Nintendo Entertainment System

Fusajiro Yamauchi (1859–1940), Hiroshi Yamauchi (1927–2013)

Founded by Fusajiro Yamauchi in 1889 as Nintendo Koppai, a maker of
Japanese Hanafuda playing cards, this company went from a small, paper-
based game publisher to a behemoth consumer electronics institution known
for its iconic game titles, including Pokémon®, Super Mario Bros.®, Tetris®,
and Donkey Kong®.
Nintendo® has had a profound impact on both the gaming industry and how
people interact with computer gaming technologies. It practically created
mobile electronic gaming and helped to introduce the fusion of entertainment
and mobile, as well as the concept of multiplayer engagement across computer
devices. Few other companies were following this strategy at the time Nintendo
was pushing such concepts.
First sold in 1983 in Japan as the Famicom or Family Computer, the Nintendo
Entertainment System hit the US market in 1985 and the European market in
1986. In South Korea, it was called the Hyundai Cowboy. That cowboy would
go on to reinvigorate the US gaming industry, which had been in a decline
since 1983. Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi is credited with making the
Nintendo Entertainment System a success, in part by insisting that the
company sell a low-cost, cartridge-based game console, rather than a more
expensive home computer complete with keyboard and floppy disk drive.
The Nintendo Game Boy®, released in 1989, was one of the first portable
consoles and helped to introduce the idea of having a mobile entertainment
experience rather than a TV-tethered one. Revolutionary at the time, despite its
monochrome screen, the Game Boy helped lay the foundation for the gaming
experiences on smartphones today. Nintendo also produced the first device to
have a satellite modem add-on for a game console. It was a 1995 feature offered
on the Super Famicom console in Japan. Called Satellaview, it broadcast
games between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. and offered a variety of titles, including a few
exclusives that were available only during a specific time slot.
Nintendo software has also proved useful for real-world applications: in 2009,
the Japanese police used the “Mii” feature on the Wii® that allows people to
create their own avatars to create a picture of a hit-and-run suspect for a
wanted poster.
SEE ALSO Augmented Reality Goes Mainstream (2016)
Graffiti by an unidentified artist of Nintendo’s Mario and Luigi, from Super
Mario Bros., on a wall in the city center in Bristol, England.