H1-B’s Place in Videogame History
NES Controller photo William Warby
Console Wars is a non-fiction account of “Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle That Defined a Generation.”
Guess what? The H1-B visa plays a role!
In 1986, Nintendo of America (NOA) launched the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Despite focus groups that suggested the NES might be a “colossal flop,” it wasn’t. The company offered its iconic gaming system in just 500 stores and managed to sell half of its 100,000 units in Christmas sales.
But questions lingered over how to take the company forward. Nintendo wanted “someone to prove that the NES was more than just this year’s Christmas fad. Someone who could exploit the potential for expansion and transform Nintendo from a niche sensation into a global juggernaut.”
They found Peter Main, former president of the Canadian fast-food chain White Spot. But, of course, Main needed a visa to work stateside.
It seemed like a good opportunity, but there was still a lot that could go wrong, so Main decided to leave the decision to luck. For the holidays, he and his wife were headed to Asia for a much-needed vacation. Just before the trip, Main told Arakawa [founder of NOA] that if the U.S. embassy approved his application for an H1-B visa to work in the United States, then he would hed to Nintendo; if not, then he would open a restaurant of his own in Canada. With the odds of securing such a visa being only about 10 percent, Main didn’t expect to be hocking cartridges anytime soon. But on the second night his trip, Arakawa and Lincoln called his hotel room in Hong Kong and happily announced that the visa had been approved. And so in April 1987, Peter Main became Nintendo of America’s VP of marketing and sales.
There’s a story you don’t hear often – leaving your entire future up to the random chance of getting an H1-B. Not to mention the toss up between becoming third in command at an electronics company (where he would ultimately oversee the nationwide launch of the NES and the Game Boy) or opening a restaurant!
-KitJ