VS. System

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VS. System
Arcade machine of VS. Super Mario Bros.
VS. Super Mario Bros. in a VS. Table cabinet
Release date February 1984[1]
Discontinued 1990
Successor Nintendo PlayChoice-10

The VS. System is a collection of coin-operated VS. DualSystem or VS. UniSystem arcade systems, and the games were designed for competitive play. The VS. DualSystem comes with two screens and four sets of controls, meaning it had support for four simultaneous players, which only the launch title, VS. Tennis, takes advantage of, not any games of the Super Mario franchise. The first model is the red sit-down type that lets players face each other and was later renamed renamed VS. Table.[2] The upright type looks like two machines conjoined at an angle. The VS. UniSystem is like a conventional upright arcade cabinet with two sets of controls and a single screen, and it can either come as a dedicated gray cabinet or be a conversion from Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., or Popeye cabinets. It is not possible to convert the dedicated wide-body Mario Bros. cabinets or the Punch-Out!! cabinets. In Japan, there are conversion kits for cocktail cabinets.[3]

The VS. System was designed in response to the video game crash of 1983 and the collapse of a proposed deal with Atari to distribute the Famicom in the United States. Knowing that arcade gaming was still commercially successful in North America, Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi conceived the VS. System as a way to gauge consumer interest in Nintendo's home console games.[4][5] The precursor to the VS. System line are the Nintendo-Pak conversion kits. Mario Bros. was the first to be available as a Nintendo-Pak, in addition to selling the dedicated wide-body cabinets.[6] Donkey Kong 3 was available only as a Nintendo-Pak, which spared operators from having to buy the cabinet.[7] The VS. System was successful, and this spurred the development of the Nintendo PlayChoice-10. Nintendo's final first party VS. System titles were each released in Japan in 1985 and in North America in 1990.

The VS. System games are mostly ports of Nintendo Entertainment System games, although many have notable changes in their graphics, gameplay, and difficulty. One exception is VS. Wrecking Crew, released a year before its NES counterpart Wrecking Crew, from which it greatly differs.

List of Super Mario games[edit]

Arcade game Nintendo Entertainment System game
VS. Wrecking Crew Wrecking Crew
VS. Pinball Pinball
VS. Golf Golf
VS. Super Mario Bros. Super Mario Bros.
VS. Dr. Mario Dr. Mario

VS. Dr. Mario is the only arcade version unavailable on the Arcade Archives.

Gallery[edit]

Cabinets[edit]

Screenshots[edit]

Flyers[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Game Machine. February 15, 1984 issue. Page 3.
  2. ^ VS. Dr. Mario installation manual
  3. ^ Cocktail conversion kit flyerMedia:VS. Golf Pinball Japanese flyer back.jpg
  4. ^ Stark, Chelsea (October 19, 2015). How Nintendo brought the NES to America -- and avoided repeating Atari's mistakes. Mashable. Retrieved January 20, 2024.
  5. ^ Horowitz, Ken (July 30, 2020). "The Vs. System (1984)". Beyond Donkey Kong: A History of Nintendo Arcade Games. McFarland & Company. pp. 119–28. ISBN 978-1-4766-4176-8.
  6. ^ Mario Bros. Nintendo-Pak manual
  7. ^ Donkey Kong 3 Nintendo-Pak manual