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This began a brutal chain reaction across the entire North American gaming market, which was not at all helped by a newly soured consumer outlook on the video game concept. Most stores, lacking space to carry new games and consoles, had no choice but to attempt to return surplus games to recent publishers, but since publishers had neither new products to supply nor cash to issue refunds to the retailers, many companies folded, and of those that did not, several abandoned the video game business entirely. Stores left with units that could no longer be returned to defunct publishers could only resort to offering the titles for spectacularly low bargain-bin prices. Toy retailers that controlled consumer access to games had concluded that video games were a fad that had in fact ended, and therefore became opposed to devoting shelf space to video games and consoles in favor of other types of entertainment products. | This began a brutal chain reaction across the entire North American gaming market, which was not at all helped by a newly soured consumer outlook on the video game concept. Most stores, lacking space to carry new games and consoles, had no choice but to attempt to return surplus games to recent publishers, but since publishers had neither new products to supply nor cash to issue refunds to the retailers, many companies folded, and of those that did not, several abandoned the video game business entirely. Stores left with units that could no longer be returned to defunct publishers could only resort to offering the titles for spectacularly low bargain-bin prices. Toy retailers that controlled consumer access to games had concluded that video games were a fad that had in fact ended, and therefore became opposed to devoting shelf space to video games and consoles in favor of other types of entertainment products. | ||
The massive recession of North America's video game market into near-complete irrelevance, as well as thriving European areas such as Britain's focus on gaming | The massive recession of North America's video game market into near-complete irrelevance, as well as thriving European areas such as Britain's focus on gaming software for personal computers, had, of course, by definition handed dominance in the devoted home console market to Japan, and Nintendo's Famicom console was free to build up influence in the country and become the dominant console. During development of ''[[Mario (universe)|Super Mario Bros.]]'', Nintendo sought an eventual late 1985 Western release for the Famicom and its building library as the "NES", but Western retailers' long-established bias against video games and consoles was a formidable barrier to these plans. Nintendo's Research and Development Team therefore hoped to construct hardware compatible with the console that could help present the NES console to these retailers as a "toy" and "entertainment system" with compatible "Game Paks" and different toy-like peripherals, instead of being presented as merely the latest console-with-cartridges product. The NES Zapper light gun and several games associated with it were already on hand to help provide this image, but Nintendo proceeded to develop a mechanically complex, battery-powered peripheral resembling a nearly foot-tall robot that was literally named "Robot". They developed two NES cartridges compatible with the device: ''Robot Block'', released in Japan along with the Robot unit itself near the end of July 1985, and ''Robot Gyro'', released mid-August. Robot was renamed "[[R.O.B.]]" for its Western release, and its associated games ''Stack-Up'' and ''Gyromite'', respectively - though the titles were not localised besides the promotional materials due to already being in English, and would show their Japanese names on-screen when booted up on the NES. | ||
[[File:ROB series logo JPN.png|thumb|left|The logo for the Family Computer Robot]] | [[File:ROB series logo JPN.png|thumb|left|The logo for the Family Computer Robot]] |
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