Nintendo of America was so poor in the ’80s that it was “bartering” for 2am TV commercials while employees had to dodge “snakes and rats in the bathroom”

The Famicom was already a success in Japan by the time Nintendo considered bringing it worldwide as the NES, but in the wake of the Atari crash, its fortunes in the US were by no means assured. While Wikipedia shows that the NES launched in the US in 1985, that was effectively just for a…