When Nintendo Nearly Became Your Lottery Machine
Back in 1991, long before online gaming or digital lottery apps were a thing, Minnesota was on the verge of turning living rooms into virtual ticket booths. The state announced an experimental partnership with Nintendo and a local tech firm, Control Data Corporation, to let players buy lottery tickets right from their Nintendo Entertainment Systems.
For just $10 a month, participants in the pilot could connect their NES consoles to the state’s central lottery computer using a modem and special software. They’d pick numbers from their TV screens, store tickets electronically, and even receive small prize credits directly to their accounts. It was, in many ways, a wild precursor to the online gaming and mobile transactions we take for granted today.
Control Data saw it as a bold way to breathe new life into a slowing lottery industry. “The lottery industry is looking for ways to expand its horizons,” said one company executive at the time — and with roughly a third of American households owning an NES, the potential audience was huge.
But the idea didn’t land smoothly. Critics worried about kids sneaking past passwords to gamble from their bedrooms. One former state official bluntly warned, “Kids are gambling now; this will allow them to gamble more.” Others argued it blurred the line between gaming and gambling, calling it “Jimmy the Greek comes home to your kid’s bedroom.”
Still, some saw something visionary in it. Analysts noted that Nintendo’s experiment could be the “killer app” that finally got more households online. Remember, this was before AOL or broadband — only about 3% of homes were connected to any kind of online service. Nintendo’s move hinted at a future where your console wasn’t just for games, but also for communication, shopping, even banking. In fact, Nintendo had already been experimenting with those features in Japan, where players could manage bank accounts and trade stocks through their Famicom systems.
In hindsight, the Minnesota lottery project was ahead of its time — and perhaps too far ahead. It never made it past testing, but it marked an early intersection between gaming, technology, and digital services that feels eerily familiar now.
Today, when millions of people buy lottery tickets online or play games connected to massive networks, it’s easy to forget how groundbreaking the idea once was: a Nintendo, a modem, and a dream — all for a dollar.
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