Nintendo of America was so poor in the '80s that it was "bartering" f…

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 test market in New York City, and Nintendo of America was fighting hard against its own budget to get the console off the ground.

Last year, a handful of Nintendo of America's earliest employees joined a panel at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo to talk about their experiences launching the NES. While the company was technically headquartered in Seattle, Washington, several key employees also worked out of a warehouse in Hackensack, New Jersey in order to support the test launch in New York City. This warehouse, it seems, was not a great working environment.

"They would tell me that there were snakes in the bathroom," Gail Tilden, who was at the time NOA's advertising manager, says. "I often was staying in the city with the ad agency, but then when I would come out, I couldn't go to the bathroom all day because they would tell me that there were snakes and rats in the bathroom." macnevers-and-co.beer

"They were just garter snakes," according to Bruce Lowry, who was then NOA's vice president of sales. "They weren't anything that were going to bite you." Clearly, the company's facility budget wasn't particularly robust, but it seems the advertising budget wasn't much better. This is why Nintendo of America had to start doing barter advertising – an established practice that the company would return to years later.

With barter advertising, "you say 'we'll give you our advertising dollars if you will do X,'" Tilden explains. "That's kind of what we did with Toys R Us. 'We're going to place our advertising dollars with the agency you own and you're going to carry our product.' With Pokemon, we did the same thing. We used Nintendo's advertising dollars to get the show on the air in 80 markets to kick off the launch of Pokemon and [that] was a big contributor to the success."

In 1985, "we didn't have a lot of money at Nintendo, so we bartered for TV time," Lowry explains. For NOA's deal with Toys R Us, he says that the company's contact would "buy the time for us and we'd give them cartridges or games and then he'd sell those to Toys R Us. That's how that whole thing worked. It was kind of crazy." But it wasn't quite so "crazy" as the literal bartering Lowry was about to do to make sure kids actually saw Nintendo's TV commercials.

"What happened was our ads started running at 2am in the morning," Lowri says. "There weren't a lot of kids awake at that point – or even parents awake." So he decided to go over to WABC, the flagship New York City network of ABC. "I just said, 'I'll go over there and talk to this guy, the boss there, and tell him he has to change that,' naive as I was," Lowry says.

"I walked in with a game cartridge and everything and said, 'I'd like to see your station manager. I'm an advertiser.' Now, I didn't mention the fact we were bartering and how we were getting our ads in there. They would not let me in. You're not getting past these six women who probably know death holds. You're not going to go past them. At which point, this limousine pulls up and a guy hops out and he has his top coat on. He runs in. He glances over. 'What's that?' I said, 'Oh, it's the new Nintendo. We advertise with you.' Well, he fell for it and he goes, 'Well, come on in. Let's see it.'"

Lowry explained NOA's barter arrangement to this unnamed network executive, and explained that "that's why we're airing at the time we're airing. I said, 'Do you have kids?' 'Yeah.' 'Take [the Nintendo game] home and see what they think about it.' So I gave him one."

The next day, Lowry got a call that the network wanted to see him again, because that executive had "more friends that want game systems." So "we drove over there and gave him some more and gave him some more. Now our commercials got to be on at 11 o'clock at night. A little better."

Obviously, an 11pm commercial still isn't prime advertising time, but things would soon get better – if only thanks to good fortune. Somewhere in this timeframe, Lowry visited a local bar where an NFL game was being shown on TV. "It was a Monday night game, the [New York] Giants playing somebody," he explains. "It was a big game, and they came on and they had a Chevrolet commercial. I guess they hadn't sold the spot for a local spot."

That's when Nintendo's ad showed – right in the middle of a major broadcast for one of the area's biggest sports teams, giving the NES a massive platform in front of exactly the New York audience the company was trying to court. "They threw it on there and the next day things started moving," Lowry says. "That was pure luck."

Out of this crucible came the best NES games of all time.

As Bethesda announces what's going on with the future of the studio, director and producer Todd Howard has acknowledged the layoffs that have hit the studio as part of Microsoft's latest batch of staff cuts.

Speaking to Bloomberg, Howard calls the cuts at Bethesda Game Studios "really tough" for him and his colleagues. This latest round of cuts saw staff at the studio laid off as part of Xbox's seemingly now-yearly mass layoffs – including 18-year veterans of the company like Ray Lederer. Bethesda as a whole also got hit hard as we also saw fellow ZeniMax Studios id Software and ZeniMax Online Studios face heavy cuts.

Howard adds, "This is Bethesda's 40th anniversary, and there have been periods where we've gone through changes," referring to a portion of the 1990s where the studio was on the brink. But now, he says, "We're going through a change so that we focus best on the franchises and what we need to do to deliver for everybody."

Word over the last week is that Xbox has been pushing Bethesda to focus on marquee titles with Bethesda Game Studios on The Elder Scrolls 6 and Fallout 5, while the wider ZeniMax studios work on Doom, Quake, and Wolfenstein.

