Gail Tilden

Gail Tilden is an American marketing manager and consultant. She formerly worked at Nintendo of America where she was instrumental in helping with the advertising of the Nintendo Entertainment System's introduction to the North American market, and establishing the Nintendo Power magazine.

Career Nintendo Tilden joined Nintendo of America (NoA) in July 1983 and by September was named the Advertising Manager for the company. At this time, Nintendo was primarily focused on arcade games though had just released its first home console, the Famicom, in Japan. Within the United States, the video game market had just crashed, in part due to oversaturation of the market by unlicensed third-party games for the home consoles of the time. Nintendo waited for some time to bring the Famicom into the United States, and sought to position it to avoid the pitfalls that had led to the 1983 crash. Tilden was part of the team to figure out how to bring the system to U.S. to appeal to consumers while distancing it from the issues that led to the crash, with Tilden leading the public relations and advertising. Tilden, along with others, decided to initially launch the system - remodeled and rebranded as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) - in a limited test market of New York City in October 1985 to gauge reaction, and with additional test market releases in February 1986. This allowed them to figure out what games to pack in with the system for its full release later in 1986. Tilden served as the magazine's editor-in-chief in its early days.

Post-Nintendo Tilden left Nintendo in 2007 to work as a freelance consultant for startup companies.