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.
