NEC TurboGrafx, Sega Genesis, and Me...

 

 

My friend David Farquhar has posted some of the history of the Sega Genesis Game Console.  Back in late February, 1990, my store manager got a call from our district manager.  I was the Assistant Manager of the Software Etc. store in Ridgehaven, a strip mall across a few roads from Ridgehaven, a major shopping center in Minnetonka, Minnesota.  The district manager needed someone to close the Eden Prairie store, down the road from us, that night, because the previous store manager was, as of that date, no longer with the company.

Eden Prairie Center has changed quite a bit over the years, but back then, it had a couple of things that made it stand out, if you worked for Software Etc.  That company began life in the corner of a B. Dalton bookstore in downtown Minneapolis, and one of the first stand-alone stores was set up in the basement of Southdale.  If you have spent any time at all in any mall in the country, you should tip your hat to Southdale.  It was the first enclosed mall to appear in the American retail landscape, and from founding until today, it's a big deal.  It's no Mall of America, but folks who live up in what some folks refer to as The Great White North, we do enjoy fighting off our cabin fever by wandering shopping malls.

My first job with Software Etc. was in the Edina store.  Four years before, a major rain event flooded the basement of Southdale, including that store.  We had water to within a foot of the ceiling, which is a big of a bigger disaster than you might think.  One of the absolutely amazing features of Southdale was the underground loading docks.  A floor below the main shopping floor level of Southdale was a massive set of underground tunnels and loading dock.  How big?  Semi-truck big.  Big enough for skilled semi drivers to come below the mall, and unload their cargo.  There were also garbage trucks picking up the refuse, and on occasion we could even drive underneath to make deliveries and pickups.

After about six weeks in Edina, an assistant manager opened in Minnetonka.  I interviewed with the district manager and store manager, and got the job.  As the next few months went by, I grew a reputation as a hard worker, dedicated, and rather inventive with in-store displays.  Which is why, when the Eden Prairie Store opened up a management position, my district manager thought of the fellow who worked a few miles north and had built a castle out of Prodigy boxes to promote that product when it launched a few months before Christmas that year.  

I took over a store in much worse shape than I had ever imagined.  We were one of the most visible stores above the food court of the mall, with sixteen-foot tall windows, about 35 feet of window space right there, and the previous manager had put tables with software in the windows.  We had a couple of computers - an older black-and-white Fat Mac, an IBM PS2 that may have been AT-class, and an Amiga 500 that ran demos daily.  And a TV playing the required video tape on loop - which meant we got "Ice Ice Baby" every 24 minutes...  Yeah, I am sure I have PTSD thanks to that.

But I'm getting way ahead of the story.  We were talking about video game systems.  But we were a computer software store.  Then.  

That's right.  I am a dinosaur.  We sold computer software and accessories and books - period.  Or did until about June of 1990.  My first display in the big windows was to promote Microsoft Flight Simulator.  I grabbed a couple of old plastic models from my parent's house, spent some money on school supplies, and made some cotton-ball clouds.  And we sold quite a few copies of Flight Simulator.

That wasn't my only coup.  The next big software package to come out was Microsoft Windows 3.0.  The trick I had learned while at Edina was that we received weekly microfiche.  Yes, kids, that's right - the internet DID exist, the World Wide Web was still in it's egg, but we did have a way to review our inventory in the warehouse.  Weekly, I scanned those microfiche.  While in Edina, that store was one of the top two in sales in the company, regularly competing with the "flagship" store on Fifth Avenue in New York.  Oddly enough, the global headquarters for Software was only about two miles from the Edina store.  

That wasn't a big a deal, though, because most of the managers and executives didn't live in Edina - they lived in Eden Prairie.  Which was also the then-home of Northgate, an IBM-compatible manufacturer who, according to the late Dr. Jerry Pournelle, made fantastic keyboards.  Some of my best customers worked down the road at Northgate, would take their lunch break to come to Eden Prairie Center, and visit my store for magazines, software, and test titles, as they called them.  One of their engineers did tell me that they were considering making the CD-ROM drive standard in their high-end systems when Wing Commander came out on 27 5 1/4" high density floppies, 16 3 1/2" disks, or one CD.  

