Super Famicom

Nintendo launches the Super Famicom in Japan, its 16-bit gaming console to update the 8-bit Famicom. Released in the United States as the Super Nintendo, the Super Famicom (priced at ¥25,000) sells out its first shipment of 300,000 units in five hours. Kenji Taskashi describes the original secret shipment of Super Famicoms:

On a night in the Fall … with the wind blowing through the Kyoto Basin, adding a considerable chill, an unusually large number of over-sized ten-ton trucks congregated at a warehouse in the city. Workmen quietly loaded the trucks, which then disappeared, one by one, into the darkness of the sleeping town and onto the state highway….

Nintendo sells a total of two million Super Famicoms in six months, and over four million in one year.