Historian completes 5-year quest to acquire & preserve the first NES ad

There's a nice post up on Kotaku today detailing video game historian (and former Gamasutra editor) Frank Cifaldi's successful five-year quest to acquire and record for posterity what he believes to be the very first advertisement for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

This is, to Cifaldi (and Gamasutra's) knowledge, the first time anyone has scanned the ad and published it online. It reportedly appeared in a late 1984 issue of Computer Electronics magazine, and now -- roughly 32 years later -- it provides devs and game industry history buffs a look back at how Nintendo was positioning itself for the Western debut of arguably its most important game console.

"See Nintendo unveil home entertainment's future, January 5-8," reads the ad, referring to the dates of the 1985 (Winter) Consumer Electronics Show. "Even skeptics are welcome."

Of course, the console that appears in the magazine doesn't look much like the NES that went on to launch in North America the following year; the one in the magazine looks far more like the AVS (or Advanced Video System), a prototypical predecessor to the NES that Nintendo at one point intended to launch in the U.S. As at least one person on Twitter pointed out, Nintendo currently displays a prototype AVS under glass at its Nintendo World Store in New York City.