We don’t know exactly when Wright’s week in Kyoto took place, but we do have a paper trail of when Nintendo and Maxis announced their partnership. The earliest report we could find was in the June 7, 1990 edition of The Nikkei (nick-kay). The story says that two versions of the game – a Super Famicom version in Japan and a Nintendo Entertainment System version in the United States – would be out in summer of 1991.
This was true for the Super Famicom, which saw SimCity debut on April 26, 1991. An American release for the Super NES would follow when the system itself finally launched that August.
As for the NES version, it made one brief appearance at January 1991’s Winter Consumer Electronics Show. Outside of a small handful of players doing focus tests around this time, this was the only time anyone outside of Nintendo had seen this version of the game. Until now, this brief segment from an American television series called Video Power was the only footage anyone had ever seen of the game.
The only time the NES version of SimCity was seen outside of Nintendo was at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show in January of 1991. This footage from the American television show Video Power was, for twenty-six years, the only known footage of the game.
Sometime after this, we don’t know exactly when, the NES version of the game – still left incomplete – was quietly cancelled, and wouldn’t be seen again by the public for twenty-six years.