What happened to the video games?  When I took over the Eden Prairie store, we had just finished our first quarter of the sales year.  And we had under-performed, putting it mildly.  Our year-to-date sales figure for the hottest quarter of the year were 30% below where they needed to be.  Edina had specialized in Apple Mac software.  That store manager had permission from the district manager and a rolling budget to special order and put on the shelf titles we could not get out of our own warehouse.  Our buyers would check out what was selling in Edina to see what might work throughout the rest of the country.

I didn't have that budget or freedom.  I did have a warehouse just down the road full of software titles.  And I had a couple of shelves for Amiga software.  So I started looking through those weekly microfiche and requesting software for my store.  Which was how I ended up with over thirty copies of Microsoft Windows 3.0 when it launched, which boosted my sales.  I also expanded our Amiga software, which started bringing people into the store that normally wouldn't.

Video Games, Video Games!  I know, I know.  That summer, Eden Prairie was selected as one of four stores in town to pilot test these video game things.  The initial plan was to carry Nintendo, Sega, and NEC game systems.  But the wheels got a little loose on the bus.  Nintendo America did not want their hot-selling systems to be tarnished with the brush of legitimate software stores.  We could sell cartridges, but no systems.  Not then.  

However, they must have had seriously low expectations for this gadget called "Gameboy".  It wasn't much. No color, just black and white, and it came with a rather boring puzzle game (we were told) with weird Russian music.  The buyer who was explaining this to me said the game was "Tits something".  I asked if he was sure if it was aimed at the youth market, and he said "yeah, forget I said that, I'll get the real name soon."  

These days most folks know Tetris.  

And most folks also know Sega Genesis.  What most folks have forgotten by now is the NEC Turbografx.  I had seen a NEC in Edina almost a year before, along with a few other things Edina had been the initial test location for, but when we got stocked, the corporate reps were brought to my store.  We were "slower, easier to get in and out of" - which in mall-speak means "fairly close to a main door" not hidden away in a basement.  

And in the never-ending string of corporate reps, I had many conversations.  One which I swear i do not recall, and did not recall after it happened, was I told a rep "I don't know what your system does or looks like.  If we could see it, that might help.  We have that TV over there with the built-in VCR, if we could get some segments that show the game in action, that might help."  

I did not recall that conversation.  Of course, I had a lot of other things going on.  1990 was the year that Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.  I managed to avoid ending up on local TV that fall when a local TV station wanted to get some video about modern computer software and "war simulations".  At the time we were really pushing a stealth flight simulator.  Sadly, the computer in the store were not able to show the software to any extent, but I had a conversation with a mother.  She'd come in with her younger son.  His older brother was a fighter pilot, they wanted something to show them how superior our fighters would be.  Being the store manager who read his email (yes, we had that, though it wasn't on-the-internet-email, just an internal system) and knew some secret shoppers were going around making sure we were providing the sort of support promised by our leadership for those key software titles they wanted us to push - like the fighter flight simulator I sold this lady.  

Fortunately, one of our corporate Veeps had come out to take the spot in front of the camera, thank God.  Because I was also in the middle of planning my own wedding.  Or, well, I was the groom, who had to show up, confirm my wife's excellent taste and choices, and keep my freaking yap shut.  And there, just a few weeks before my wedding, I was also informed that I would need to be hopping onto an airplane for the first time, flying to Denver, and participating in a national Sales Conference for all Software Etc. Store Managers.

My district manager was particularly thrilled with me because our sales had picked up.  No thanks to the video game systems, yet, but because I kept the store stocked, staffed, and people came through and regularly bought software, we had gone from 31% below where we needed to be on February 1, 1990, to 44% above our expected sales figures on September 30, 1990.  We were well ahead of our numbers, my boss was thrilled.

