Development In 1986, Nintendo's entry into basic online communications was the
Disk Fax kiosks, preannouncing the deployment of 10,000 kiosks throughout Japan's toy and hobby stores within the following year. This allowed Famicom players with
Famicom Disk System games to bring their writable Disk Cards into stores and upload their high scores to the company's central leaderboards via fax, enter nationwide achievement contests, and download new games cheaper than on cartridge. By 1987, Nintendo president
Hiroshi Yamauchi foresaw the impending
Information Age, developing a vision for transforming Nintendo beyond a toy company and into a communications company. He wanted to leverage Famicom's established and totally unique presence in one third of all of Japan's homes, to bring Nintendo into the much larger and virtually limitless communications industry and thus presumptively on par with Japan's largest company and national telephone service provider,
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT). He believed the Famicom should become an appliance of the future, as pervasive as the telephone itself. Beginning in mid-1987, he requested the exploration of a partnership with the
Nomura Securities financial company, to create an information network service in Japan based on the Famicom. Led by Famicom's designer Masayuki Uemura,
Nintendo Research & Development 2 developed the modem hardware; and Nomura Securities developed the client and server software and the information database. Uemura cautioned that they "weren't confident that they would be able to make network games entertaining". Five unreleased prototypes of network-enabled games were developed for the system, including Yamauchi's favorite ancient Japanese
board game,
Go. New services included buying stamps online from the postal service,
betting on horse racing, the Super Mario Club for game reviews, and the Bridgestone Tire Company using a Famicom online fitness program for its employees. By 1991, all these Famicom Network System online services had shut down, except for the Super Mario Club as the sole final application of the Famicom Modem and Network System. Super Mario Club had been formed for toy shops, where the Famicom was deployed as a networked kiosk, serving consumers with a member-store-created searchable online database of Famicom game reviews. Nintendo performed market research by analyzing users' search behaviors, and directly receiving user feedback messages. In that year, the disappointed but steadfast Yamauchi stated, "It is just a matter of time. When the people are ready for it, we have the Network in place." ==Reception==