NES Top Loader: Why Did it Fail?

By: The Collector
 The Toploader NES: Why did it fail?

As any modern NES collector knows, one of the consistently hot (and expensive) items on the market (or at least eBay) today is the Nintendo’s NES 2. Short supply and newly-mustered high demand make this a $100+ item on eBay nowadays, but many know that the system was more or less a failure in its launch days of 1993. What happened? Why did this functional update fail to take hold in the US, where the NES is the most common video game system available?

Though this article is based on speculation on my part, I believe that there are some answers here that can calm the questions of individuals who ask themselves why a system that sells easily for twice as much as it did ten years ago sold poorly back in 1993. This article also assumes that the reader has knowledge about the specifics of the NES 2.

A basic overview of the toploader is as follows: released in 1993, the NES 2 was an update to the highly popular box design of the NES. The toploader had a smaller, sleeker look, a relatively low price tag ($50 for the system and two newly-designed “dog bone” controllers), and much more solid game support. The idea was simple: make it cheap, make it look cool, and make it play games without requiring time-consuming cart blowing, cleaning, or repair. The NES 2 accomplished all of these, but things didn’t work out in the end. Why was this?

To start with, the game support, while much better than the “zero-force” design of the original, did not allow for Game Genie support. This was not a huge deal, since Game Genies were best suited for making the connection to the NES (box) much more solid (and allowing games to actually run on the system), and the cheat-code feature was a disposable novelty in the first place (though many people liked it, including myself). The NES 2 lacked a lockout chip, so support for unlicensed games was not a problem. At times, carts would wobble out of place (they were designed for horizontal loading, after all), causing lines on the screen or the lack of function altogether. Propping the cart straight up or putting the system at a slight angle (to allow the cart to be straight on the pin connector) fixed this. The game support wasn’t that big of an issue.

The NES 2′s television connections, however, left a lot to be desired. In an attempt to cut costs, Nintendo did not include the optional RCA cable connection, like they did with the gray box. This would not have been so bad if it weren’t for the fact that the RF feature on the NES 2 wasn’t up to snuff. The display was terrible compared to the box’s own RF, with washed-out colors, static, a darkened display, and scan lines abound. Nintendo’s shoddy construction of the system’s A/V capabilities likely didn’t bode well with consumers of the time, and perfectionists today (like myself) find this laziness inexcusable and offensive.

The biggest reason that the toploader failed, however, was simply bad timing. By 1993, consumers were abandoning the 8-bit market in favor of the superior 16-bit line. There simply wasn’t enough interest in the NES by that time to sell NES 2s, despite the established nature of the system. It didn’t matter that the ship was given a new look and was more functional, it was still too old to stay afloat.

Which leaves the toploader as a collectible today, was well as a functional, yet low-quality, NES unit. Whether or not to buy one remains entirely up to the purpose it will serve and the overlooking of shortcomings. The point is that some light was shed on an issue that has perplexed some about this interesting chapter in NES history, a light that will educate those who care to ask “Why?”