We all know that over the years, the original Nintendo Entertainment System had it?s share of winning and losing add-on devices to enhance the ability of the system. In a world of Power Gloves, Power Pads, and Advantages, it just seems that the NES had more extras than you could shoot a Zapper at. So when it was recently rediscovered that Nintendo of America had a concept that would allow you to create knitted items, needless to say, we all had a jaw dropping moment in disbelief. Let?s take a look at this unreleased item.
The advertisement for ?The Nintendo Knitting Machine? was originally shown in a brochure that was given out to possible buyers and stockholders at Winter Consumer Electronics Show, when it was held in Las Vegas, Nevada in January of 1987. The device in prototype form shows a knitting device that is connected to an NES controller that is sitting on a base. This device, along with a special cartridge, would have allowed interested parties to design and then knit their unique creations. If this device was to see the light of day, it would have been without a doubt one of the most unique items ever created for any video game system of this era, or any era for that matter.
The brochure advertised the device in this manner:
?You?re looking at the Nintendo Knitting Machine. It?s not a game; not a toy; not something a young girl can outgrow in three or six months or even a year. It?s a machine that interacts with the powerful Nintendo Entertainment System to actually knit sweaters; and not just one or two patterns but a multitude of different and unique designs. The Nintendo Knitting Machine is just one more example of the innovative thinking that keeps Nintendo on the cutting edge of video technology. And your customers on the edge of their seats. Of course we should probably mention that no other video game system offers anything even remotely similar. But why needle the competition??
The concept of a knitting title for the Nintendo Entertainment System was actually nothing new at this point. A software publisher called?Royal Kougyou released two titles in the summer of 1986 for the Famicom Disk System, called ?Ai Amu A T?ch??, which was a way of designing sweaters on the Famicom in Japan, and then following the instructions on the screen, you would create your items manually. (One of the two disks for the system even allowed you to make sweaters with characters from Super Mario Brothers.) While this concept may have had slight success in Japan, the head of Nintendo of America was very much against the ill-fated project, and eventually dropped the entire concept.
This very well could have been a way to try to get girls to try out video games in a way that Nintendo may have felt more natural to them. (I personally think that it would have been a little sexist, which is hard to believe when we are talking about children here, but even the promo page said it between the lines. A young girl can?t outgrow this machine in a year?) Regardless, this is just another example of what the NES could have been capable of. It could have started a very unique path to have the console perform other tasks than playing video games. Who knows what else could have been developed if this device had actually been produced? Maybe the Nintendo could have been ahead with the whole robotic vacuum market. Or not.
Let?s take a look at the Famicom title that started this idea:
Source: http://www.retrogamenetwork.com/2012/09/06/nes-knitting-peripheral-planned-in-1987/
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