Nintendo Quest

Narrator: It was the brainchild

of now the world's biggest video game company,

and with it, they redefined an entire industry.

For a period of time there, Nintendo was a word

used to describe video games in general.

Narrator: It was the Christmas gift every kid wanted.

There was just a little magical quality to Nintendo

that caught on with the public.

Narrator: And it took over toy stores around the world.

When I went to Toys R Us,

it was an aisle, two aisles long.

This side was all Nintendo, this side was all Nintendo,

and you went down there, and it was like...

Narrator: The Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES,

gave kids a new way to play games

and challenged them with every title.

With the NES, a lot of the titles

you played to the end,

and you didn't just play for three or four days.

You played for weeks, sometimes months.

Narrator: And although the NES wasn't the only game in town...

The NES essentially received the baton

from the arcade era and ran with it.

Narrator: ...they did it with characters

that became pop-culture icons...

Ben Gold: You know, so when you see a Mario,

like people are dressed up as Mario for Halloween,

you just see it in so many different places,

and everybody instantly knows what that is.

...and games that were dubbed immediate classics.

Billy Mitchell: Every game they came out with

really had a level of success to one degree or another.

I can't say that about everybody.

I can certainly say it about Nintendo.

Narrator: But this video game console didn't fade

when it left store shelves. It's still around,

with a fan base of millions across the world

and continues to impact a lot of people,

like this modern-day treasure hunter

from London, Ontario, Canada,

who loves Nintendo so much that he started a quest

to get all 678 original NES games in person

within 30 days.

Nintendo's such a part of him

that he's willing to crisscross the country in search

of these Holy Grail-like artifacts.

A journey like that

with someone pursuing their dream

is bound to change anyone

and become the stuff of legend.

It's what he's calling his Nintendo quest.

So let me tell you a little secret.

That guy hunting those games, that's Jay,

and we've been friends for a really long time,

and he's always dreamt of owning a complete NES collection,

so I dared him to do it and only gave him 30 days

and told him he couldn't use the Internet in any way,

'cause as a collector, that's really cool to me,

but as a filmmaker, that's the kind of thing

I want to see captured, because following Jay around,

we'll get to talk to other members of our community,

like competitive gamers and personalities

and the other die-hard collectors,

and all of those people will get a chance to weigh in

on what makes the NES so resilient

and amazingly popular 30 years later.

I mean, no piece of technology lasts 30 years.

We never use phones, cars, or computers that long,

so what makes the NES the exception to the rule?

Well, we're gonna find out,

but first let's learn a little bit more about Jay,

'cause clearly, he's a fan.

Jay's been my best friend for more than 30 years.

He's got a great dog named Spencer...

a hell of a Star Wars collection...

Jay Bartlett: Huge fan of Star Wars.

This side here is my favorite.

These were kind of throwbacks to the original packaging.

Rob McCallum: And an impressive library of games.

So this is...

pretty much most of my collection here.

"Mighty Final Fight."

Really, really personal favorite of mine here is "Stack-Up."

I don't know if it's my favorite NES game,

but it's pretty close, "Balloon Fight."

There are precisely three things he's passionate about:

Star Wars, rock 'n' roll, and video games.

If I remember correctly, he always lined his haircut up

to be what Dave Grohl was wearing at the time.

He's just your friend just to be your friend.

It does not matter what you do or what you say.

Rob: Jay's the perfect guy to take on this adventure,

because as the manager of a video game store,

he has years of retail experience

that will help him out in the wild,

not to mention he's been collecting

every kind of video game merchandise

for over 30 years.

And you called me on my phone,

and you're like, "Okay, I dare you.

I dare you. We'll go out,

and I dare you to get every single Nintendo game."

And you're like, "How 'bout this?

How 'bout we do it in a month?

We'll do it in 30 days."

I'm like, "Well, Rob, that's cool,

but I could just go on eBay,

you know, and I could buy someone's private collection,

probably get 300 of the games out of the way in one click."

You're like, "Let's do it old-school, man.

Let's go, and we'll hit the street."

And I'm like, "That's a really good idea."

McCallum: So here's what Jay's up against.

He's got 30 days to get all 678

officially North American released Nintendo games.

Thankfully that does not include contest carts

like "Nintendo World Championships,"

but it does include "Stadium Events"

and "Little Samson,"

and he's gotta pay for every single game himself

with no help from friends or the film production.

Did we mention he can't use the Internet

to aid him in any capacity?

And he's gotta start from scratch,

regardless of what's in his current collection.

One more thing. Jay's loaded a special app on his tablet,

and it's really cool, because it ranks

all the games by rarity, but more importantly,

it sorts all his purchases, too,

so out of the 678 games,

he knows which ones he has,

but he also knows which ones he has to find.

We don't know exactly where we're going.

We don't know exactly what we're gonna hit there.

We don't know exactly who we're gonna talk to,

or what we're gonna find.

There's the thinnest of plans out there,

and no doubt there's gonna be 100 challenges along the way,

and I'm sure it's gonna have a transformative effect on Jay.

Oh, he'll be a different person.

First off, that he's venturing away.

Like, he's a real homebody.

Some way, somehow, he'll succeed

at what he wants to do with this.

Rob: I really wanted to stress on Jay

the sense of history that he and I had with each other,

but also our combined history with the NES,

and there was one place that really summed this up

and shows how seriously we took

and still take that game system.

This, of course, is my treehouse...

- Wow. - but for a very brief period,

it was something else.

This was the original NES Club.

Or clubhouse.

- Clubhouse. There you go. - Yeah.

Look how small it is.

We had our first Nintendo Club in here.

Yeah.

Let's take a trip down memory lane.

Of course you want to see us up here. Ohh.

- Stunt work, right? - Here we go.

Ohh. Getting old.

All right. Large and in charge.

All right, Winnie-the-Pooh, you're in?

- Good. - All right, so...

- what were we thinking?! - ( laughs )

Where are we gonna put a TV in this place now?

Well, in the corner, obviously.

I hope-- I really hope this doesn't collapse,

'cause that would really suck.

This journey is going to be incredible.

I'm going to literally go across the country.

I'm gonna get to see all these amazing game stores,

all these different types of people.

Regardless of whether he gets all the games,

it's just gonna be this massive game loving.

It's just gonna be fun.

I think the collecting of the games,

I think, will be the easier part for him.

I think that he'll be right into it.

I think he'll be focused.

Again, I'll say it, man. Life is too short

to be doing something that you don't want to do every day.

There's no cheat codes. There's no Game Genie.

There's no extra lives. There's none of that stuff.

He's got 30 days to figure this game out

and beat it, and that's it,

and the big boss at the end of the game

is the ticking clock.

If he doesn't beat that, he loses a chance at a dream.

While Jay gets ready

for the biggest challenge of his entire life,

let's take a look back at the NES

and the company that introduced it,

because after all, Nintendo managed to revolutionize

the entire industry and change the world.

So here's Nintendo history 101,

the abridged two-minute version.

Announcer: ...the two-minute version.