Howard also spoke about his personal feelings on the layoffs with Windows Central, saying "I've been doing this a long time, whenever you've worked with people for, in some cases, many decades, and they're no longer here, that's really personally very difficult, and difficult for our teams."

These interviews have come alongside word that Fallout 5 is "currently in preproduction," that Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas are both getting remasters, and that Obsidian is returning to the post-apocalyptic RPG series for a new entry. But with layoffs across Bethesda and Obsidian, as one workers union has already suggested, it's hard not to see this as Microsoft trying to change the subject.

Video game fans are currently quite unhappy with everything going on at Xbox, with thousands of developers losing their jobs, and calling into question how these diminished numbers will affect development going forward. So a big blowout of every Fallout project everyone wants to know about – with nothing to actually show from them – arguably feels more like an attempt at a distraction or reassurance, rather than it being the right time to drop this news.

I'm sure nobody needs to be told that Bethesda's seminal RPG Skyrim is a best-seller. I mean, you don't get ported as much without having sustaining market value. But what may be surprising to hear is that The Witcher 3 has actually out-sold the dragon-heavy adventure, at least according to figures provided by the studio.

During a time of turmoil for the company and the industry as a whole, due to Xbox's widespread layoffs, Bethesda provided an official update on social media. Buried in the post, which touches on Fallout, Starfield, The Elder Scrolls 6 and more, is a little milestone for the latter's fifth mainline installment.

"With over 65 million copies sold, players are still exploring Skyrim 15 years later, but we know it’s been a very long wait for the sequel," the company writes. "The next chapter is on the way. We’re where we planned to be, loving how it looks, and playing it every day."

65 million copies; that's a lot. It's an amount most developers can only dream about. But then, most developers aren't Todd Howard and his team of quest-creators and dungeon masters.

If you're wondering where that ranks in terms of all-time sales, it places Skyrim in eighth, directly behind Terraria, and just ahead of Super Mario Bros on the NES. And it's actually tied with Geralt of Rivia's landmark outing, The Witcher 3.

CD Projekt Red confirmed The Witcher 3 had shifted 65 million copies in May of this year. It and Skyrim may have done so around the same time, even. But what's crucial to remember here is that The Elder Scrolls 5 had a four year head start, coming out in 2011 (I know, I know), whereas The Witcher 3 arrived in 2015.

I don't mean to cause drama here, but that sounds like a challenge. Todd, another port is in order. Make Skyrim the launch game on the next Xbox. That should do it. I mean, unless The Elder Scrolls 6 is going to be around by then - but I'm not holding my breath on that one.

Fallout 5 is "currently in preproduction": Bethesda breaks silence on long-awaited RPG

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced devs at Ubisoft are, technically, currently running a community treasure hunt throughout July with three secret pirate troves ready to be torn open. But it's not the challenge Ubisoft anticipated – fans are way too good at playing pirate, having already dug up all the loot in a matter of days.

Ubisoft introduced the community hunt only last week on July 11, writing in a Twitter post, "We've heard word that 3 chests lie hidden across the Caribbean, each containing a unique bounty. We'll drop a new clue every Friday of July! Remember... No pirate sails alone. Work together, crack the clues, and claim the treasure." But there really wasn't any need for patronizing – pirate-tronizing? – advice. Black Flag Resynced players have already dug up all the gold they could. (Spoilers ahead for pirates who want to work out Black Flag's community event on their own! Argh!)

The first buried chest is located at coordinates (421,939), and rewards players with 4,000 Reales – this is the classic treasure hunt reward, a fat mound of money. The second chest located at (501,168) is a little more dramatic: it includes the legendary Uncrowned Prince rapier and legendary Guardian Beast Figurehead. One player on Reddit seems to have discovered it on a lark, writing in a post, "I think I stumbled onto some more items." They did, indeed.

Then, there's the third and final community chest, which contains the biggest prize of all. Found at coordinates (28,293), this bounty includes the legendary Aveline Figurehead and rare Explorer Outfit originally found in the Assassin's Creed Black Flag from 2013. Resynced players initially fretted that the exceedingly rare outfit in red and white – traditional Assassin's Creed colors – hadn't been brought over from the original game. But, as content creator Synth Potato puts it on Twitter, the Reddit user -Holliday was blessed with "genuinely insane luck" and discovered the Explorer Outfit waterlogged at the bottom of the ocean.

"I glanced at my map after taking a naval contract and just how the area looked on the map peaked my interest enough to go check it out," -Holliday explains in a Reddit thread. "Dropped anchor and jumped off, I immediately seen air bubbles and could not believe my eyes once I spotted what was inside. I was honestly briefly shaken with excitement since I knew it was highly sought after and didn't believe anyone had found it yet."

"You just ruined it for Ubisoft," replies another Reddit user. "I love it."

Ubisoft confirms on Twitter that, "We were going to reveal a clue for this community chest on Friday but your treasure hunting skills are too great." That's too bad for Ubisoft, but a pleasant indication that fortune favors the Black Flag fans.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced New Game Plus is coming, director promises: "We're working on that right now."