♥FH: Forgotten Friend (2026)
Nobody’s buddy, really
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The original painting shown here can be purchased here
Limited edition reproductions can be found here
In the history of toys and video games, is there a product from the past so beloved years later, but which was played with less than R.O.B.?
It’s a well-told story how this toy robot, which would “play” games with you on the then-new NES, was essentially a trojan horse to get retailers to stock the game system at all, after the Great Video Game Crash of 1983 forced stores to deep-discount video games, making them think they were done with video games.
Sold in a deluxe bundle with the light gun and the console for a whole lot of money, it was quickly and quietly discontinued early in the system’s life, as soon as retailers and kids got excited for home video games again. Only two games were produced that worked with it, and there are no known prototypes of unreleased titles to make you think Nintendo even intended to support this beyond launch.
This painting was the feature of April’s Livestream, and I worked on a portion of it and other Hearts for Hardware paintings in March’s Livestream, both of which can be viewed as video-on-demand.
I didn’t know anyone who had one of these who used it beyond setting it up and trying it once or twice before just playing Gyromite using both controllers. As such, this thing sat in dusty corners of rooms, on bookshelves, and ended up more of a decorative item than anything. The Robotic Operating Buddy was the buddy a kid in the late 80s spent the least time with.
And yet, a lot of nostalgia has grown up around this little guy. His design is pretty spectacular, presaging robot designs in films like Short Circuit and Wall-E in popular culture, even if Tomy’s Omnibot 2000 likely served as a just slightly earlier inspiration.
R.O.B. was always going to be the most complicated object my Hearts for Hardware series would feature. The transparent controllers and things all run second. And yet, I’ve always looked forward to painting this, even as the unit I picked up has sat on a shelf behind me for years, true to form. It’s nice to close out the NES portion of this series with this piece.