So four days or so before I was to leave for Denver, I was driving through an intersection after dropping off my wife at her job, about 2 miles from Eden Prairie Center, a woman t-boned me.  I was in a 1990 Ford Tempo we could barely afford, but had to buy because her used 1984 Tempo had been destroyed a few months before that, just after we put $1500 in repairs into it.  But I bounced off the front end of a Pontiac Grand Am, hit the front of an El Dorado, and was stuck on the side of the road until a guy showed me how to reset the fuel pump so I could start the car again since fuel was not leaking from the car.

In that state, I made it to the wrong airport terminal and missed the first flight to Denver, so had to go to the main terminal and ask for - and get - my seat shifted to the second flight of the day to Denver - the one with my boss, his boss, his boss, his boss, and the CEO all on the same plan.  I told my boss what had happened - car accident, wrong airport, first flight - and he sympathized. 

Video Games I know.  We got to Denver, and then to the hotel where all of the event were taking place  Kind of tough to move 300+ store managers around, so we used our feet.  After a kick-off training session, we had most of day 2 to follow a schedule path through sales demos.  That is, we'd head into a hotel room that one of the software companies had set up to demo their products, and we'd watch demos, get a key ring, and a sales packet.  Then get our passports stamped to show our bosses that we didn't nap the entire day away.

As we're wandering around this hotel in a rather difficult schedule, i noticed people were carrying big boxes.  They looked familiar.  Then we got to the NEC Turbo folks.  Their head of sales saw me in the front row, and started his presentation off with "y'all can blame this fellow here for your difficult time getting everything home on Sunday.  Each of you is leaving here with one of these" and he pointed to a stack of TurboGrafx boxes.  "Hey, I just figured a few segment in the video would work!"  

 "You mean you don't want a free TurboGrafx?  Use it to excite your staff, demo titles in the store, let them try it out - and it stays yours after Christmas."  

My momma raised a few fools despite her best efforts.  I can sometimes fall under that description - but sure as hell not that day.  

i schlepped my new TurboGrafx around the hotel the rest of the day, getting a few pats on the back from the folks who knew me.  I was kind of looking forward to the dinner, that night, because John Dvorak, a columnist I had read a lot, was giving the keynote speech.  I thought that was pretty cool.  

So I had a NEC TurboGrafx in my hotel room, sat down at my assigned table with the other store managers in the Twin Cities area, and we ate, and then they announced Mr. Dvorak.  It was one of those times where I got an assigned seat in exactly the right spot to watch him.  

"Hey, folks, I was just told that the Sega Genesis people are pretty unhappy with all of the attention that NEC is getting.  I guess they also talked to your Eden Prairie Store Manager, and he said he needed to see the games in operation.  Under your seats are a form.  Fill it out, leave it in the baskets by the door when you leave tonight, and they'll ship you a Genesis system for you to use and keep for your own after the Christmas Season.  Merry Christmas!"

Which is how I got blamed for, and came home the owner/potential owner of two brand new video game systems, and one 13" color TV.  The glamorous job of a retail store manager.  We did sell an awful lot of game systems that year.  Unfortunately, not enough.  And the wheels came off the bus for me just a few weeks later.

Six weeks after our wedding, ten days after I got back from Denver, my father-in-law passed away.  I had to leave town for five days for his funeral in the leadup to Christmas.  And our car, which was in an accident in October, was done, and I had to swap the rental car we'd used from shortly after dropping the busted one at the shop, through the wedding, honeymoon, and funeral, back up, and the garage had not done an oil change as requested, so two days later I was unable to start the car when temperatures dropped to -28, I was unable to rive home, or back to the mall, stayed in a hotel by the mall, then used my share of my bonus I'd gotten to fly down to be with my wife and mother in law for our first married Christmas.  Then borrow my brother-in-law's car to get home so I could get to work the day After Christmas, walk into a store that was an utter disaster with no sleep exactly four minutes before opening, and nine before my district manager walked in and saw half the old ad, none of the after Christmas ad, and everything else.  

So yeah, that all led to me getting asked if I'd rather leave the company or take a "temporary demotion" six weeks later.  And then, come April, I found an ad in the newspaper for a job that offered a company car and no weekend work  Retail - you're relatively easy to replace, I know.  

But then again, if you look for Software Etc., you'll find Gamestop - yep, THAT Gamestop.  I think I came out OK.