Which is retailers of NES in UK between 1987 and 1995?

[AhmetoFihhhters_1]

[No message]

 

[AhmetoFihhhters_1]

Toys R Us. others?

 

[FAST6191]

Back again with these sorts of questions? Still not sure where you are heading here. You say you are not doing an educational thesis, and in another you said you were worried about customs or immigration control but they would not care either. You might also do better if you went and made a big thread rather than having people repeat themselves every time; again NES history, much less UK NES history, is not really a particular focus of the site and it is mostly older members that were around that will be filling you in here.

Short answer
Anybody that cared to buy one. Most toy manufacturers do wholesale selling of things, and there were still quite a few independent shops throughout all that. The toy company known as Mattel (a few of these were later or after but Barbie, Polly Pocket, Match Box, Hot Wheels, He-Man, Fisher-Price are under their umbrella) were the ones handling distribution in Europe for it and they would deal with just about anybody.
Nintendo were also not the only game in town -- the "crash" was mostly a US (possibly also Canada but I know less there) affair. The UK and Europe had all sorts of things going on throughout all this so while the NES was a big player it was far from the only one (Sega was a somewhat bigger player in Europe than it was in the US, the commodore 64 and later the Amiga was no small fry, the amstrad, bbc micro and all the others were fading by this point but still had a presence), not to mention UK retail at the time worked rather differently to US retail today.

Longer answer
Supermarkets had not quite yet got in on the act; that might have even been as late as PS2 in some cases, and even then only some popular games. Even today I normally only expect to find games, online credits and maybe a controller or two.

Toys R Us would have had some in the UK, indeed such places were probably the main place a lot of people went.

EB Games (what eventually became Game, and bought up Gamestation) arrived in the UK in 1995. Not sure what the Rhino Group (their path in) were doing during this as I am not sure if any were around me.

Woolworths might be a place to look here. I don't recall what they did for the NES offhand but they were around for the games on tape and floppy discs eras.

Virgin and HMV, both retailers more known for music, had a few games in. Virgin's parent company had a game division (Virgin Games during most of your time frame, becoming Virgin Interactive towards the end) that were active and often well respected in game dev/publishing, though as far as I can tell never did anything for the NES despite being around at the time ( https://www.giantbomb.com/virgin-interactive-entertainment-inc/3010-176/ https://www.mobygames.com/company/virgin-interactive-entertainment-inc https://segaretro.org/Virgin_Interactive ).

Argos will probably be worth looking at here. They do catalogues too which is probably good for you here if you can find a digitised one. https://issuu.com/retromash/docs/argos-no36-1991-autumnwinter has a whole bunch going back many years, though possibly a bit spotty around the late 80s which a pity.

I am not sure what goes for high street chains (this was still before the real rise of out of town warehouse efforts). Dixons, Hughes, Currys, possibly Index, Toymaster might be worth a look but they are more a group of independents,

Blockbuster (the video rental place) in the UK eventually sold games and consoles, and they certainly rented them during this time frame, but I am not sure they sold consoles and games at that point save for a few ex rentals.

https://ebid.s3.amazonaws.com/upload_big/5/6/2/1380931576-31771-891.jpg
mentions a few as well, many of them long since defunct (and possibly even forgotten by the populace at large -- you might have to find some fairly old people who remember Allders) and a few of them looking like independents as well (Gloucester Toy Shop not really being a chain). Quite a few of those are also mail order or catalogue shops which is nice if you can find their catalogues.

 

[Humanity]

It is so strange that someone asks this and also strange (maybe less so) that someone is able to answer it in such detail.

Although not at all conclusive detail.

Why is OP asking this shit? Haha.

 

[FAST6191]

It is so strange that someone asks this and also strange (maybe less so) that someone is able to answer it in such detail.

Although not at all conclusive detail.

I am also at a loss why the OP has several questions like this now. The usual guesses are someone is writing a thesis or article for something, or someone is looking to put together a game collection to sell or just have (this being more from them wanting a date list rather than an alphabetical list).

As for able to. We do a fair bit of game history around here -- the GBA is now something of a historical console (if teenage pregnancy begets teenage pregnancy there is a chance someone out there originally playing it in school is now a grandparent) and even before that between the ports, emulated games, hacking history and whatever else we deal in a fair bit of it. Not really the NES, and indeed I don't even know if people do it much like they do for the C64 ( https://www.lemon64.com/ being a great example of the concept), Amiga, Amstrad and BBC micro, but I had one in the UK at the time and was around to see it play out, even if I was not taking it in as well as I did for something like the 360. Game history is a bit of a hobby but in day to day life I also do a fair bit of engineering history as well (indeed right now I am surrounded by bookshelves full of science and engineering books going back to the early 1800s) so I can use some of the stuff I learned from learning to be able to do that here as well.

As for conclusive then a lot of old console history, especially outside the US, is if not lost then probably only available to someone wishing to search Nintendo's (or possibly mattel's in this case) basement or piece things together themselves from archived sales catalogues, adverts, game magazines and memories of people which were there living it. Such things were mentioned to the OP in the past ( https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/167392/sad_but_true_we_cant_prove_when_.php being an interesting example here) but they seem to persist.
Combined with the above that means that while I might not have a set in stone history of the concept I can give some hints, some answers (which might be enough for a springboard into something) and some places to start looking.

I don't know if I would view the lack of history as a pity really. If someone decided to go in for it I would not object and will happily watch their C3 presentation in a couple of years (as far as computer history and emphemera surrounding it goes you will find me linking Jason Scott presentations all the time around here), however (and we have more than suitable examples of all of this) if the ROMs are saved, the electronics are known, we have a decent collection of boxart, decent collection of manuals and decent collection of magazines scanned then it is all good -- the exhaustive stuff can be skipped.

 

[Humanity]

No, inconclusive is good.

This topic is very creepy to me.


There is no such thing as a definitive list of UK retailers who sold the original Nintendo NES, anyway. Must have been some small 1 or few-outlet stores selling it.

The question of OP is so soooo weird unless we are given a decent explanation as to why s/he asked it.