire thing in full if you can’t get enough early 90s shilling.
