The History of Nintendo

Nintendo began to develop video games when they saw how successful video games so they decided to join into the industry. In Japan they originally secured rights to distribute the Magnavox Odyssey in the 1970s. During this time, the video game consoles were still rare when the Atari Pong console was not yet developed. Nintendo began to develop its own video games for arcade and home for the home console.

Mitsubishi Electric proposed a joint development of the Color TV Game Machine and in 1977 they released the Color TV game 6 and Color TV game 15. Nintendo’s first video game was the EVR Race a large handful of others followed in the following years, which Donkey Kong was the most famous of the games.

During the 80s Nintendo’s video game division created some of the most popular arcade games of its time. Donkey Kong was  created in 1981 by Myamoto which was released in the arcades and on the Atari 2600, Intellivision and ColecoVision video game systems. Then the original Mario games were released which were released on Nintendo’s dedicated console.

In 1982 Nintendo created the AVS (Advanced Video System) which had controllers similar to the Nintendo Entertainment System which also used Tape drive, Joy stick and a lightgun.

In July 1983 Nintendo released the Famicom system in Japan which was their first attempt at a cartridge based video game console. 500 thousand copies of the system were sold however the Famicom would freeze up when playing certain games and this was because a chip was malfunctioned so Nintendo had to recall all the Famicom units currently on the store shelves.

Nintendo had contracted with Atari to help them distribute their entertainment system however conflict occurred which severed the relationship between the 2 companies.  

In 1983 a crash in the video game market had occurred and took out Atari, but Nintendo was determined not to make the same mistake as Atari had. Gaming had almost died out in the US so Nintendo decided to secure their Famicom by not allowing any unlicensed games by placing a chip called the 10NES to prevent it.

1985 Nintendo begins releasing the Famicom worldwide with a different design and under a new name, the Nintendo Entertainment System.

In 1988 Nintendo of USA unveiled the Nintendo Power which is a magazine released monthly as news and strategy Magazine which served to advertise new games.

Nintendo released the Game Boy which is a small hand held game console with built in screen which sold extremely well. It eventually became the best selling portable game system of all time. Super Mario land was also release for the portable game system.

The Super Nintendo was produced in Japan in 1990. The Entertainment System was very successful the controllers had changed, having a more sleek design and incorporating 2 additional buttons.

Nintendo and Sony worked together to develop a CD-ROM attachment for the SNES which later on Nintendo left the partnership and halted the process on developing the CD-ROM, Sony continued the development and later on Developed the Playstation console.

The next Major release was in 1996 where Nintendo released the Nintendo 64 in Japan. The console had much more advanced visuals. However unlike Sony’s Playstation the N64 did not have play CDs which became a Nintendo’s weakness and games manufacturing are much more cost effective in CD format versus the Cartridge format.

Nintendo’s GameCube is released in 2001 however not as successful as the Gameboy Advanced and In 2004 Nintendo DS came out which incorporates an additional screen.

Nintendo continue to be ahead in the hand held game system however remaining with the cartridge format.