Syd is a master of backdating.

Also, for some reason, new stuff never shows up on his page until I refresh manually.

About this article, pretty good one. I owned a fair amount of these, actually. I actually owned a ROB but I didn't have any of the accessories that came with it (except the Gyro-spinners), so it was pretty useless. It worked, though.

I also had a Stack-up cart, but not the pieces. Fun fact about those adapters you mentioned in passing in the Ice Climber section: you could take the cartridge apart, pull them out, and use them as a Famicom-NES adapter. You can tell if your game has the adapter, it's a little bottom-heavy. I know my Stack-up copy had one.

18 games is a pretty huge launch, actually.

Syd Lexia wrote:

UsaSatsui wrote: About this article, pretty good one. I owned a fair amount of these, actually. I actually owned a ROB but I didn't have any of the accessories that came with it (except the Gyro-spinners), so it was pretty useless. It worked, though. I also had a Stack-up cart, but not the pieces. Fun fact about those adapters you mentioned in passing in the Ice Climber section: you could take the cartridge apart, pull them out, and use them as a Famicom-NES adapter. You can tell if your game has the adapter, it's a little bottom-heavy. I know my Stack-up copy had one. I'm pretty sure that all copies of Stack-Up had the adapter and most copies of Gyromite did as well. Both games have title screens that display their original names, Robot Block and Robot Gyro.

Not all copies of Gyromite had it. Mine didn't.
Here's a very, very old page with some details.

JRA wrote:

What's the story behind the rumor that the NES only sold a lot of copies because of ROB at first, but then most people actually played the games and ROB was a bust? Is that true or not?

Slightly incorrect.

ROB was mostly a Trojan horse, they didn't have any plans to make any more ROB games, and it was pretty much a bust from the get-go. The video game market was dead in 1985 and while Nintendo believed the NES would sell, retailers wanted no part of it. ROB was part of the marketing, so they could say "This isn't a Video Game, it's a Robot Game!". Duck Hunt as the other pack-in was also part of this strategy ("It's a Gun Game!"), as was the unique design and calling it an "Entertainment System".

Once they got the foot in the door and proved there was still a market for video games, they dumped the ROB gimmick.

Syd Lexia wrote:

I think if the robot had been well-received in America, it would have gotten more games. One interesting thing: I remember SMB3 selling for either 44.99 or 49.99. I have an old catalog from shortly after the launch. The launch games retailed for 29.99, except Stack-Up, which was 34.99. Once they got their foot in the door, they jacked up the prices.

Possibly, but I remember reading that by the time it hit US shelves, it was already a flop in Japan, and no further development was planned for it.

Of course they jacked up the price (supply and demand, naturally, and NES games were in short supply for a while), but also remember that later games were more complicated to make and used more chips. Also, catalogs usually have cheaper prices.