"Slalom" was developed by British video game company Rare by Tim and Chris Stamper. Rare had been looking to develop games for consoles in the wake of rampant computer game piracy in the United Kingdom. They chose the NES for its nascent popularity, though the console had no Western developers, and asked Nintendo for a license. When Nintendo declined, they reverse engineered the console and made a demo, "Slalom" to show the company. Nintendo was astonished at their effort, and made Rare its first Western developer, beginning a long and close collaboration between Rare and Nintendo of America founder and president Minoru Arakawa.