“You drove 1,000 miles just for this game?” Christmas 1988 was a stressful time for many American parents. Nintendo’s
Super Mario Bros. 2 was the must-have toy that year. But copies of the hit videogame were as scarce as hen’s teeth.
ABC News ran a
20/20 special on the shortage called “Nuts for Nintendo.” They chatted to one dad who drove 1,000 miles from Indiana to NYC in the hopes of grabbing a copy.
“I’ve tried 7 stores a day for 3 weeks and still can’t find it,” he told reporters. They called it a “chip famine.”
Why was it so hard to get your hands on a video game? Longtime RiskHedge readers know computer chips, also called semiconductors, are