Nintendo's First American TV Ad

This commercial ad from 1980 was lost for a long time, then game historian and Nintendo expert Chris Kohler found it offered on eBay in 16mm film. The Video Game History Foundation worked with Movette Film Transfer to restore the color of the degraded copy in order to preserve it for posterity -and to show it to you. The quality of the restoration belies the 45-year-old aesthetic of the time, when a handheld video game device was promoted as a quick break from our busy lifestyle of playing real sports.

This is believed to be the first Nintendo ad aired outside of Japan. But is it really Nintendo? The product appears to be the Game & Watch device from Nintendo, but it's called Time Out by Mego! That takes some explanation, but it's not a knockoff, the company behind it was indeed Nintendo. Read the story behind the ad at the Video Game History Foundation.