Nintendo became a video game mega-giant with the release of the game Donkey Kong and it was all forward from there. The technology that Nintendo would develop would soon come to include handheld games in the form of their Game Boy systems.
The company soon realized that the video game industry was where the money was. Since they had the technology, they embraced it and went full force ahead. They began developing video games in full force and remain one of the oldest intact video game console game on the market even to this day!
The very first Nintendo system - the NES - was released in 1983. The NES was an 8-bit video game console released in North America, Brazil, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Its Japanese equivalent was known as the Famicom or Family Computer.
NES is the most successful gaming console of its time in Asia and North America, since Nintendo claims to have sold over 60 million units worldwide. It helped revitalize the video game industry following what is known as the “video game crash of 1983” where it seemed like every single console that came out was plagued by problems and doomed to be unsuccessful.
The NES also set the standard for subsequent consoles in everything from game design to business practices. The platform game, Super Mario Bros. was the system’s first “killer app” and was wildly popular. The NES was the first console for which the manufacturer openly courted third-party developers to develop games for the system.
In 1990, the Super Nintendo (SNES) was released. This console was a 16 bit video game console giving users a much more satisfying and realistic graphical experience when playing video games. In Japan, the SNES was known as the Super Famicom (Super Family Computer). In South Korea, they called it the Super comboy.
The SNES was Nintendo’s second home consoles following the NES. Whereas the earlier system had struggled in various regions of the world, the SNES proved to be a global success although it really couldn’t match the success of the NES in parts of Asia and North America.
This was due in part to increased competition from another company called Sega. Despite the late start, the SNES eventually became the best selling console of the 16 bit era selling over 49 million systems worldwide.
Nintendo’s next big release was the Nintendo 64 and came out in 1996. When it was released for sale in Japan, it came bundled with three video games - Super Mario 64, Pilot wings 64, and Saikyo Habu. However, in North America, buyers only received Super Marion 64 and Pilot Wings 64.
The rising popularity, at the time, of games like The Legend of Zelda, Golden Eye 007, and Star Fox 64 were also released around the time the system was released. That helped propel the N64 to become a very popular system among gamers and as of 2005, had sold over 32.93 million systems.
Nintendo’s sixth-generation video game console was called the Game Cube. In 2001, the release year of Game Cube, also saw the release of other video game consoles with similar technology by some of the other video game console manufacturing giants.
In that year, Sega released its Dreamcast, Sony released Play Station 2, and Microsoft came out with X Box. The world of video game consoles was becoming ultra-competitive as each company touted their system as the best and most innovative on the market.
The Game Cube itself is the most compact and least expensive of all the sixth generation consoles and is Nintendo’s first game console to use optical discs rather than game cartridges.. As of the end of March, 2007, there have been 21.59 million Game Cubs sold nationwide.
2006, however, would be the biggest year yet for Nintendo when it comes to video game technology as they announced the innovative and, for some, extremely exciting Nintendo Wii. The Wii is Nintendo’s seventh generation video game console and started a buzz throughout the video game industry from the moment it was announced.
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The Nintendo Corporation was founded in 1889 in Japan. It was not originally intended to become a video game company. It was first conceived to become a leading producer of playing cards. In fact, its founders thought that they could form an electronics company that would be able to serve many very different functions that included the hotel business and a taxi company.
Eventually, as technology emerged, the founders of Nintendo realized that the real future of their business was in the electronic toy industry. They began doing research and found that this could be a very profitable venture. Their first video game came out in 1978 and was called “Computer Othello” based on the popular board game.
